Tag Archives: truck

Seymour Gets Stuffed

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April 8, 2018

All those hours spent weaving our way through narrow streets in pueblos in Mexico, along barely wide enough “roads” that hung off of cliffs in Peru, through four lane city highways packed six cars wide….they have really paid off. After partly airing down the tires and rear suspension to meet the height limitations of the container, Derek, without even breaking a sweat, expertly backed Seymour into a glove tight shipping container, with nary a scratch nor a dent. All this without the use of side mirrors (they were folded in so that Seymour would fit), nor rearview mirror, as all you see when you look in it is our camper. There was a man in the container, behind the truck, shouting instructions to Derek, in Spanish…but Derek could neither see nor hear the man. But with the help of another worker outside of the container, Seymour officially got stuffed.

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Another Trip to the Mechanic, Christmas in Osorno

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December 19, 2018 – December 28, 2018

We had an appointment for the truck in the town of Osorno for the 21st of December, so we camped for a few nights close by, then headed into town to the mechanic shop. After a few hours we were told that we had contaminated fuel, and that the system would need to be completely cleaned. The problem was that it was the Friday before Christmas, so they would not be able to work on the truck until the following Wednesday. We got the truck started, resupplied, and headed to a beautiful wild camp on Lago Ranco to await our appointment.

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Blowing through Bariloche, Loving El Bolson and Heading Back into Chile.

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December 14, 2018 – December 19, 2018

The town of Bariloche in the Lakes District of Argentina is a place that we had known about long before embarking on this trip. As we got closer and did more research, however, we kept running into one troubling piece of information….it seemed that Bariloche has had a bit of a problem with petty theft and vehicle break ins. Just a day or two before we were planning to arrive we had read about a couple who had parked on the street and went for a coffee in a nearby shop. Half an hour later they returned to find their vehicle had been broken into and the thieves took almost everything they owned. Overlanders, we read, were being targeted in Bariloche, as the thieves knew there would be computers, cameras, iPads and other goodies on board. We decided one lake town is as good as another, so we blew through Bariloche and headed to El Bolson, a town reputed to have a more relaxed vibe that had become popular with the “hippies” in the seventies.

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Villa de Angostura

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December 13, 2018 – December 14, 2018

We had read about a restaurant in the town of Villa de Angostura that we wanted to visit, called Tinto Bistro. It is run by the brother of the Queen of Holland (Queen Maxima is originally from Argentina).

The restaurant was great. For starters we had trout wrapped in pastry and a veal and salmon tartar. For our main dish Derek ordered ribeye steak, and I had lamb. We also had beautiful sweet deserts. We also ordered a very nice bottle of Argentinian Syrah red wine from the lower end of a list that topped out in the Cdn$1000s. We’re pretty sure that in Canada, the wine alone would have cost more than the whole meal. This all, after having washed up and put on clean clothes in the camper in our stealth camping spot in a parking lot close to downtown….we do what we can.

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Las Lajas, Lago Alumine, Wild camp, Piedra Mala in N.P. Lanin

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December 2, 2018 – December 8, 2018

Driving so many kilometres, often on rough roads, means that there is almost always something that needs to be adjusted, repaired or replaced. Probably about 50% of the time when we arrive at a camping spot, one of the first things Derek does after we are set up is get his tools out and work on something. The fridge is finicky and doesn’t always work, screws rattle their way out of the camper and need to be tightened or replaced, one time the electrical connection for the solar panels on the roof was loose or filters need to be replaced on the truck. Sometimes it is more complicated, like when we noticed that the camper batteries were completely discharged and not being charged as we drove anymore. The computer chip governing the relay had quit and so Derek wired a manual bypass… we now have a manual switch in the cab that we need to remember to turn on for charging camper batteries when we start to drive, and off before we shut down the engine so that the fridge doesn’t end up draining the engine batteries. He is one handy guy!

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La Serena, Horcon, a Copec gas station and Embalse del Yeso

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November 13, 2018 – November 19, 2018

We returned to La Serena to take Seymour into the Dodge dealership for diagnosis. We arrived early, left the truck at the garage and walked, with Piper, to a nearby outdoor mall to kill some time. We moved from shady bench to shady bench as the sun made its way across the morning sky.  We snuck into the Sodimac (South America’s version of Home Depot) to use the washrooms. We watched the security guard watch us. We went for a coffee. We searched for an outdoor plug to recharge our phone and tablet. It was a little like being homeless for 6 or 7 hours, except, of course, we knew we would have a nice warm bed at the end of the day.

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Atacama Desert, La Serena and the Elqui Valley

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October 23, 2018 – November 12, 2018

Entering Chile was such a drastic contrast to our last few days in Bolivia. The highway was paved and had wide shoulders, we were driving 80 to 100 km/hr and there were road signs giving distances to the next town. We were headed for San Pedro de Atacama, a small tourist town not too far from the border, where we were looking forward to warmer temperatures, a shower, and a little bit of village life – maybe a nice restaurant, some interesting shops, that kind of thing.

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Our Welcome to Ecuador and Quito.

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July 12, 2018 – July 17, 2018

We had been a bit anxious about crossing the border from Colombia into Ecuador.  We had read that there could be line ups of thousands of Venezuelan refugees at the border, having walked, hitch hiked, and stowed away on vehicles across Colombia, hoping to land somewhere where they could restart their lives.  We had read accounts of it taking 8 or 10 hours to get across the border….a small inconvenience for us in light of what the Venezuelans are facing, but a daunting prospect, none the less.

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Our First Roadside Breakdown, a Lovely Refugio and a Church Across a Gorge.

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July 8, 2018 – July 12, 2018

We were heading up a hill, when suddenly Derek took his foot off of the gas and the truck responded, instantly slowing to a crawl.  I looked at Derek, I looked to the road immediately ahead, and then back at Derek.  There was no animal, no debris, no tope in the road.  “What’s up?”, I asked.  “I have no steering”, Derek said.

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