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The mood in the garage the next day was a little gloomy. The engine itself seemed to be running fine, but I was pretty pissed off to still have quite a sizable oil leak. We decided, as much as we didn’t want to, that we'd pull the engine out again and change the rear crank seal. The one I had replaced it with was aftermarket and had also spent longer than it should have kicking around in the van than it really should have. It was possible that it had been slightly damaged. Th

Initially, we had decided we would try and get out of the garage in 10 days. This was the deadline for the cat paperwork. After this day we would have to pay another £100 to legally take the cats back into Argentina or smuggle them in. It didn’t take long for us to realise that we wouldn’t be able to make it in time and so we decided that we’d smuggle the cats in later and take our time now to get Ruby in the best shape possible. We were determined that even though we were he

After two weeks on the street in Santiago, we had sorted what we could and it was time to move. We checked the engine oil was high enough to get us there and set off a bit earlier than usual, trying to take advantage of the cooler mornings. We had been in regular contact with our soon-to-be host, but as he was having surgery on his hand that day we couldn’t arrive straight away. Nevertheless, we decided that we would get the majority of the drive out of the way in case anythi

Amidst all of this mayhem, it turned out that Asking Alexandria were playing here, in just a few days. Again we deliberated. It was pretty cheap, much less than it would have cost us back home but in light of the upcoming rebuild should we really spend any more money. In the end, music won out. With the pandemic it had been so long since we went to a gig and we just couldn’t pass up the opportunity. We both needed a night to let our hair down and so we decided to buy tickets.

On the border road between the very small town of Bardas Blancas in Argentina and the city of Talca in Chile are a few points of interest. As we were in no particular rush to rip the engine out all over again, and Louis and Kareen did not need to be in the capital for a few days, we had time to break up the drive with a couple of nice stops. The first was Termas del Cajón Grande, a campsite with several hot pools located a short way off the main road and in the no man’s land

After a windy and cold night at the coast, it was somewhat of a shock to arrive in the blistering heat of Chile’s capital. We headed straight to a vet who told us that it was 15k per cat for the health certificates we would need for the border. What they didn’t mention was that they also charged 15k for the consultation, which basically involved weighing them and not a lot else. This, on top of the parasite treatment for our two girls, set us back the best part of £100 and I

One reason for our rapid descent down the coast was that we wanted to be able to spend a few peaceful nights on this beach. A morning stroll revealed an even more picturesque spot, so we dropped the roof down and moved over. Here we could easily walk down onto the beach and it was also unlikely that anyone else would join us here, unlike the other larger flattened area. It turned out that this wasn’t something we needed to worry about. Despite the fact that we spent the weeke

That morning we should have been celebrating being out of the garage, but Boris had messaged us the previous night demanding money. He wanted to charge us just under £10 a day, for 34 days. This was somewhat of a shock as he had told us that he didn’t want any money when we had brought it up on the very first day we arrived. We did realise we had been there far longer than we had initially said and had been using their water and electricity, so it was only fair that we paid s

I gave FedEx a couple of days, while I obsessively watched the tracking information, before I sent them another angry email. According to their tracking, our parts were still in Santiago. It simply wasn’t acceptable, I told them—what kind of service do you call this? I was both slightly deflated and incredibly relieved when the response came back: the parts are awaiting collection. We told Boris the good news, and he said that they had a job planned the next day in Antofagast

I bet you hoped, like I did, that as I shut my laptop and headed up to bed at 3am that the one-man party was over. We couldn’t have been more wrong. Juan kept going, by himself, till 5am before finally leaving. At least I thought I would get a good three to four hours of sleep now. But that also wasn’t meant to be. At 7am, a crowd of people came into the garage. We heard bottles opening and loud conversations as they milled around Ruby. Then someone spotted the speaker. It wa

There are many things I love about Latin America. The climate, the landscape, and its friendly and generous people. There are, however, sticking points. As I sit here and write this, it’s fast approaching 2am. Not the usual hour for blog writing, and I do it merely as a distraction because the alternative is to sit and listen to Juan. I tried that between 12am and 1am and can’t say I enjoyed it. We are in the garage, now into our second week. It’s been pretty relaxed so far r

Now that we had finally found a place where we could get to work, the next morning we did just that. We are so familiar with taking apart Ruby’s engine and box that it was only an hour or so until we were about to split the engine from the box. Every now and again one of the workers would pop over to see what we were doing or to try and lend a hand, but largely they just let us get on with it and that was fine by me. The only downside to being here was that the engine crane t

That morning we left our beautiful, tranquil beach spot to head back into the town of Mejillones for more supplies. We planned to return and spend another week there, watching the sea lions, catching up on odd jobs, and more importantly — not spending any more money. It sounded perfect. We packed up, leaving our newly scavenged beach umbrella wedged in its pallet-and-rock base. Hopefully it would still be there when we returned. The road out from the beach is a steep one — a

Now that we were alone again, we went back to the slow plan. The following morning, we headed back to our free spot in San Pedro and spent a few days there. It would have been nice to spend a little more time enjoying the cute little town itself, but with the price of camping — and also of eating and drinking out — we decided not to. What we both fancied was some coast. We hadn’t been near the sea since we entered Peru, so we packed up our things and decided to go and spend s

If the dizzying heights of Bolivia hadn’t been barren enough, crossing into Chile dropped us into the Atacama Desert — one of the driest places on Earth. Even though it hadn’t been long since we’d dipped in the warm pools up there, we decided to follow Louis and Kareen to a campsite for a proper hot shower. We had heard Chile was expensive and, as we started looking into campsite prices, it certainly seemed that way. We settled on the cheapest one with a hot shower, which wou