Otavalo
Trip Start
Jul 04, 2010
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Trip End
Jul 23, 2010
Otavalo, Ecuador
Monday, July 5, 2010
Monday was the first drive day of the trip and unfortunately the truck was playing up. We thought it was air getting into the fuel system via the Racor as the truck was struggling uphills and almost stalling at points. At one point, the truck does stall and then won’t start again. Arrgghhh!! Stuck in the middle of the road with a broken down truck, not a good idea! By some miracle we stall next to some shops so the pax go in and buy them out of beer while Sam and I jack the cab and manually pump the fuel through to get rid of any air bubbles. Unfortunately this doesn’t solve the problem so we stutter our way into Otavalo and arrive in the dark. Sam does all the driving as it’s pretty difficult with the constant threat of stalling so my first day of driving pax is delayed (phew!!).
We find the hotel without incident and unload the pax and their bags, before heading round the corner to the truck park. This is going to be the norm when we stay in cities or towns as it will be rare that we can park the truck outside the hotel. Luckily this truck park is literally a 5 minute walk around the corner so it’s all good.
We all head out for dinner and find a pizza place, only to realise we’ve left Ryan behind at the hotel so I leg it back to the hotel to try and find him but despite searching around, he’s nowhere to be found. Big ooops! Not a good thing to be leaving pax behind! After pizza, I head back to the hotel and the others stay out for a few drinks.
Tuesday was fix the truck day for us, and fun day for pax. Via the hotel, we arranged a village tour, waterfall visit and bird sanctuary visit for them and then in the afternoon there were the famous Otavalo markets for them to explore. While the main market is at the weekend, there were still enough stalls to keep everyone amused. Sam and I headed to the truck park first thing in the morning to see if we could fix the problem ourselves. Unfortunately after a couple of hours of playing, we couldn’t get it sorted so headed out to find a mechanics to fix it. Sure enough, it was the Racor filter so it was replaced and now Elle is as good as new again! Yay!
We had dinner at a local place that Ryan found the previous night and it was good. $5 for a steak, you just can’t go wrong with that!
On Wednesday, we head out pretty early to head to Tena and the Amazon Jungle! Can’t wait!
