For a short while there, one afternoon actually, we felt like nomads on the move again. We drove, the steering didn’t wobble and the brakes braked. Until they didn’t. Coming down from 5500 feet to sea level in manual gears not trusting your brakes with night falling was a new and not enjoyable take on being a nomad. We VN lived.
The idea was to go on a test drive with our new bearings and bushings and brakes. The only thing was we hadn’t yet received our new electronic brake modulator to replace the one showing signs of failure in our Promaster. That shortcoming may have overheated our brakes as apparently they weren’t regulating pressure properly.
We’ll investigate the damage Monday and if necessary start again with the repairs and wait till the electronic module arrives before we go mountain climbing again. Perseverance is the name of the game and that’s what we plan to do and just keep figuring stuff out.
Until it all went wrong Friday was a great day, lunch shared at the mechanics shop was a jovial affair,
…and then we set out to relearn the art of the van road trip. It was a two hour drive up the mountains into the heart of the agricultural area that produces cool weather root vegetables for the rest of the country.
Layne bought a huge bag of leafy greens and carrots and potatoes for two and a half bucks reveling in how strong and fresh the produce was.
I loved having the wheel between my hands and the business of exploring the back roads made our short drive feel like a Sunday outing. And yes there were some potholes on the back roads.
We could see the rain clouds but temperatures dropped to near 70 and we drove with the windows open only half listening for rubbing brakes squeaking bearings.
The Panama Canal is running out of water to operate the locks they tell us and railways are going to pick up some of the slack.
To us getting rained on almost every day it seems inconceivable that there is a drought here in the wettest country in the Americas. But what do we know?
We were here 25 years ago when we sailed through Panama…Me enjoying an ice cold leg bath after months on a sailboat in the tropics:
Some things don’t change, an Ngäbe-Buglé woman in traditional dress in Cerro Punta in 1999, pity whoever had pissed her off.
Layne bought vegetables back then too.
Our guides whom we had met on the dock helped us stumble in a rodeo.
Back to the present:
Characteristic low clouds, drizzle and generally dank conditions.
We didn’t stop to buy souvenirs but we enjoyed the drive though the fields and some spots reminded us of the Salina’s Valley in California from earlier in our lives.
Watch out for the unpredictable tractors…
Familiar plastic greenhouses which you will see all over the US.
Cheers Bob! Hope you like living up here in the back of beyond…
And then the rain started so we paused in our slow descent and allowed the brakes to cool off even more in the town of Volcán hand way down. It looked like a cold winter day but Rusty loved walking in the rain.
Night fell slowly as we slid downhill in 3rd gear holding the van with engine braking.
It got too dark for photos as the rain came back and we trudged along the PanAmerican Highway to David in a long line of red tail lights. Then we turned up the hill to Boquete, no need of brakes here and made our way back to our camp spot by eight o’clock. A disappointing day but a full one, a reminder of the pleasures of life on the road exploring.
