The Garage... Continues...

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 really, and who can complain when the owner doesn’t want to charge us. So far I’ve fixed one side of our exploding filler and just started the other. The work underneath is truly terrible. As I ripped a square foot of filler off the side, it revealed a tack-welded repair piece of panel that wasn’t even trying to be flat, disguised by about an inch of filler. There is little other choice but to clean it up a bit and slap a load of new filler in. Ruby seems to be falling apart on a daily basis, and I do worry that she won’t reach the end just because of the appalling state of the chassis. I wish I could go back and tell my younger self that buying this van was a very bad idea, but who doesn’t wish they had hindsight.

Instead, I sit here listening to Juan’s very bad solo karaoke that reverberates around the spray booth in the early hours, Lee’s snoring and wishing for something more realistic: our parts to arrive. We decided to order something from England, despite being told that it could be made here. Perhaps it could, perhaps it couldn’t. Trust is rather thin these days when it comes to anything mechanical. I do, however, trust Richard, the engineer who designed this system, and seeing as he has kindly supplied us new seals for free, we can’t argue. The only problem is that with Christmas looming the delivery date is estimated at the 28th of December, two weeks away. Right now, all I want for Christmas is some peace and quiet. I miss our lovely beach, nestling just half an hour away up the coast.

From behind a door that barely keeps the paint fumes in let alone any noise, Juan’s singing reaches a particularly excruciating climax only to drop off into an awkward silence when the speaker cuts out. It seems the power here isn’t enough to handle it and so periodically it shuts off for a second, and I enjoy the silence. Sometimes it lasts long enough to think he’s turned it off on purpose, and then it blares back into life in the middle of a YouTube advert and the dream is shattered.

Today a guy came into the garage and the owner waved us over and told us he has a torneria, a metal workshop. We asked him to fix our step bracket, a casualty of the laguna route, which he has taken away and will fix for an extortionate £50. I’m not sure if that’s a gringo price or just a Chilean one. Either way, I’m very glad to be the ones doing the work here, and while they may think us crazy ordering in some seals, I’m glad to be in control. After the last incident in Peru, I promised I wouldn’t let anyone touch the car again no matter how good they seemed. It always ends in more problems, and even if it doesn’t cause anything new, it’s just a waste of money again. At least here they are more than happy to let us get on with it. The only downside is Juan, lovely as he is, and his bad singing. It’s not fair to just criticise him though; it seems like every night someone is playing music until the early hours and apparently we’re the only ones who actually need sleep. No country has partied as hard as Chile.

The lack of sleep has made us a bit less productive than we otherwise might have been. Lee was up till 3am in the middle of the week, drinking and playing dominoes. He went with “if you can’t beat them, join them” and then spent most of the next day sitting there in a heap, while Juan cheerfully rolled around on the floor and worked his usual 12-hour day. As much as this makes me very angry at the same time, one can’t criticise the people. Juan is a lovely, friendly guy who has made us feel welcome and, despite the fact that I currently want to throw his speaker over the wall, I will go ahead and make a cake for him and everyone else who has been so nice to us.

A few days ago, Lexi vanished. She had been gone most of the day and, as it got late, hadn’t come back. Here we go again, we thought — same problems, different cat. We sat there kicking ourselves for not activating her tracker, although it barely works here anyway. Still, it would have helped. It had just been another big expense to add on top of the first month we hadn’t received our rent in the whole trip. It wasn’t like there was far she could have gone. The garage sits in a block of other garages, houses made from containers and empty yards. You can walk around the whole thing in about 5 minutes, and outside that are huge empty streets roamed by stray dogs. I couldn’t see her going that far. For once, the garage we were in had no dogs at all and instead a whole load of cats. If that was anything to go by, it seemed like a pretty safe place to be a cat. We figured she probably got stuck or shut in somewhere.

Still, as ever, we started to panic. Maggi came and put up her photo on their local Facebook group. Both her kids searched the cars for us. Juan called up the guy who had been in earlier in case she had snuck into his car. Lee climbed up a tower where they store the water tanks and, just as he was about to give up, spotted her eyes. She was stuck on the roof next door, too scared to figure out how to come back. We shouted down to the guy below and eventually managed to speak to him. Juan went around, and I followed after he had negotiated for me to be let into the compound. Dogs nipped at my heels and chased me into the property. I pried a scared Lexi off the top of the fence, who promptly sank all of her claws into me and howled. Then Lee had to come and bring her bag; I couldn’t imagine trying to carry her out through the dogs again when she was like this. The guy whose property she had been in was a very cheery, spherical chap who really reminds me of my old boss back home. He introduced us to all his family, including the puppy, before we finally headed back. We locked the cats in and went to bed. The next day we paid to activate her tracker and, needless to say, she’s not gone far since.

While she may be closer, she’s not the only one. What started off as us feeding one stray cat quickly progressed into four. There are two tortoiseshells, skinny and scared, that I had put out some biscuits and water for. Then yesterday they were joined by two kittens. These are making nuisances of themselves, climbing in and out the camper and annoying our cats. Aimee has taken to hiding in a stripped-out van, while Lexi judges them from a roof they can’t climb up to yet. I suppose we shouldn't have fed the first one, but I’ll always be a sucker for helping cats, especially sad skinny ones.

As it now approaches 3am, the owner has arrived. At least Juan has stopped singing, but they’ve both gone to discuss the paint job in the booth to the tune of Ra-Ra-Rasputin, Russia’s Little Love Machine. At 2.39am. I swear I am the only person who needs sleep. We can only hope they leave soon; there’s things to be getting on with.

Having searched since Peru, we finally found 15mm copper elbow tees and I plan on making us a small ladder for the van that will make it easier to clean the solar panel. We already have the leftover pipe from Ecuador so it should be fairly straightforward. Then the other exploding side panel needs fixing still; the previous one took me the best part of a day, much sanding and more filler. We can’t buy the paint here, so for now it will be filled, sanded and primed, ready for whatever we decide to stick on it. As we had only just got it resprayed, we decided we wouldn’t pay to paint it again. Instead, we’re going to do it ourselves with spray cans and it’ll be what it’ll be. We also need to paint underneath after driving the salar in Bolivia and the salty parts of the Atacama Desert; the surface rust under there is no joke. So you see, there’s a lot to do and it’s 10 days till Christmas.