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The Wallas technician, Juan, had kindly passed on the details of the shipment coming from Finland, so we knew we still had quite some time to kill. We awoke to yet another grey day after a night of heavy rain. In the distance over the city, it was almost as if you could see the cloud lifting towards the horizon. We had no desire to kill time in a grey, noisy city and so we headed out. It turned out that the outskirts of the city were where the Zapp family lived. Somewhat famo

As it was Friday night, we toyed with our camping options. This didn’t take very long as there weren’t that many of them. We knew our friends had tried the paid campsite and told us that despite its high price tag, it was noisy and dirty. In light of this, we decided to risk a free option. This was another disused train station in the small village of Torres. We didn’t have the quietest night admittedly, with the local youth using the old station as their hangout, but we deci

Back at the lovely peaceful reservoir again, the morning peace was ruined by the Wallas not turning on. It seemed that whatever I had done was nothing more than a temporary fix. We had tried at least. I took the thing apart on the floor outside and when nothing was visibly amiss other than a dirty combustion chamber, we made the decision to drive to Buenos Aires and send it to the technician there. We were at least fortunate that it had kept us warm up in the higher altitude

In keeping with the new hiking plan, we headed off that afternoon for La Cumbrecita. A village that was founded back in 1934 by Helmut Cabjolsky, who was from Berlin. He was a civil engineer who was transferred to Buenos Aires in 1932 and apparently he didn’t think much of the beaches and just missed the landscape back home. Therefore the town of La Cumbrecita looks straight out of Bavaria, right down to its purposefully planted pine forests that now thrive on a once barren l

As we were committed to spending some time in this city waiting for the window parts, we decided this would be a good moment to get the Wallas sorted. It was getting cold now, some nights dropping below freezing, and I really did miss being warm. Not only that, but cooking on gas here was an expensive enterprise. We got in contact with the supplier here and asked for a quote. When it came back at about £400, we opted to get the parts sent out here and try to do it ourselves.

With our return flights to the UK edging ever so slightly closer, we began to head east. We hadn’t really been alone for a while or in a genuinely new place and so we cruised along the highway towards a salt flat where we hoped to stay for the night. We were headed towards Río Cuarto where there was a VW guy who we hoped could help us find a new window mechanism for our broken driver’s door. The mechanism had first broken as we entered Chile in San Pedro de Atacama. I’d bodge

We were a little delayed arriving at our friends’ place due to the messing around with the gearbox and it was early evening by the time we squeezed through the pergola and parked both vans on the lawn. They were very excited to see us and waved us straight into the kitchen, where a fire already roared in the hearth and the table was covered in homemade empanadas waiting to be cooked. Rosa instantly sprang into action, offering everyone drinks and starting to cook the food. Ca

As we have been overlanding for quite a long time now, we are members of several WhatsApp groups for travellers like ourselves. Every now and again, someone pops up with a mechanical problem and, if I can, I offer advice. For several months now, I’d been messaging Annie, who was travelling in an ex-Mitsubishi Fuso school bus called Buzzy. It was prone to breaking, not helped by the vast quantities of terrible mechanics along the way. While we had a conversation history as lon

As we drove the three-kilometre-long tunnel that connects Chile to Argentina once again, a feeling of relief washed over me that we had made the ascent on our newly built engine. Ahead of us our friends drove on in their Mitsubishi camper, ready for our illicit border plans. We had coordinated our departure from Chile in order that we could both enter without declaring our pets. Our previous paperwork had long expired and we had no intention of paying another £100 for another

We had planned to meet back up with our friends on Friday night to see the show at the planetarium. As it was now only Thursday, we decided to wild camp a bit before the town. We thought we’d prefer a night’s free wild camping by the river rather than an additional night on the street in the town. After the tough drive out of Valle Hermoso, we slowly made our way down into Las Leñas and to the welcome sight of tarmac. It’s always a relief to come off a tough dirt road and the

I awoke the next morning feeling surprisingly chipper, despite the amount of alcohol I had consumed the day before. I guess a solid 14 hours’ sleep had worked wonders. Lee, on the other hand, had gone to bed later and also drunk some beers. He was feeling much worse for wear and spent most of the day sitting in his chair looking somewhat green. After leaving the bodega, we had driven up into the foothills of the mountains a short way and the increase in altitude had resulted

We were so relaxed in our new river spot that we just couldn’t bring ourselves to leave. The following morning we awoke to glorious sunshine and, as the cats enjoyed being back in the wild again, I set about doing the huge pile of clothes washing. It took me several hours down by the river, but with a good breeze and a beautiful sunny day, things were drying in no time. I had put my bikini on, with a good layer of sunscreen, to try and top up the tan. As I hung up the last fe

Due to the gear shift issue, it was mid-afternoon by the time we arrived. Our friends were already in town at Che Picadas bar, watching the football and so we headed in to join them for the second half. I dived into the 2-for-1 mojito offer while Lee excused himself, quite possibly for present shopping. Back at the vans that evening, we weren’t sure we’d have the quietest night parked up by the lake, but we hoped that being midweek we might get away with it. We were wrong. As

When we had last visited this area, it had been after the visit to the bodega and we had already got plans to meet our friends. We said at the time we wanted to come back to this pretty spot and spend a little more time there. So as we left Mendoza this time, it seemed like a good place to head to. We thought we’d spend a tranquil week up here in the mountains before another boozy birthday down in the valley. Our little river spot had been ok for a night or two, but we had li