Running on Fumes

We awoke after a chilly night with a busy day ahead of us. I had managed to get hold of the guy who dealt with the pet paperwork via WhatsApp and he had told me that he wouldn’t be back in the office for several days. This didn’t work for us at all and so we had agreed that we would pay the fee here and leave the correct documents with one of his colleagues before leaving. He would then come in and process the paperwork and send it on for us to collect in Uyuni after we had visited the Salar. We also needed to sort out our suspension. Wilson had located us a small trolley jack and this, with a big piece of metal I had found in the yard, should do the trick.

We started off jacking up the van and taking the front suspension apart. In order to reassemble it, it was necessary to remove the upper ball joints from the hub assembly. We could then rotate the adjusters back to where they should be, fix them in place, and reassemble the front. I also needed to remove the front shock absorber and try and force back in the new bushing, which had managed to work itself completely out and over the head of the bolt. As ever, we found ourselves fighting fires caused by other people’s poor work, and we resolved that from now on, no matter what the job was, no one would touch Ruby.

We had both started off doing the suspension, but as the shock bushing was pretty persistent, it took a while before we got it to a serviceable state. By this point, we were worried that if we waited until Ruby was finished, the bank would be shut and we wouldn’t be able to pay. When the suspension had collapsed, it had damaged the teeth on both the removable piece of the adjuster as well as the piece welded to the beam. In order to refit it securely, I needed to file down all the stripped pieces individually. This wasn’t too hard on the piece that could be removed but a lot more awkward on the beam itself. It was also a one-person job and so while I set about fixing this as best I could, Lee headed to the bank to pay for the cat papers.

After a good hour of filing, the piece fitted nicely back together. I had the bars in place and the adjusters secured. When Lee got back, we both levered the suspension back into place. Now it was a case of refitting the ball joints, bleeding the brakes, and we could head off. We had managed most of this before it started raining, but then the heavens opened. The concrete drive on which we were working soon flooded, and I had to finish off tightening up the last bolts and bleeding the brakes lying in a freezing cold puddle of water.

As unpleasant as it was, it was done. Ruby sat at a normal height and we could leave. We still had half an hour to make it to the office and drop off the pet documents, so we hurriedly set off after gulping down a warming cup of tea and getting into some dry clothes. It’s a short drive back down into the city centre, and the person we had spoken to on WhatsApp had clearly told his colleague we were coming. We handed over the relevant papers and we were done.

With it still pouring, we drove around the quickly flooding streets trying to get some fuel. We wanted to head out of the town and camp somewhere peaceful and a bit lower. We tried several petrol stations, all of whom refused to serve us, either at local price or international price. We had no choice but to drive on and hope we could buy fuel in a small shop along the way. By this point we were pretty fed up, so we headed a short way out of the village and pulled off down a quiet dirt track in the middle of nowhere. On any other day we might have enjoyed some nice views, but this afternoon we sat in a cold wet cloud and so we did the only thing you can do on a miserable wet day: we drew the curtains and enjoyed a nice hot chocolate.

After the glum end to yesterday, we awoke to bright blue skies. We saw the mountains laid out before us and smelt the fresh clean air after rain. It seemed like a bright new start and, with the camper now ready to tackle some offroading, we headed onwards towards Coqueza. It was a long drive, of which we had been doing a lot recently, but we knew that once we got there we could spend several days moving slowly and enjoying our drive on the Salar. This is the largest salt flat on earth, stretching for over 10,000 square kilometres. Currently, parts of it are mined for lithium at discrete unmarked locations in the west. It is also visible from space and is used by NASA to calibrate its satellites. In the rainy season, a thin coating of water turns vast expanses into an endless mirror, while now in the dry season it’s accessible with any vehicle and a bit of care.

As we set off that morning, our first priority was to find fuel. In Bolivia, fuel is frequently an issue to buy at petrol stations, and so sometimes it’s easier to find a local selling it on in a town. They normally charge around 5–6 bol (compared to the local price of 3.4 bol), but for us this is still far cheaper than buying it at the approved foreigner rate (closer to 10 bol), and as they are still making a profit they don’t mind selling it to us. It didn’t take us too long to find a local woman who happily sold us 20 litres of fuel from her little roadside shop. It wouldn’t be enough to get us all the way there, but we imagined in the upcoming 4-hour drive we would find another place.

After being in Potosí at 4200m, we now dropped steadily. We left behind the stormy and rainy mountains and drove down into flatter and drier plains. After a couple of hours we started our hunt for fuel, but without any luck. No one here would sell it to us and so we kept on going in the hope of finding something. As we turned down the final stretch of road, the needle hovered dangerously close to the bottom of the red. Google was adamant there was a petrol station down here and also a small town, and we hoped we’d be able to find something. We now drove through flat, dry desert. There was nothing to be seen at all, and even when we reached the so-called town, the petrol station was non-existent. The whole place was boarded up and abandoned, so we steadily kept going.

By the time we reached the final point to buy fuel, we ran on fumes. There was one final station marked in the small village of Salina de Garci Mendoza. At this point we had no option but to find fuel. There was no way we could go back and no way we could enter the Salar without it. As we approached the toll booth to enter the town, we hoped it would be open and that they would also sell to us. Luckily for us, at the death, luck was on our side. The lady on the pump happily filled our tank and jerry can for a fairly reasonable 5 bol per litre, and we could make our way on the final stretch towards Coqueza in a more relaxed fashion.

Once you leave behind the little village and the petrol station, you leave the tarmac roads too. Before long we left behind the dirt road and drove on the outskirts of the Salar. It was an odd experience to just aim for the headland and drive with no particular guidance, but it was only a short and hard stretch and we easily crossed it before picking up the road again on the other side.

It was now late in the day, and we bumped along the rough gravel track that would bring us round to our spot for that night. As we came around the end of the land, the view opened up and we saw the salt flat below us. Tiny dots of other cars were parked out there, and a large brown swathe of tracks marked one of the available entrances. Although it’s a hard salt crust, the edges here are wet marshland, and so it’s only possible to enter the Salar through designated roads.

We were only 6 km away from the end when a nasty rattling noise made us pull over. A quick check revealed that one of the bolts had fallen out of the rear shock absorber. I removed the bolt so we didn’t lose it and we decided as we were so close we’d slowly limp there. We got another 3 km before I realised I should have also collected the sleeve that fits in the bushing. When I went out to check, we’d lost it. So as the sun began to set, I started off back down the road to find it. I had walked around a kilometre or so before I found it and headed back to Lee and the van. Now the sun had nearly set and we soon pulled into the village of Coqueza.

We had planned to drive on a little way and park outside. Apparently there was a warm water source here from the volcano and we needed to wash some of our still soaking wet clothes from Ruby repairs in Potosí. When we arrived though, they were apparently doing work on the road and it seemed it wasn’t possible to drive on any further. We pulled up on the side of the pretty little plaza and decided to call it a night. Tomorrow we would need to deal with the shock absorber first and then we could go out and enjoy the Salar.