11th April
Here's the next bit of my story - I STILL haven't got around to finishing it!
We'd left it where our kit was covered in petrol and we were about to settle into our zero-star hotel with no electricity, a dodgy roof and hot sulphurous spring water on tap. Next morning, we rose to petrol-flavoured muesli - yummy! The petrol had got through the plastic, as it had done for all the food it had touched. We went off the breakfast idea and went to play with the car. It started! Yippee!! But had less power than my old Citroen 2CV.
We "drove" it down to the bottling plant - great going downhill but it couldn't quite handle anything that approached level. Needless to say, it died. Muggings was charged with driving whilst David and Romi pushed - if you've never been at altitude, you won't appreciate the significance of this. At 11,000 feet, even walking is hard work, but pushing a ton and a half of vehicle is astoundingly stupid! Anyway, when we got to the next bit of down, Dave and Romi leapt in the back and screamed "keep going, don't slow down" - even round the hairpin bends. What they didn't know was that I couldn't slow down even if I'd wanted to, because with no engine, there weren't any brakes!!!
It turned out the alternator was broken. A new car turned up in the afternoon. We transferred petrol from the old car to the new, changed all the tyres, and waved goodbye. We then had a bath, ate tinned something with packet rice, and worried about the leaking roof as torrential rain threatened to wash us back down to the bottling plant.
Next morning, we packed up. All set, key in the ignition... off we go! Only, no we don't. The one thing that was missing was electricity in the car's battery. Three people have an instant sense of humour failure. So... improvise, adapt and overcome. PUSH.
The guys at the bottling plant were incredible. They let us have one of their batteries and would invoice the hire company for it. At their lunch break, they knicked the battery out of the fork lift, which we carried up the hill (another totally daft thing to do at altitude). We connected the new battery... and on went the headlights. The lights had developed a life of their own, merrily turning themselves on and off! The control relay had developed mental problems. Immediate surgery did the job - we whipped it out and agreed not to do any night driving.
Time for Geysers - the Puchuldeeza Geysers. The journey took us on up to about 14,000 feet through the mountains where we saw maybe 15 or 20 big birds of prey circling in the thermals. They looked like Condors - graceful and quite awe-inspiring, set against mountain scenery that varied in colour from palest yellow-grey to the deepest and richest reds, set against the darkest blue skies I had (up until then) ever seen.
On the way we came across many places where the road had been washed away. At one spot I waded into the river to survey the obstacle and disappeared up to my knees. About half way across, I heard 'beep beep' to my left - the car wasn't supposed to be to my left. Romi had convinced David to have a look at the road on the other side of the river and there they were, on a perfectly serviceable rock track... and I'm up to my knees in cold rushing water. Who's a silly boy then!
I've not quite finished the last instalment. Can you wait?
See ya soon, Dan.