Driving us Dotty

Puerto Madryn is nice, but we want to go.

Once again, it’s been a while since we wrote anything here and now you’ll see a sudden flurry of posts and photos. The reason for this is two-fold.

Firstly, we have been having some trouble with Dotty, our van, which has had us focussed on getting back on the road rather than blogging. In fact, Dotty has been living up to her name by driving us dotty for the past week with heat issues. She got gradually hotter and hotter and we drove slower and slower until we all came to a standstill in Trelew last Saturday evening. Unfortunately Mum and Dad had just arrived and so they were stuck with us too. We spent a night in a nice hotel (thanks Mum!) and then the family trailed after me whilst I strode around stressed and unable to find a mechanic or a campsite or food or indeed anything at all . It was Sunday but how dare people have days off when we needed them! Finally we nursed Dotty the 70 km back to Puerto Madryn and a known campsite, driving at 50 kph and sweating almost as much as Dotty.

The following day, whilst the family sorted themselves out, I took Dotty and my limited Spanish around town looking for a mechanic. I was sent to the Toyota dealer who of course took one look and said ‘but it’s a Mitsibushi, you foolish foreigner’ and pointed me to a small mechanic shop down the street. There, with much waving of hands and miming, I demonstrated that Dotty was ‘muy caliente’. Fortunately, the mechanics there all spoke the universal language of mechanics. As they peered into the engine and shook their heads, I knew it was a difficult job. With sharp intakes of breath, they communicated that it would take time or be expensive or both. I followed one of the mechanics across town to a radiator specialist (more gazing, oohing and shaking of heads) and was told to return in the morning as it was too complicated to fix today.

We booked the campsite for another night and an excursion on a boat to see dolphins the following morning. I share a consolatory beer with Dad.

Tuesday morning is once again stressful as we need to get the family to the boat for 8.30 and aren’t sure what time the mechanic opens. I leave Dotty with the first guy who arrives, I think he works there and I think I have managed to explain to him that I don’t want the tyres filled with air and that the problem is still the radiator. After an uneventful boat trip (no dolphins, some sea-sickness, chat with crew about windsurfing and sailing), I return to find the same young lad and still no sign of the original mechanic. However, he tells me she’s fixed and having pointed at the radiator I’m convinced something has been done. We pick up the family and head off up to the Valdes Peninsular, jubilant that we are finally back on our way and that Mum and Dad’s trip can start properly.

After 20 km, with Jo’s bottom getting hotter (the engine is under the passenger seat), we give up and trundle back to our Puerto Madryn campsite. The place is nice but like the original Welsh settlers, we need to move on so we decide to hire a car and leave Dotty. Meanwhile Pablo, from Wicked Campers, volunteers to fly out from Santiago with spare parts and try and make the repairs. He’ll then meet us somewhere on the road to Bariolche.

The best we could manage, a two door Ka, was rather small for all our luggage and so Mum and Dad became porters for the travelling Beaumonts filling their small van to the brim. We set off once again to the Valdes Peninsular and then to begin the journey across Argentina a couple of days behind schedule, rather stressed and pretty cramped. However penguins, elephant seals, Welsh settlers and some ‘interesting’ campsites soon put the adventure back on track. Pablo managed to repair Dotty on Friday (a new radiator) and since we were only in Gaiman, I returned for a final time to Puerto Madryn to leave the Ka and collect Dotty. Of course that was not without stress – the car hire place closed for lunch until 5.30, they couldn’t refund my mastercard and we are now proud owners of an expensive Ka parcel shelf that we left in Mum and Dads van.

In the past couple of days, we have made our way to El Bolson, a return to mountains, greenery and of course mountain weather. There has also been more waiting – 5 hours for fuel, queues for banks and internet access has been very intermittent, the second reason for our lack of recent blogs and the sudden flurry now that we are on line. Forgive us also if we are slower replying to comments, it’s great to get them and we’ll reply as and when we can. However, we are back on the road and Dotty is cool!