January 14, 2019 – January 29, 2019….yes, 2 weeks and counting….

We got an appointment with the mechanic for a few days out, and then found a nice campground right on the edge of the town of Coyhaique. Coyhaique is the largest town in Chilean Patagonia, with about 50,000 people, and is a tourist hub. We were amazed at the number of people staying in the campground…sometimes there would be 30 tents set up and 4 or 5 rigs in the parking lot. It was a bit overwhelming with our after having wild camped for so many nights in isolation.

We set up and ran an extension cord to a plug in. “Hey”, I thought, “we have electricity, it’s cool outside, why not plug in the ceramic heater for a while”, thinking that we might as well save our propane for when we didn’t have power. We were sitting in our camper, enjoying the warmth from the little heater when heater turned itself off. It has a thermostat attached so it was not a surprise when it shut down. But I wanted more heat, so I got up to turn up the thermostat….nothing happened. It seemed like we didn’t have power, so I went outside to check that the extension cord was still plugged in. While outside one of the workers from the campground came over. He was speaking Spanish, and the first word I picked up was “humo”, which means smoke. I wasn’t exactly sure what he was saying so I asked Derek to come out for help in understanding. The man was telling us that he had seen smoke coming from the far side of our camper he thought we were doing an “asado” (barbecue). We investigated, and discovered that we had completely overheated the transformer that is plugged in between our camper and the extension cord. The transformer steps the 220 Volt electricity down to 110. But the transformer is only rated for 500 watts…..not nearly enough for our refrigerator AND the ceramic heater. We had completely cooked it. When you think about it… no duhh!

Off to Sodimac (Home Depot equivalent) we went for a replacement. Back at camp, we got everything plugged in again (minus the heater!), and all was well. The same man came over and knocked on our door. He was asking if everything was okay with our system, as the little dial on the campground’s electrical meter had been spinning like crazy. “Si, toda es bueno,” we assured him….or so we thought.

A few hours later, we discovered that our breaker had tripped again. We checked our new transformer…is was not hot. We unplugged the extension cord and reset the breaker. When we plugged the cord in again, the breaker immediately tripped.

Derek began investigating. We must have a short and indeed we could smell that “fried electrical” smell that can make your stomach sink. It was not long into the process when Derek discovered the culprit….one of our shish kebab skewers had, presumably on the bad roads we had been on previously, jumped over two wooden barriers in our cupboards and had inserted itself in the power converter/battery charger….oh oh.

Derek removed the skewer, made some tests with our multimeter, reassembled everything, and, to our amazement, the entire system seemed to be working…..wow, “Did we get lucky or what?”, we thought.

Our neighbours at the campground were a young Chilean couple travelling in a VW van, Jocelyn and Pedro. Pedro spoke only a bit of english (he joked that he spoke english like Tarzan but that was OK because Derek spoke some Spanish Tarzan right back), but Jocelyn had very good english. It turns out that she also had a good understanding of vehicles and motors with her brother being a mechanic who works for the Capitol, in Washington D.C. and sometimes even on vehicles from the fleet used by the White House. She generously offered to come with us when we dropped off the truck at the garage to act as our translator.

We delivered the truck, and, with Jocelyn’s help, discussed the history of the problems with the truck. Hours later Jocelyn called the garage to get an update. They had found a hose that returns excess fuel from one of the filters to the fuel tank that was disconnected. All other tests had shown no problems, but they had one more test that they wanted to run. We could come and pick up the truck in about an hour.

When we arrived at the garage, they told us that the diagnostics had shown that the in-tank lift pump was fine, but when they did a manual test on the pump, it was not delivering the proper volume of fuel. All along, Derek has suspected that the problem was our lift pump. In fact, we had gone ahead and ordered a pump from Amazon even before we had dropped the truck off at the garage, as parts for our truck are not readily available here. It would arrive early the following week.

We returned to the campground and settled in to await our Amazon shipment. Jocelyn and Pedro work on the road, she as a Thai massage therapist, and he as an artist, giving workshops teaching the art of xylography. We decided to sign up for one of his workshops.

Xylography is an art technique where you carve a wood block, then cover the high parts with ink, which are then run through a press to transfer the ink to cotton paper. Pedro talked about the history of the technique, it being used in the middle ages to create propaganda pamphlets for the mostly illiterate masses, how it was used by revolutionaries to fight “the system”, and by artists for making multiple copies of art.

We began by carving a monster….Pedro said, “this was a good first project, because if it turned out to be ugly, no problem, because monsters are supposed to be ugly”.

Our second project was free form.

Our Amazon shipment arrived a day early and we returned the truck to the shop. They had told us they would need it for a day and a half, so we rented a little cabin for two nights…..we followed the directions on our phone to the cabin, and it turned out to be one short block away from the garage….things were starting to go our way!

We picked up the truck two days later. The engine seemed to start okay, but we were dismayed to hear the super annoying “Lamp Out” chime once again. Hmmm… We decided to return to our little campground instead of driving towards the border of Argentina…it would be better to start the drive fresh in the morning and it would give Derek a chance to investigate the lamp out warning. We set up, plugged in, and discovered we had no power. The breaker had tripped again.

We unplugged, reset the breaker, and this time when we plugged the camper in again, sparks flew from the cupboard that houses our electronics…..really? I mean, not a surprise given we had skewered the power converter, but it had worked fine for several days. We can do without lights if we need to, and we can run the fridge on propane (although the last time we tried to do that it wouldn’t stay lit), but the real issue is if we cannot raise and lower the top of the camper. Driving with the camper up is not advised and there is no manual override….we really needed to get this issue sorted out.

Out came the multimeter. All lines and connections were tested. Several hours later we had determined that our power converter, and likely the solar controller, would need to be replaced. After a few dead ends trying to find the equipment we needed here from local solar panel suppliers, we turned once again to Amazon and ordered the parts on-line…..they would arrive in about 5 days, February 1st.

We ran the truck to charge up the batteries in the camper and Derek temporarily changed some circuits to get the lights working again. We considered building some decking or out buildings around our camper, as it seemed we were becoming a permanent installation in the parking lot of the campground. Instead, we cooked some nice meals, watched Netflix, walked the dog, clicked obsessively on the “Track your Package” link on Amazon’s website every few hours, and waited.

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As an aside, a few people have asked if we are planning on driving all the way home again. Initially, when we planned our two year journey, we thought it was lots of time to drive all the way to Ushuaia and back. Then, we decided that we didn’t want to do all the border crossings in Central America again, so we thought we might drive back to Colombia and maybe ship to Mexico and drive home. Now, we realize that we will not have enough time to do that, but are excited by our new plan; assuming our “Hotel California” experience (with the well known lyrics…🎶🎵🎶🎵 “you can check out any time you like but you can never leave”) at this campground ends, we are hoping to drive to Ushuaia, then up the east coast of Argentina to Buenos Aires. If we have time, we would like to drive another 1200 km to to Iguazu Falls where the borders of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil meet. We will then return to Montevideo in Uruguay where we plan to put the truck into a container and ship it to Halifax. It will take 4 – 6 weeks for the truck to reach Halifax. We will get a direct flight out of Buenos Aires, Argentina to Toronto. Ideally, the truck will arrive in Halifax around June 1st. We’re not sure yet how we will get from Toronto to Halifax with the dog… we suspect trying to get Piper to go back into a kennel for another flight may prove difficult… maybe we will rent a car, not sure yet. However we get to Halifax, the plan is to tour the maritimes for a few weeks or more and then drive across Canada to Calgary. We hope to be home before Sept 26th, 2019 (my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary), and we get our house back on October 1st. Insert smiley face.