Return to Chile

We're back in Chile!  Very relieved to be able to say that our sixth and final border crossing passed (almost) without incident.

We left Arequipa and drove all day to the border crossing at Tacna.  We stopped for a late lunch in Moquegua and narrowly avoided being stopped by police for doing an illegal u-turn.  We could see one of the officers talking to his colleague and gesturing like a u-turn, as if to ask if he had seen us do it as well.  "Quick! Before they stop us!" I yelled to Paul, and we were off down the Pan-American highway.

At the Peruvian side of the border, we parked up to go through immigration but it was unclear exactly where we needed to go.  So we went where most people seemed to be going and queued for windows marked 'EXIT'.  But when we got to the front, the woman asked for a form we didn't have and was very unhelpful when we asked her where to get one.

After a bit of going backwards and forwards, an officer from a group who appeared to be on a break directed us to two security guards who gave us four copies of the same form, all to be filled in with exactly the same information about who was in our vehicle (when will they get duplicate forms?!)  Now that we had the ball rolling, the process was easier.  We were stamped out of Peru, handed back three of the forms and sent around the corner to 'CIT' to have the van checked out of Peru.  

The dude there did a more thorough check than when we last left Peru, checking the number plate and needing to look at the steering wheel to verify it was a Fiat.  He eventually asked to see the van's registration document, at which point I realised that I had lost the real document.  Eek!!  Cue some frantic rifling through reams of paper, then retracing of steps to human immigration.  Thankfully, the woman there knew exactly what I was talking about when I said I'd lost a little slip of paper - it had been handed in to the two security guards.  They wanted me to recite what was on it before they handed it over.  This was not long after I'd written out the van's chassis number four times, so I was able to reel that off!

By this time, the dude checking the van out of Peru had decided he didn't need to see the registration document, so we drove over to Chile, miraculously losing two hours in the 20 seconds it took to reach the immigration booths.  

When we got stamped in, the immigration officer obligingly stamped the penultimate clean page in my passport.  We then moved the van in to a queue to be searched for contraband organic produce such as dairy and fruit & veg.

We had already purged the van of most things, but had a bag containing milk, eggs, mayonnaise and dulce de leche to hand in.  We were surprised when we were allowed to keep the mayo and dulce, as well as the Argentinian maté that Paul had kept hold of in hope.  The van was searched more thoroughly than before, but we still could have smuggled stuff in, for example in the cupboards containing our clothes, which they just opened and shut when they saw what was in them.  A second officer did a quick search, but he looked like he was just having a nose around, more than anything!

At the customs window to get the van in to Chile, all we had to do was in hand the final copy of the passenger inventory form.  "The van's Chilean, right?" asked the woman.  "Yes." "Ok, you can go."  Didn't realise it was going to be that easy!!  I had been practising in my head explaining how hard it was to get a replacement windscreen, expecting it to be an issue.  But that was it.  Final border done!

Cutting it short

Just a couple of days ago (Tuesday 21st) were actually thinking our road trip would have to be cut short because of a problem.  I'd even started imagining the conversations we'd be having back home: "Oh it was great....right up until the last two weeks..."

After leaving Huacachina, we continued south.  Our next proper stop was going to be Arequipa on Monday (20th) to meet up with Joanne whom we'd met in Santiago, and was now volunteering in Peru.  Everything had been going smoothly.  We'd even managed another dip in the sea at a beach en route where we stopped for lunch.  But about 90km from Arequipa, Paul suddenly realised the brakes weren't working properly!!  Luckily, we weren't in a dangerous situation; he managed to get the van over to the hard shoulder and glide to a stop with the minimal braking power we had.  It wasn't a problem with the actual brakes - Paul said it felt like the power assistance had failed, so we were able to stop, but only very gradually.  

We were in the middle of nowhere so decided to drive on for a bit very slowly to see if there was a mechanic in the next town a couple of kilometres away.  There wasn't, but the officer at the police station advised us to go back to a small town about 10km away.  The return journey was mostly uphill, so not too scary.  After a bit of asking around, we were directed to a mechanic who seemed to be operating on a farm (there were cows in a pen not far from the tarpaulin shelter he came out from behind).   But when he didn't appear to know how to operate a jack, we told him not to worry and continued our search for a proper mechanic!

We eventually found one who actually tested the brakes for himself.  He then checked the rear brake pads, but of course they were new, so no problem with them.  He said he wanted to check the front ones as well, but by this time it was about 6.30pm so he told us to return in the morning.  Fortunately, there was a petrol station nearby which had a truck park behind it and they let us camp there for the night.  

Enter Mechanic Paul!  Frustrated with the mechanic checking the brake pads when the problem was clearly to do with the power assistance, Paul decided to do some of his own diagnostics, armed with just a head torch and a basic tool kit.  

About 20 minutes in, he goes: "Christine, can you get me a plastic bag and lots and lots of toilet paper, please?"

When I stepped outside in to the dark, Paul looked like a mad scientist who'd just ripped the heart out of an animal - he had his head torch on, his hands were covered in oil and he was holding a small part that had oil dripping out of it.

He'd figured out that the vacuum pump didn't seem to be working.  While it was good to know what the problem might be, it was also worrying because it would probably be very difficult to get a replacement pump - practically impossible before we were due to fly home.

After a restless night's sleep, the next morning Paul cleaned the pump and refitted it, hoping that it might help.

It didn't.  By this stage, we were thinking we might have to have the van towed to northern Chile, where we'd have to sell it for what we could get before flying home.

With our mood rather low, we headed back to the mechanic to see if Paul's diagnosis was right.  He agreed that the failing pump was probably the problem and after checking that everything else was as it should be, he spotted that a small part of the pump had worn away, so it wasn't spinning properly.

I half expected him to say "You need a new part, love" (or whatever the Spanish equivalent is) but instead, he took the pump to his workbench and started welding!

When he came back, he'd welded some metal on to the pump to replace the bit that had worn.  Paul and I both said, "This will be amazing if it works."  And bloody hell it did!!  We couldn't believe it!!  From thinking we might have to be towed back to Chile, to being back on the road, in half an hour!!  And even more crazily, he only wanted to charge us 20 soles (less than a fiver!) so we gave him extra for a beer.

After testing the brakes (and our seatbelts), we headed back on the road to Arequipa.  I started messaging Joanne to tell her we were on our way, but before I could even send the message, we were brought to a halt by a march in the road.

The townspeople had gone on strike, so lunch in Arequipa was off the cards!  We joined a queue of traffic (protected by riot police) and ended up sat in the van with the engine off for about two hours.  

We found a way to pass the time though (and also found that the mobile phone holder, which is too small for either of our phones, holds a deck of cards perfectly!)

After a couple of hours the march ended, so we did eventually make it to Arequipa and Joanne, and were rewarded with beers bigger than my head!

Huacachina (again!)

We loved the oasis of Huacachina so much, we stopped again on our journey south.  This time we wanted to go quad biking in the sand dunes.  We stayed at the same hostel as last time, camped right next to the pool (and got a better picture this time!)

We also ate at our favourite place, Desert Nights, who serve massive salads with very healthy sweet and spicy fried chicken pieces.

The quad biking took the form of a tour, where we followed a guide who took us on a roller coaster route, involving seemingly impossible inclines.  He also got us to do a small circuit one at a time so we could film each other.

Patch it up

Our first port of call in Lima was Manuel Muñoz's garage, as our CV boots had slipped.  He was just as nice as last time, offering us chicha morada, a popular drink made using purple corn, while we waited.  While the mechanic was working on the van, he noticed our brakes needed looking at, so we ended up going back again before we left Lima to have the rear brake discs replaced.

All was going well until the mechanics went to take the van off the supports they'd been using to hold it up.  It turns out one of them had been under our grey water tank and had actually punctured it, so all our grey water (from washing dishes etc) had spewed out!  Not to worry, Mr Muñoz knew a plastic welder (is that what they're called?) who came over straight away armed with a soldering iron and patches.  He pulled the plastic plug that had been created out of the tank and then just melted and patched the edges to seal it in again!

We poured some water down the sink to test it and then we were off!  Loving this culture of mend, not replace.

Second run-in with dodgy Peruvian coppers

We've been stopped by Peruvian police a few more times since our run-in with the corrupt copper in Lima who got bored of us.  There are police patrols doing random stops all over the place, but they have all let us drive on after seeing Paul's driving licence, the van registration document and our insurance.  That was until we were driving from Barranca to Lima. 

The procedure started off as normal - we were asked to pull over by a police patrol doing spot checks at the side of the road.  He asked to see Paul's driving licence, the vehicle registration and our insurance.  There was nothing wrong with those documents, so then he said Paul had illegally overtaken some way back down the road, crossing solid lines in the middle of the road that he shouldn't have.  He checked where we were from (i.e. could we afford a bribe) and went to consult with his colleague in the patrol car, taking Paul's driving licence with him.

He soon came back to tell us something along the lines of "We're going to issue you with a ticket," and asked Paul to go over to the patrol car.  There, a second officer who was in the car started filling out various forms, showing Paul that the fine was going to be 438 soles (almost £100).  

This time, instead of "if you pay me something now, we'll scrap the fine," this officer said he was going to keep hold of Paul's driving licence and he wouldn't get it back until he'd paid the fine at the bank in Lima.  OR, we could give him some money now in exchange for the licence there and then.

These guys were good.  Last time, we had been in a pretty strong position to play the "we've got no idea what you're saying" game because the last corrupt police officer had been on a motorbike and was standing in the road by the side of the van to talk to us, with us comfortably inside and in no hurry to go anywhere.

This time, the officer was in his patrol car where he was likely to be sitting for the next few hours anyway, while we were stood out in the sun.  Plus he was threatening to keep Paul's driving licence.

"You want me to bribe you?" Paul said in English.  At which point, the officer, clearly having understood the word bribe, smiled in a "if you want put it like that" kind of way.

Paul offered him 20 soles (£4.45) but he said he wanted double that, so Paul got out another 10 soles. "You've got no more?" asked the officer, accepting the money and handing back Paul's licence.  Twats.

Our first breakdown!

It only took 3 months, but we finally had our first breakdown.  I had been hoping we would have none, but it wouldn't be an adventure without one!

So we were just getting in to the Peruvian desert on the road from Piura to Chiclayo when we realised we only had about a quarter of a tank of fuel - not enough for the full 206km journey.  But Paul was confident there'd be a petrol station along the way.....of course we should've remembered from the outward journey that there wasn't, and it soon became clear we were going to run out of fuel.

In the meantime, a knocking sound had developed whenever the van was at low speeds, which was quite often because there were lots of detours around roadworks.  So while I was worrying about what we were going to do when we ran out of fuel, Paul was worried about the prospect of a mechanical fault.

Just as we were working out a plan of action for when we ran out fuel, we came across a building with a 'We sell fuel' sign outside.  Inside there was an old man with vats of fuel in his front room, waiting for idiots like us to turn up.  There was a bit of confusion over exactly what fuel we wanted because, unnervingly, they call diesel petroleo here.  After confirming that this was diesel ("the fuel lorries use") we got 18l for 70 soles or about £15 (still cheaper than at home!)  Who knows what it was diluted with, but dirty diesel was better than no diesel.

So with enough fuel to get us to the nearest petrol station, we set off.  As expected, the knocking sound was there again as we pulled away, only this time it was followed by a clunk and the battery light coming on on the dashboard...  We pulled over straight away and found that the fan belt had snapped!!!!  It had been squealing for a while, I suppose we pushed our luck with how long we had to replace it.

Anyway, we were now stuck in the desert unable to drive anywhere and with no RAC to call.  There were vehicles going past, it wasn't like we were completely stranded, but even if we flagged someone down, what would we do?  Buy a fan belt and find a mechanic who could come all the way out to the van and fit it?  There seemed to be no easy way out of it.  So, Paul's plan of action was to fashion a replacement fan belt out of the hem of a t-shirt.  

Sadly, this did not work.  We drove for about 20 seconds until it was clear the engine was going to overheat.  The replacement fan belt had flown off straight away, so Paul fashioned a second one.  This didn't survive revving the engine while the van was static - the knot failed.  Then just as Paul was considering alternative knots, a truck driver pulled over of his own accord and reversed back towards us.  Cue me thinking: "Maybe he has a spare fan belt of exactly the size we need and he knows how to fit it!"  No.  But when Paul showed him our problem, the truck driver said straight away that he was going to tow us because it was dangerous where we were!  Being towed hadn't even crossed our minds as an option!!  (At this point, despite the relief at being rescued, Paul says he was slightly disappointed not to get to see if he could fashion a successful replacement fan belt!)

So we got towed the final 60km to Chiclayo (we needn't have bothered with the emergency fuel!)  The truck driver brought us all the way to a petrol station where we could stay the night and which had a mechanic right next door.  I can't believe how nice he was; he didn't want any money and dashed off as soon as we were untethered.

The next day, the mechanic next door turned out to be just as amazingly helpful.  We had to go in to town to buy a new fan belt, so he negotiated with a taxi driver to take us there, wait for us to do our shopping and then take us back.  The first fan belt we got was too short though, so he had to do that all again!  While we were hailing the second cab, the truck driver who towed us drove past in the opposite direction and recognised us.  He slowed right down and was honking at us and waving and shouting!!  Can't believe he spotted us and recognised us!

When we eventually got the right size fan belt and had it fitted, the mechanic only charged us 30 soles (£6.70).  I almost felt bad paying so little as he'd spent quite a lot of time working on our van, including replacing a bolt that was missing from the alternator assembly.

The early morning productivity got us in the mood for sorting out the van, so next stop was a car wash where cleaners spent more than 2 hours washing off iguana poo we'd accumulated while parked under a tree in Canoa, plus loads of mud from driving in the rain in southern Ecuador.  They also vacuumed up all the sand we'd collected from the various beaches we've been to.

Before, during and after:

Then it was to the tyre shop to replace our worn down tyres....

And then we popped in to a car spares market down the road.  We needed to replace the glass in one of our wing mirrors, which had shattered when we hit an invisible post which turned up in the middle of a road in Ecuador.  Plus our rear view mirror needed repairing.  We ended up finding a glass cutter (or rather, he found us wandering around with broken mirrors) who fixed and fitted both for £30 - bit expensive, but he did a good job and his colleague spent ages drilling out and replacing a threaded screw in the rear view mirror.

So all in all, a productive van reparation day.  Now all we need is a new windscreen....

Back in to Peru

A dose of Imodium ensured I was able to survive a full day's drive from Puerto López all the way to the Peruvian border.  We stopped in Guayaquil for lunch at KFC - our usual motorway food when we do long drives at home, although the food isn't 100% the same.  Paul had a set meal - not your usual KFC UK fare!

(Lentils, rice, fried banana, chicken, chips and salad)

In the car park, we were stopped by two people who were amazed to see a campervan in Ecuador, and when we were in the restaurant, a couple who spoke English asked where we were from (they'd lived in Cambridge) and said it was very rare to see campervans in Ecuador.  South Americans are not afraid to stop you and ask about unusual things, and they love it even more when you let them have a nose around!

Once back on the road, we ended up still driving after it got dark, something we've done quite a lot but which the Foreign Office doesn't recommend.  We soon realised why when the beautifully tarmaced, but poorly lit road we'd been driving along suddenly turned in to a rough dirt road with invisible posts!  We were lucky that just Paul's wing mirror hit the post, but the force smacked it in to the door frame and shattered the glass.

Oh well, it was another thing to repair, but we were both still in one piece!

When we finally made it to Huaquillas, the border town on the Ecuadorian side, we planned to fill up with ridiculously cheap diesel ($1.02/gallon or less than 20p/litre).  But for some reason all the petrol stations were closed by the time we got there at 7.30pm.  So we ended up having some food in Huaquillas and then camping out at one of the petrol stations with a 24-hour security guard.  The next morning, we got in the queue for fuel, only for the guard to tell us that the fuel was for 'co-operatives' only i.e. taxis, police, companies etc.  But before we even tried to ask him to bend the rules, he raised the fact that we'd been parked there all night and said he'd speak to one of the attendants for us.  Camping there made it look like we were desperate for fuel and we were allowed to fill up - yay!

Then it was off to the border.  We had to abort our first attempt to cross and drive back into Ecuador to de-register the van at a customs office we missed in the dark the night before.  The lady there was very thorough, taking a picture of the van, the number plate (which a security guard had to clean with a brush for us because the van was so dirty!) and the chassis number under the bonnet.  Then at the border, we got stamped out of Ecuador and in to Peru with no problems - although I had to photocopy a couple of pages from my passport for Peruvian immigration because it seemed my exit the last time had not been processed, so it looked like I was still in the country.

Getting the van in to Peru this time was no problem either.  We didn't bother with the notarised documents, we just gave them the 'improved' registration document from the start.  The officer this time was very nice though, so who knows if he'd have accepted the notarised documents. 

In Peru, we headed to some mud baths en route to Máncora.  Paul had read about them online and they weren't in the guide book, so there were no other tourists there, just us and some Peruvian families.  

A couple of kids even took the opportunity to practice their English with us!  The mud baths were really good fun because we were so buoyant in them, so we could just float around, smothered in mud.  It almost felt like being in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, floating around in lovely warm vats of chocolate....except we didn't taste it of course.

We're not sitting on the bottom in these photos, we were so buoyant we could float with both feet and our shoulders out of the mud!

In Máncora we stayed at the Loki hostel.  We'd met the manager, Rhiannon, at the Loki in Salta so it was nice to see a familiar face, something we've missed while travelling. 

We even got free t-shirts for staying at our third Loki (the other being in La Paz).  The hostel was packed with young Chileans and Argentinians on their summer holidays, so it was a bit loud and full on.  But it was still nice to relax by the pool or at the beach after the long drive through Ecuador.

There was even a poker tournament one afternoon at the hostel, so while I sunbathed, Paul did some male bonding.  And he showed the kids who's boss by whooping their arses and winning!!!!

A whole £11 richer!!