Leaving Day

It was the 28th of April. Two days to the visa deadline, and finally we were driving. As much as I would have preferred to be heading south towards the border, we were heading north once again. We had paid an $80 deposit on a new roof rack and we needed to go and get it. The welder needed to test fit it to Ruby before it could be finished, so it wasn’t ideal to be leaving this late and at the weekend too but we really hadn’t had much choice in the matter. As it was towards the end of the afternoon, we decided to head to Alex’s house for the night. We would go and see the welder first thing on Saturday morning and then we would be able to leave Sunday. The timings were tight, but possible and we were happy to finally be driving after two months of living in our cold, mouldy little apartment. After initially, and understandably, freaking out at being in a loud car full of crap, Lexi had soon stopped howling. She had buried herself in one of the heaps of our belongings and hid where she felt safe. Aimee hadn’t been too impressed either. Her normal driving spot had been covered by our still unpacked possessions and she awkwardly squatted in the back. We hoped to get to Alex’s with a few hours of daylight left in which to continue sorting through our stuff and pack more away. Instead, what ensued was probably the worst 24 hours we had ever experienced. 

It was probably around an hour and a half drive to make it to the north of Quito from Machachi, and we were well over halfway when the first disaster struck. There’s not much in the way of flat roads in this part of the world and the drive north is a series of relatively steep uphill and the downhill roads that snake their way along the edges of the volcanoes and over rivers. The brakes are important here. Ruby is a heavy little thing and as much as having a new gearbox helped with engine braking, it’s not enough to hold the van. Especially when you can’t get it into second gear. That suppose was the first problem, but not one that can quite be labelled as a disaster. It was pretty annoying that after the first half an hour we could no longer get second gear, but we could still drive. We just hoped that it wasn’t the gearbox at fault and more a question of our new custom linkage not being quite the right length.

The disaster, in fact, was the brakes. We appeared to lose them on one of the rather more steep downhill sections. Having just about made it safely to level ground and off the main road with a combination of the gears, handbrake and swerving onto the hard shoulder to avoid people, we pulled over. I hoped it was maybe some air in the system. A quick glance under the front and it was instantly clear from the brake fluid puddling onto the floor that this was not the problem. This was not something that could be fixed on the side of the road. So despite our rather ropey situation, we opted to keep going. It was that or a tow truck as the only garage around told us they wouldn’t work on our car.  Luckily for us, the handbrake was working well and so with this we crept along in first gear. Not wanting to get up too much speed as the drivers here love to cut you up, leaving you with no option but to slam on your brakes. We only needed to get 9km further and then we would be in a safe place to dismantle them and see what was going on. 

As you can imagine, driving through the capital city with only the handbrake, in the rush hour, was not a nice experience. And so, when we drove past a specific brake repair workshop I asked if they could look at it. We thought, if we were proactive maybe we could just have it fixed tonight and not lose much time.  The guys said they’d have a look. We rolled off the work and positioned ourselves over the ramp. Now normally I check when garages jack the car. Ruby is a bad car to work on as she has so much rust you can’t get away with just jacking it anywhere. I suppose I didn’t check because I thought that this guy was only going to lift the side to take the wheel off, not the entire van. This guy was so quick to get it off the floor, mainly because he didn’t check where he put the ramp at all, that by the time I had realised it was too late. He put the entire weight of the camper on the radiator. Crushing both the chassis and the scoop. If that wasn’t bad enough, the distortion to the chassis caused one of the radiator fans to punch a hole in the radiator core. Within a few minutes we had a huge puddle of coolant on the floor and were shouting at him to take it off the ramp. This is just one example of why I have trust issues when it comes to people working on the car. A lot of them are totally incompetent. 

Now we had two big problems. The braking problem was not a case of the seal as I had hoped, but a large metal chunk that had broken off the body of the calliper, allowing all the fluid to leak out. The other side had seized solid. They told us that the torno (metal workshop) down the road could fix it ready for tomorrow morning. At least it was repairable. Then they put ruby on their other four poster ramps to look at the radiator. Here they flatly denied that the huge piece of twisted metal was their fault, but they offered to take it off and fix it anyway. We refused. As angry as I was, they would most likely make it even worse and as they said that it wasn’t their fault, they’d obviously try and charge us. The only good news here was that our friend lived next to several shops that could also repair a radiator. So tomorrow we would no longer be looking at our new roof rack, but be trying to repair our radiator and brakes. For now, it was dark and we decided to try and make it the last couple of kilometres. 

We pulled out the garage into standstill rush hour and it took me a minute to think of checking the engine temperature. Naturally we had lost some coolant. By the time the code reader connected, we had driven less than a hundred metres down the road but the engine had already hit 118 degrees. Way to hot, gasket blowing temperatures. We killed it immediately and sat on the side of the road waiting for it to cool. This was a terrible time to not have any coolant, standstill traffic. We decided to wait until the worst of it passed before we tried again. Over the next few hours, we limped in 50m bursts down the road. We could only drive a few metres before the engine got close to overheating as we had clearly lost all the coolant. We slowly crept along, everytime the engine got to 100 degrees we stopped, not wanting to do any damage if we hadn’t already. It cooled painfully slowly, but we were getting there. 

Now getting rather late, we were finally in sight of the final turning we needed to make. Two more bursts we reckoned, and we’d be there. We went to turn her on for the penultimate push to safety, the engine cranked and refused to start. After a quick check, it seemed our problem of no spark had returned again. I had hoped for a second that the fuel pump switch had got knocked by our piles of stuff, but no. We had fuel and no spark. We messaged Alex, wondering if he knew someone that could give us a tow as his kombi was also in the workshop. In the end, he and his cousin came to try and push us. I was steering, Lee and the other two pushed. We inched slowly forward but the road got steep and after we turned there was quite a hill. It was only a few metres, but there was no way we’d push her up it. The final resort was asking a taxi to tow us. We flagged down several, but none wanted to help. I didn’t blame them really, they were all small regular estates and they probably didn’t want to ruin their car trying to drag Ruby’s fat arse. Then, third time lucky. One guy said he would. He questionably attached the tow rope to his bumper and off we went. After a few times where the rope fell off, we were moving. Then we hit the tiny hill and for a moment I thought his car wouldn’t do it. Then the engine strained and we slowed to a barely moving crawl, but still we inched forward and made it back onto flat ground. Once outside the gates, it took all four of them to rock Ruby over the hump at the entrance before we finally rolled into his garden. We thanked our taxi and gave him $20 for his troubles and perhaps to repair his bumper. We thanked Alex for saving us, dumped enough things outside that we could get inside the van and crawled into bed for the night. Though I doubted it would be a peaceful sleep with the stress of our current situation weighing on us.

It's unlike me to write a blog with absolutely no photos. Perhaps that's an indication of the gravity of the situation that it never crossed my mind. Naturally, it didn't stop Lee whipping out the camera and so if you'd like to watch this particularly horrible day and get some visuals, follow the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyUsjsm6EbU&t=1818s