Thank you for the best wishes and recovery has taken place rather faster than I expected.
The good news is that our test run to Medellin and back went well and oil leaks appear vanquished, the new oil cooler is doing its job and the brakes are better than they have been since El Salvador. They are trouble free and responsive as they were when they came from the factory so I feel ready to go south.
And that’s where the wheels come off the wagon once again.
We arrived back at La Bonanza campground Sunday night at five and as we pulled up our neighbors from California asked if we had heard about the hassles at the border with Ecuador. My heart sank.
The four vehicles in the picture had come north from Peru through Ecuador with no problems but the border with Colombia is now not completely open. They say it’s a computer glitch but I wonder if the Ecuadoreans don’t have some concerns about the Colombian drug traffickers. Supposedly the Ecuadorean border police have computers that aren’t up to date and linked to Interpol so they don’t know who they are letting in.
All four vehicles have children and last night they showed a movie for them on the white screen hanging from Jan’s green Iveco truck. The world outside may be chaos but in here it’s all normal; we now hang about and wait for things to get better.
Our neighbors from California left this morning before I got their picture, and they plan to test the border in a couple of days to see what it might take to get through. A young Dutch couple with an appointment in Chile in a couple of months is also waiting to see if southbound travel is possible.
They bought their Mercedes Vito van in Chile for their South American trip and have arranged to meet buyers back in Chile where they can sell it and fly home. Ecuador is not their friend. Incidentally the Vito was sold in the US as the Metris except ours got a gasoline engine and the rest of the world uses a diesel. It makes a nice camper but it’s been discontinued in the US which is a shame.
Layne and I are coughing a bit still but we are much better now. We spent a couple of days in the heat of Cali at 3,000 feet, did a last shop at PriceSmart which is just Costco under another name and came back up the mountain to prepare to drive south.
Apparently tourism operators in Ecuador are working to sort out the border glitch and the consensus is that things should be worked out by the end of the week. Unfortunately not many people visit by car from Colombia so I’m not sure what the motivation is to act quickly, but I still hope this weekend will see us in Ecuador.
And as if that weren’t enough Bolivian truck drivers are closing the country’s borders demanding better pay. I get the feeling they are warming up for our arrival in a few months. Sigh.
