Chris writes:
Quick update from last night:
1] Wilson at 17.00 pm failed to deliver wheel to match with our tyre, why were we not surprised?
2] After our last photo session, we hot footed back to the Pizza parlour before the sunset day packers and got a steal on them in the queue.
3] Having shared a large Pizza with me, Doug excelled himself by having a main course and then to follow a Hawaiian Pizza dessert and kindly invited me to share it.
It would have been churlish not to have accepted his kind offer:
4] We returned to the hotel at 20.30pm which is actually the earliest that we have gone to bed, and there were many, many people 10% of our age still out on the town.
In a non selfish manner, we raced into our own showers to get warm water in the evening compared to the cold shower we knew will be available early in the morning.
We had agreed an early 6.00pm start only to be fooled in our attempt to leave Uyuni by a flat battery in the remote control for the Toyota.
Thinking that’s not an issue, we reverted to an old type of technology called “a key” to manually unlock the car only to find that not only did it set the alarm off at 06.00 am, to the delight of the entire neighbourhood (including the old bay who bemoaned us parking anywhere close to her shack and the lady whose car we purchased the day before] but the immobiliser was also activated.
By the way we agreed that the car I think I had purchased the day before, we would not tow to Ushuaia and therefore dumped it where it stood.
So the challenge at 06.00 was where would we find a battery ?
We tried warming the batteries in our hands, as supposedly that could work but it didn’t, we asked a passing Toyota Land Cruiser adventure vehicle driver if he had a spare battery, he didn’t, and in a final rather pathetic attempt broke open the receptionists calculator to try his battery, at which time all the buttons fell out and we paid him sufficient compensation for a new one!
After an hour or so and a clever reassemble of the unit by Chris, a miracle happened as we heard a very welcome beep, beep from outside hotel reception and John commented later that he had not seen a 65-year-old move so fast and dive into the SUV and fire it up before it closed all electrics down on us again.
Note: for our readers, the 65-year-old was me, the eldest of the team a fact that I am constantly reminded of at all opportunity despite being last to bed and first up everyday.
So we headed out of town on a 422 kms drive to Calama in Chile via the border crossing at Ollague.
With a mix of Kate (Waze) and all other route info systems we had we headed out of town but within a mile were defeated by a not as map new roundabout and had to stop to ask a ‘Yorkie bar man’ in which direction we should head.
The road was not tarmac but a well prepared loose surface with occasional potholes. The biggest issue was soft low verges and dust from incoming or vehicles being overtaken as it is always unknown what is lurking in the dusk cloud .
However all is safe as we have triple audible speed warning system on board which shouts out if the speed being taken is too much, in their opinion, and then restrictions are placed on speed.
We tracked towards the border passing some fantastic scenery including dormant (but two active) Volcanos, salt lakes, and some amazing rock creations some of which seemed to form a valley of sculptures.
We have learnt to be well provisioned each day as we don’t stop for lunch. Here we are seen having a quick break for coffee with crackers and Peanut butter.
Various adjustments in driving style had to be made as in total we are 3.2 tons excluding any Christmas presents that may have been purchased.
Arriving at the border in good time we started the process to leave Bolivia and enter Chile, a simple process, potentially made difficult by taking a Bolivian vehicle cross border, which none of us owned out of Bolivia.
However it seemed that all our paperwork was in order and once the Bolivian border guards understood that we were not stealing or not attempting to export this Bolivian vehicle we were on our way.
The Chilean border control points are a couple of miles up the road and unfortunately we arrived just after a coach carrying numerous nationalities had arrived.
The procedure was simple, go through immigration no problem, go to customs, having taken all your bags and rucksacks from the car and then be subjected to a full baggage search by the border guards, one of whom found it hilarious that two of our names include John and she associated us with Pocahontas (John Smith).
We laughed with her (not at her) and then we were subjected to a full vehicle search including the use of a well behaved sniffer dog, but the laughing female guard refused to admit what he was trained to find, drugs, explosives or cash, however we passed the tests and she wished us well and we were in Chile, our 10th country.
Also at the border was the German plated MAN truck the we had seen at Salar de Uynui a couple of days before. This German couple are amazing touring a continent of the world for six months for the past five years, thats a great plan.
Heading further into Chile we again experience some great scenery and then in only a few kilometres – desert
We had one police post to stop at but with papers in good order it didn’t take long. What was more disheartening was that while trying to decant the 90 litres of fuel from the tank on the roof to the vehicle tank we found that the hose provided was three feet short, hence this mid trip refilling at 10,000 feet was abandoned.
The final run of 100kms to Calama is fairly uninteresting but we now had the advantage that mobile data in Chile is part of our mobile user agreements [unlike Bolivia], so we followed various Rugby matches including the great win by England , much to the silent fury of Mike and John. (This is not even poetic license it is fake news in the Donald Trump style adds John)
In Bolivia we could spend £20-30 pounds in a few minutes through their local suppliers again confirming how Bolivians tend to rip you off whenever possible.
On route there was also a good commentary by John on which Volcanoes and what type of mines we were passing thanks to his ex colleague Robert of David Brown Chile.
As we approached Calama we finally came below 8000 ft following eight days at over 12,000 for so perhaps the younger members won’t be as tired each evening.
Just outside Calama we saw from a distance the Mine ‘Radomuro Tomic’ a copper and also Chuquicamata once the largest copper mine in the world and now number 2.
We arrived at the Park Hotel, checked in and the immediate priority was not a visit to the bar but rot get to a store to find batteries for the remote control and a length of pipe to be able to connect roof tank to SUV fuel tank.
Th experience:
1] the hotel receptionist told us exactly were to go for the ‘bits’
2] The hotel taxi driver was very helpful, took us to the door and waited for us
3] The staff in the store without an English skills sorted us out [and laughed at the attempt Mike and I had to explain what we needed.
We returned to the hotel, activated the remote control, decanted the roof fuel, with much leaking over us and retired to write the blog in the hotel bar, stinking of petrol.
Tomorrow we are being entertained with a tour of the David Brown mining facility at Antofagasta. Hopefully with all these challenges in the past.
But who knows?
Our America’s Challenge Drive 