At The Shop

You know you’re an overlander when…you’re in the shop. Facundo went over our electrical system, recommended some changes and tried to figure out what had gone wrong. We have been living with a bottleneck in our system where a hundred amp battery is blocking our two 250 amp batteries. Apparently with this line up the big accumulators never get properly filled. Who knew? 

Meanwhile the lack of charging came down to a broken alternator. We have a second alternator dedicated to charging the house batteries and the negative pole has failed, whatever that is.  At least it wasn’t the three thousand dollar inverter/charger. 

The alternator been removed and sent away to be rebuilt for an estimated $70. I’m just hoping their certainty that it will be repaired works out. Meanwhile all our junk from the back of GANNET2 is resting comfortably in the spare room of our cabin in the woods. 

We were extremely lucky to find this place where they repair RVs and build them too.

That they took us in right away was a bonus, and they have lots of work assembling van interiors and building travel trailers from scratch. A couple came by looking to have a trailer built for their southern Chilean travels. 

I thanked Facundo for his work and found out he is from Argentina where he started an internet video security company, he speaks English Russian and German after working in Berlin and Russia and he travels by motorcycle. We had notes to exchange when he told me of his fall in Patagonia that wrecked his motorcycle and shredded his clothes and left him on foot alone in Patagonia with no water. After two days he walked out to find help. The survivor: 

I left GANNET2 to be repaired and…

…took a thirty minute Uber ride back to the cabin. It was nice to be a passenger. 

And this is where we are staying until Saturday morning. At least that’s the plan. 
Me being John Bunyon. 

This is the heat and it is blazing hot. 45 degrees and raining outside? No problem. Except cleaning up the ash and lugging the logs and starting the fire…who needs central heat? Tea and a book and a blazing log is pretty nice. 

A gas stove with an oven and a full sized fridge. 

Rusty loves this place. He sits outside on the gravel watching the chickens scratching around. He sits in the porch when it rains and only comes in to sleep or eat or if I demand his company. Otherwise Patagonia weather suits him. 

We are about half a mile from the PanAmerican Highway and about thirty minutes from the waterfront in Puerto Montt. 

Layne had been in contact with a German couple overlanding Chile whose Unimog expedition truck broke an axle. They are waiting for a replacement to come from Germany. Maybe this week, maybe not. 

They were commiserating with Layne on WhatsApp when we suddenly needed a place to stay and there was an empty cabin next to theirs. 

Two bedrooms, two bathrooms and $55 a night. Done. 

Rusty’s bed as he is required to spend the night indoors for our peace of mind. 

I didn’t mean to give the impression he hates to be in here. He likes his day bed too. 

Lake Calafquén

A year ago I turned 66 in El Salvador with a tropical storm coming ashore. This year I’m sitting on the shore of a lake surrounded by mountains in southern Chile. I find retirement to my liking. 

I am fond of Thanksgiving and shall be sorry to not be home for it again this year but being born on Halloween requires one to acrept everybody will plan to dress up for the day. I used to go to work in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts and say I was a Key West tourist. Even here Halloween has its adherents.

“My earnings from my work are buried here.”

She reversed the usual trick or treat program and surprised me by giving a delicious marshmallow to the birthday boy. 

This is a lovely spot to have a birthday.  A local pizza was as good as I’ve had anywhere and a bottle of Chilean champagne washed it down. And the chocolate cake. A good day.

And thank you for the birthday wishes. I was indeed born on Halloween almost exactly on the Greenwich meridian in Rose Hill Cottage Hospital in Dorking in England. My mother was Italian and I grew up bilingual which influences my Spanish. 

The lake front walk. 

The two brothers who appear to own the campground. The one with the cane met us yesterday after we entered the empty lot with no one in it and we took a space before he hobbled out to let us know he has prostate cancer and was napping when we arrived. We murmured our sympathy not a little taken aback. That was a fairly robust introduction and all we had to offer in return was Layne’s modest little skin cancer, dismissed with a change of subject by our host. 

His brother told us they have another brother who married Up North and lives in the US but keeps a house down here for vacations. You can see why. 

A cold breeze blows off the lake as the sun warms the land and its bracing. 

Chile’s Lake District. 

A new world to explore. 



I don’t doubt in summer, January to March, it’s packed. 

“Look after the water” and you’ll notice there is no trash. 

No camping and no camp fires. That’s why we pay $20 a night for hot showers clean toilets and electricity… and because we are rule followers. The fine for transgressors is between one half and five times the minimum monthly wage. That’s normal Latin American practice for setting fines, a multiplication of the minimum wage. 

In a straight line it’s 1600 miles to get to the bottom of the continent. We don’t drive straight lines so it will be further. Probably much further even though it feels close. 

And as Webb Chiles noted to me it requires crossing the Straits of Magellan. Doubtless a rough ferry ride to come. 

Mountains and lakes. 

I think the nod to an indigenous tongue is Mapuche, long since practically exterminated and now revered in the modern style of tipping the hat to those who came before. 

The town of Coñaripe:



Home sweet home. 

Not a bad place to spend a birthday. 

Homes for rent too if you don’t have your own home on wheels. Not a bad escape from winter Up North.