Back to Santiago

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 between the two countries. To clarify, it’s in Argentina, but in order to visit you must notify the border office if you are not also leaving the country, as the hot springs are after the checkout point for Argentina. As we were leaving anyway, we simply signed out of Argentina and continued on. On paper, we weren’t officially in Argentina, nor were we in Chile. I wondered how long you could stay here before Chile got funny about it, although knowing Chile, it wouldn’t be very long. Over 100km separates the two border posts and we turned off the main road just before the highest point of the mountain pass and headed up towards the hot pools. This last section of road was slow and bumpy, but thankfully not too steep, and so we slowly made our way up towards the campsite.

The little deserted track to get here might lead you to think it’d be quiet. However, it was full of locals camping, as well as a couple of campervans too. We registered ourselves and set up camp. All around us, families grilled their evening meals and used one of the seven hot pools for a nice warming dip in the chill of the mountain air. The following day was even busier. Little generators popped up all over the site and the tents multiplied. Even though it was busy, we had our own little space on the side of the river and, as the day grew colder, we headed to the hot pools for the last of the daylight. At least then I could say I’d had some kind of wash. When I’d tried the showers earlier, I hadn’t risked the freezing cold water there.

After a relaxing few days, it was back to reality and time to finish the last part of the border crossing. We had nearly made it back out to the main road when a smell of burning rubber made us pull over. It seemed that all of the recent off-roading had caused those pesky bolts on the rear suspension arm to come loose yet again. This meant our tyre was rubbing on the shock absorber and we’d also completely lost one bolt. To get us out, we stuck a much thinner one in its place, as we didn’t have the correct size to replace it, tightened the others and continued on slowly. We knew at least from here that it’d be good roads.

The countryside was beautiful up here and, with the lower altitude of this pass, it was possible to enjoy it. I was glad we had crossed lower down the country as this also meant lower down the Andes and the altitude increase was much kinder on our engine. On a very good quality road, we could sit back a little and enjoy the mountain views. Soon we had reached the highest point and had technically crossed into Chile. It was still, however, a while before we reached the Chilean check-in. The views on this side were even better and we couldn’t help pulling over for a quick picture and this gorgeous lookout over Laguna del Maule.

Now we had one crossing into Chile under our belt, we knew what to hide. First up, the giant pine cones were stashed. Then we relocated a load of our fruit and vegetables, just leaving one manky potato. The cats still had legitimate paperwork, so we didn’t have to worry about them at least. We parked to the side and went into the main building to complete our personal paperwork. To enter Chile, this involves filling in a form online before you enter the country or, at some borders, a paper version. We did this on our phones in the queue. It was a long wait, with people queuing outside, so at least we still got a signal from the router in the van to do the paperwork. With this done, we proceeded over to the aduana side. We had declared on our form that we had ‘something to declare’ and so we told them about the pets. They seemed more relieved than anything else when we produced the proper paperwork for them. They went back and forth, back and forth with our papers until finally telling us to pull over outside.

The plus side of having the cats legitimately is that you can use them as somewhat of a distraction. Our fridge went undetected, as did everything else. He stuck his head inside a door and took a cursory glance. I released the sacrificial potato and then a howling Lexi sped things up somewhat. They searched us a lot less thoroughly than the locals going past, who were having their cars turned inside out. Louis and Kareen appeared to have got off lightly too and now we had an even easier drive winding back down out of the mountains.

We headed towards a spot on the outskirts of Talca for the night. We hoped it wouldn’t be too busy, it being a Sunday after all, and Talca is a large city. It seemed like there was a decent wild camping option on the side of the riverbanks, but when we got there it was too busy for us to drive right down. We parked just above and sat in our chairs eating ice cream and waiting for a few people to leave. It wasn't a surprise really; on a roasting hot Sunday afternoon, what else would you do except go for a nice swim? The river was fairly clean too, not the startling bright blue water that we had followed out of the mountains, but swimmable nevertheless.

After a while there was space for us to move the vans nearer and then, as the afternoon came to an end, we bagged ourselves some prime real estate right on the river. Louis and Kareen blocked us in at the back as they needed to leave earlier in the morning and we parked up on the riverside. At this point, Ruby was so incredibly wonky that we stuck our jack under the front bumper in order to try and level her out enough to sleep. Here, we also met Jacob, a guy on a bike travelling down from the States. We invited him to camp with us too, which he was happy to do.

The following morning, it was time for things to get real. We packed up and got ready to leave. We said goodbye to Jacob and helped him find his cooking pot, which a local dog had dragged off into a bush. Then we wished him good luck on his trip down south, as we were about to head in the opposite direction.

It was about a straightforward three-hour drive to get to the capital from here, but it was stressful nonetheless. We had nearly put in the entire bottle of oil we had bought back in Malargüe already. The engine was burning about 1L per 100km. Now the oil light flickered at us and we needed more. At the worst possible time as well. The engine temperature started to climb and the oil light came on. I instantly killed the engine and coasted to the hard shoulder. No sense in frying it now. We poured in what little we had and made it to the next service station where we bought another litre. The exhaust pipes were filthy with soot. We hoped this litre would be enough to get us to the north of the city where we planned to stay the night with Louis and Kareen. It would be their last night in their camper and we were going to enjoy a bottle of wine and some pizzas to commemorate the occasion.

Despite my stress levels, rubbish oil level and the loss of power, we crawled into Santiago. Louis and Kareen had used an agency called Suzi Santiago to help with the purchase of their camper and so they needed to go back there in order to finalise parts of the sale, including picking up the standard steering wheel to refit rather than the one adapted for Louis to drive. We realised as we came off the motorway that another reason our engine was running so hot was that we had totally lost the fans. On a hot summer’s day here, this was something that became apparent pretty fast as soon as we lost speed on the motorway.

It was getting a bit late now though and, as the day cooled, we managed to make it to the pizza place without having to try and repair the fans. We ordered the pizzas, as our friends too had been delayed, and then brought them back to where we’d be camping. It wasn’t long before they turned up too. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a nice night together wasn’t meant to be. Louis had caught a nasty infection from the hot pools back in Argentina and was feeling very poorly. So the rest of us polished off the pizza, but it wasn’t the evening it was supposed to be. We said we’d try again when they were settled in their Airbnb and Louis felt better.

The next morning, they headed straight off to a doctor. We had a cold shower, filled up our water in preparation to wild camp, wiggled our fan wiring and went to buy an awning. Just down the road was a camping shop that sold them. I’d already skulked through their website online and we decided that we were going to just do it. Not only would it be good for the extreme sun, but also in wet weather to give us a dry area outside the door. It was a 2m, 14kg beast and we shoved it inside. We still weren’t totally clear on how we were going to mount it, but that was a problem we could sort out later once we were parked up.#

We headed back to our old faithful wild camp by the park. Once we were there, I could relax a little. We were in a good free spot. We could source everything we needed before we left. There was very little driving left. We decided we would stay here for as long as necessary to get the parts we needed. In the meantime, we would find a place to work on Ruby.

The first thing we wanted was to compression test the engine. I had found a shop that sold tools for most likely less than the price of paying a garage to do it. The easiest way to get there would be by using the metro. Down in the same location was also a shop that supposedly sold Kombi parts. We were in need of a new steering bush, as this had also begun to split, and also some more CV boots.

Again.

We walked to the nearest station, got ourselves a card and put some money on it. All of this was incredibly easy. So was the metro network. We made it easily to the south of the city. We had planned to stop off on the way in, but with the delays and stress of the drive we hadn’t bothered. We found the VW shop easily, but were told that they only carried parts for VWs after 2000. They told us there was another branch on the other side of town that dealt with older vehicles. As for the tool shop, we couldn’t find it. I stupidly hadn’t pre-saved it on the map and as soon as we left the van we had no internet. I thought it would be obvious, I guess, but it wasn’t.

This meant we had to go back again for the compression tester. Then it seems that I accidentally bought a fuel rail pressure gauge rather than an engine compression tester. Back again we went. The sales assistant tried to refuse us a refund, saying we’d used it, but in the end we managed to swap it for the right tool. Finally we could test the engine. We had also managed to find the right VW parts shop and pick up the spares we needed from there. I fitted the new steering bush right away. Ours had completely cracked open, meaning we had lost a lot of steering capability, as well as having to deal with all the other problems.

Then it was time to test the engine. I disabled the coil pack and fuel pump and then pulled the spark plugs. One was so covered in carbon I couldn’t even see the electrode. One was covered in oil. Both of these were on the right bank of the engine. The left bank didn’t look so bad. The compression readings we got were all over the place, between 120psi and 165psi. If you’ve no idea what that means, then below one hundred is a pretty dead cylinder. This engine will run at about 180 psi when it has good compression. It is also important to note that there shouldn’t be more than a 10% difference between cylinders. As I had feared, they were somewhat inconclusive. None were so bad that they screamed, “REBUILD!!” On the other hand, I didn't like the large variation between cylinders. If I rebuilt only the right bank, then it would be too high in comparison to the left. I ummed and ahhed about it for a bit. I checked the PCV valve in one last hope that it was that. I also checked all of our injectors and discovered most of them had lost at least one of their seals. The oily plugs, the dirty exhaust. After much deliberation, we decided to go the whole hog and rebuild it.

With this in mind, we began to message garages. Most said they didn’t have space, or didn’t want us staying there too, or didn’t want to let us do the work. Then Lee stumbled upon “VW House”, clearly incorrectly located at the airport. It said that this was a space that literally advertised exactly what we wanted: somewhere safe where we could work on the van ourselves. The owner was a fellow traveller and owner of a T25 and so we sent him a message. After a quick chat, he said we were welcome to come. He told us he was located in San Felipe. This was the only downside; it was an 80km drive north back towards the Argentinian border. We decided that this was still our best bet, but that we shouldn’t leave the city until we had got as many parts as we could first.