New Friends

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 long as your arm, we’d never actually met in person. In fact, they were wrapping up their trip, having already made it to Ushuaia and back while we pootled around in northern Chile. Happily though, they were passing this way and so we’d get an opportunity to meet both her and her partner Ben before they left the continent.

They joined us later the next day in our chilly little spot and we sat around a huge fire that evening getting to know one another. It turns out we got on pretty well, so much so that they decided to stay another night. We had an all-day fire going with the remains of the huge tree that Lee and Carlos had dragged out of the bushes the other night, as it was coming into winter here and, in the foothills of the mountains, there was a definite chill to the air. It was especially noticeable with our current lack of heating. Despite the fact there were signs around prohibiting fires, we saw how many others had been before us and went for it anyway, not just for heating but also cooking.

The nice weather we had enjoyed previously had gone and we were left with a cloudy day, so much so that for the first time we had to fire up our new generator to keep the batteries topped up. While it did somewhat detract from the peaceful running stream, it was nice to have the option to charge remotely again.

The following morning, after spending two nights together, they headed for Mendoza. We decided that we would follow a little later. We had hoped for another sunny day to come back and charge up our batteries but, when it remained stubbornly grey for the remainder of the day, we decided that the next day we would head back to the campsite in Tupungato, where we could do some washing, recharge and have a nice shower all for an incredibly reasonable price.

It was a short, easy drive over from our current spot and, as we descended a little into the valley, the air got noticeably warmer. The last time we had come here we hadn’t bothered trying to hook up, but this time we drove around the campground a bit until we found a space that had both a plug socket as well as enough view of the sky for Starlink to work. I opened up the engine bay to grab our hook-up lead and noticed that the new aluminium air intake pipe I had fitted had shattered into pieces. I knew it had been intact at the last campsite when we had parked up and so we had driven a maximum of 20 minutes with it off, nearly all on tarmac roads. There was unlikely to be any damage, but I was pretty annoyed it had happened at all to my freshly rebuilt engine.

I had my head buried in the engine bay when Lee called me to come over. I wasn’t best pleased, as I was in the middle of wrestling pieces of broken air hose off the intake, but when he insisted and I looked up, I saw it was none other than Carlos and Rosa. They invited us for some more food and we told them we’d join them in a little while. First things first, I needed to get some washing out on the line.

Carlos went on a wine run — clearly they had not anticipated meeting us — and we chipped in a couple of bottles too. We then walked up to the other end of the campsite where they were cooking on a grill out in the sun by the river. Last time we had been here, the river had been a smelly, muddy torrent but now it ran nearly clear and was pleasant to sit by in the afternoon sun. All this was made even better by the current company and we enjoyed food and wine together and had a good chat. They walked with us down to a small waterfall and amphitheatre there on the site, which we hadn’t realised even existed.

I explained I needed to get my washing finished and suggested they join us back at our van. More wine came with them and Rosa tutted at me handwashing all of my clothes, telling me to just come and use her washing machine. I assured her that it was definitely on my list and I was just doing some of the essentials. Soon, I sat down with the rest of them and we shared some rather strong Belgian beers we had, and then the bottle of whisky came out. Once again, they were late leaving and they really probably shouldn’t have been driving.

We had spent so much time the day before with our friends, we hadn’t got to finish off everything we needed to do and so we decided to stay one more night. It turns out that the second night is even cheaper as they don’t charge for the vehicle again and so, for just two people, the cost is about 60p each. We enjoyed a hot shower, charged up everything fully and let all the washing dry. We were now prepared to head to Mendoza and join up once again with Annie and Ben in time to celebrate my birthday in two days. Ruby, of course, had other plans.

It wasn’t a long drive to the city, and we stopped off shortly after the village to get some fuel. The gears, which are never particularly precise, seemed to be even sloppier than usual, requiring a good hard shove to find 3rd. Still, it wasn’t far to go. We left the petrol station and began to merge onto the dual carriageway that heads north into the city. As we began to accelerate down the slip road, it became apparent that what felt like changing up the box into 3rd gear was actually still first gear. We pulled over to see what was going on. The front bushing on the gear stick was totally broken, which is fairly normal to be fair. The shift plate probably needed tweaking, although neither of these things should really completely stop us finding the gear. We messed about with it for a bit before deciding that it wasn’t so straightforward and it would be better getting to the city while we still could. I was pretty sure it was a linkage problem, but the worst-case-scenario part of my brain, which seems to be the more dominant part, told me the gearbox had a fault.

It was about 40km to the city, but we decided that instead of driving down the dual carriageway we would take a much slower road through the small villages alongside. It ran parallel to the main road so wouldn’t add on much in the way of distance, but at least it would be far more acceptable to drive along this at 20mph. Something that would probably end in an accident on the dual carriageway and that was unavoidable, seeing as the highest gear we could get was 2nd.

We took this very slow and scenic route along the back roads, watching the vineyards go by and just about overtaking the odd cyclist. Fortunately it wasn’t too hot and so Ruby managed to keep cool despite being driven constantly at high revs in 2nd. After a while we approached the outskirts of the city where we didn’t have much choice except to complete the last few kilometres of the journey on the busy ring road. I stuck myself half over the hard shoulder, hazards on, and watched rather anxiously as large lorries approached at speed from behind while we crawled along. At the first possible opportunity I jumped back off into the smaller back streets where it was perfectly acceptable to drive at our current max speed. Before too long, we made it safely to Parque General San Martín and parked up alongside Buzzy by the lake. Now at least, whatever the problem was, we were likely in a place where a solution could be found. We weren’t too concerned though, and we sat outside and enjoyed the new view.