Life on the road in Cuthbert is a joy, but not without its frustrations! Everyday housekeeping hum-drum and the inevitable technical issues that arise with all motor vehicles are not escaped on the road; in fact they are sometimes magnified in significance. So just to prove to Cuthbert blog-readers at home that overlanders suffer at the hands of the mundane too, we’ll start this Chiloe travel blog with a bit of practical stuff, then sit back and wait for the messages of sympathy to come flooding in 😉

Iveco Games (Part 1)

Cast your mind back to the end of our last blog. You left us at the end of the Carretera Austral as we headed into the town of Puerto Montt to find the Iveco garage. Cuthbert was due his 80,000km service and we wanted to buy some Iveco parts for our on-board spares store. Iveco’s publicity indicated that their depot in Puerto Montt was a full-service Iveco garage and spares dealer, so we were cautiously optimistic.

It turned out that the Puerto Montt ‘Iveco Centre’ isn’t actually a dedicated Iveco garage, it’s a representative office for several brands of trucks. Their ‘Mr Iveco’ was on holiday when we arrived and the staff couldn’t arrange a service or place any order for parts in his absence. They could however, establish from the computer that all the parts we wanted were not held in Chile – they need importing from Italy with around 20 days for delivery. It took them 4 days to obtain from Santiago HQ, the prices for these import-parts which turned out to be over double the UK prices.

To be fair, the price list from Santiago wasn’t the fault of the chaps in Puerto Montt – they were very friendly and helpful, if not hugely efficient. Whilst we were waiting for the quote for the spare-parts, Mr Iveco returned from holiday and arranged the service for around the same price as it would have cost in Europe. In the end, the exorbitant prices quoted for the import-parts forced us to reconsider our wish-list; we placed an order for just the critical items that we couldn’t be without and they agreed a decent discount on these items.

During all of the above palaver, we had a few days hanging around in Puerto Montt, which we used wisely for more hum-drum mundaneries (just made that word up!). As the main city of southern Chile, Puerto Montt has ‘de-luxe’ facilities such as: a trendy shopping mall for some new clothes, a credible looking hairdresser for my first haircut since Buenos Aires, a great choice of tools/hardware shops for Marcus to fix some minor snags on Cuthbert (including some shiny new tailor-made rear mud flaps and a very loud new air-horn to supplement Cuthbert’s original rather pathetic little hooter).

There remains of course, the matter of the 20 day delay in receiving the import-parts. We certainly don’t plan on staying in Puerto Montt for all this time, so we need to plan a circuit that takes us to other attractions in the wider area and back to Puerto Montt in around three weeks. Hmmmm… “It’s obvious…” you shout in exasperation at your screen… “Why don’t you just head south on the short ferry to the island of Chiloé, then return to the mainland on the long ferry from Quellon to Chaitén, and head north back to Puerto Montt via the Argentinian side of the Andes from Esquel to Bariloche?” You know… that’s not a bad idea! Thanks blog-reader! Quicker than you can say ‘Home of the UNESCO World Heritage Churches’, we were on our way to Chiloé Island 🙂

Chillin’ on Chiloé

Chiloé is the largest of the islands off the Chilean coast and its ‘claim to fame’ is a wide selection of wooden churches, 16 of which have been designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. We’ll move on to these in a couple of days, but our first stop on the island was the town of Ancud and a bit further round the coast, Fort Ahui.

The fort was the last stronghold of the Spanish before being unceremoniously kicked out of Chile in 1826. There’s very little of the original building left now, just some overgrown fortifications with a few canons and its significance seems to be all but lost. It wasn’t only the Spaniards’ last stronghold in Chile, but in the whole of South America. One of history’s greatest empires, the source of the language and culture still dominating much of the South American continent today, ended here. It’s sad that the location hasn’t been given a greater priority as a visitor attraction.

After a few nights parked-up by wild, beautiful beaches on the west coast of Chiloé facing out onto the Pacific’s rolling breakers, we drove through rolling green hillsides – which could incidentally, easily be mistaken for views of rural England – to the less wind-battered east coast of the island to start the ‘Ruta de Las Iglesias’ (Route of the Churches). There are countless small wooden churches across Chiloé island; you’re nobody in the social circles of Chilotean villages if you can’t boast of a small hand-built wooden place of worship sitting on your central square.

Okay… we admit… church visiting wouldn’t normally be high on our list of preferred travel activities, but we had some days to waste before our ferry to the mainland and these churches are said to be worthy of a visit. We made some small detours to see some of the 16 haute-couture ‘designer’ churches which hold the coveted UNESCO World Heritage status.

On Day One of the ‘Grand Church Tour’ we saw the tiny Colo – a bit dull on the outside but a beautiful vibrant turquoise inside; and then the larger Tenaún, sporting three towers at the front, painted in a stylish Cuthbert-like blue. On Church Tour Day Two we had a veritable bonanza of churches: no less than four UNESCO spots to visit. So much excitement in one day 😉 !

First, San Juan then Dalcahue then onto a little ferry to a small island off Chiloe to see Achao and Quinchao. None of these can exactly be described as headline-grabbing highlights of our travels, but they are all interesting in their own small way. Quinchao’s church is so huge that all the other buildings of the village could fit inside it.

Anyway… as if the excitement of the UNESCO churches wasn’t enough… we stumbled upon a ‘bonus church’ in the small town of Curaco de Velez. For some reason this church isn’t one of the 16 with special UNESCO status, but we liked its vibrant colour and think the poor people of Curaco were robbed by UNESCO! To compensate and in some attempt to restore the town’s pride, we hereby present this small colourful church with the much more sought after and highly coveted accolade of CWHA (Cuthbert World Heritage Award 🙂 ).

At the end of Church Tour Day 2 we were feeling rather satisfied with our church-ing success. Parking up on (another) nice beach for the night, Marcus decided to do a routine check of something-or-other underneath Cuthbert. Whilst underneath he noticed that the something-or-other attached to the rear axle is a bit wobbly (not his exact words, but you get the picture). After some effort explaining to me the significance and the potential long term implications of this ‘rear-axle drive flange wobble’ getting much worse, we decide we have no choice but to abandon our church tour and head all the way back to Iveco in Puerto Montt the next day 🙁

Iveco Games (Part 2)

We got up early and headed on a small ferry back to Chiloé, then another ferry back to mainland Chile and, one week after we last left the town, we were back in Puerto Montt. The Iveco chaps were surprised to see us but welcomed us like old friends and took Cuthbert into the workshop immediately to check-out the ‘wobble’.

It seemed to be an intermittent problem and they couldn’t identify the exact cause of the ‘mystery wobble’ until they can disassemble the rear differential on Monday. Once they’ve done this he explains, they will be able to order the parts and… Oh! Let me guess… import them from Italy by any chance?? With a 20 day wait, maybe?? Quelle surprise!!! In the meantime, we could drive locally and keep an eye on the ‘wobble’, but if it got worse it could cause the bearing to break up which, even I could work out, would essentially be a bad thing.

Over the weekend we headed to nearby Lake Llanquihue with stunning views of the Osorno Volcano. We found a great spot to park-up for the weekend on the lakeshore and mull over the situation with some other overlanding travellers that we meet there. Monica and Jeff from Arizona and Hannah and Kasey from Brisbane were unfortunately not able to assist us with Cuthbert’s woes, but they did provide excellent company for some beers and swapping travellers’ tales of derring-do.

Also over the weekend, Marcus decided that rather than rely on Iveco (who although are thoroughly nice chaps, don’t seem to be fully au-fait with the workings of the 4×4) he could do a few investigations of his own. If we could buy generic parts locally in Puerto Montt, he might be able to fix Cuthbert himself. Now… the non-technical person who observed us packing Cuthbert for this overland travel two years ago might reasonably have been under the impression that we are carrying one of every tool that could ever be needed in any eventuality. But that ‘non-technical person’ (i.e. me!) would be sadly mistaken. A trip to a tool shop was required to purchase the last few remaining tools on the planet that we don’t already have.

Our situation now resulted in two things: i) we spent considerable time in some of Puerto Montt’s tool and motor-spares shops and became rather friendly with the staff; and ii) I had a steep learning curve in technical Spanish as I tried to ask for items such as: bearings, shims and rotating torque wrenches (unsurprisingly, such words didn’t enter my vocabulary as a child when I grew up in Spain).

Some of the items took a couple of days to deliver, so we were (again) hanging around a bit in Puerto Montt – but it was better than waiting 20 days for Iveco delivery and significantly cheaper. In a specialist shop we found the correct size bearing and we found either the necessary tools or the raw materials from which Marcus could make the necessary tools (which bizarrely included the calibration of a make-shift torque wrench using bananas and a plastic cup). Unfortunately however, nowhere in Puerto Montt seemed to stock the correct size of shims for the bearing, so we don’t quite have the full complement of items necessary to do the repair. Marcus could attempt the job without these, but it’s not ideal if the shims don’t fit precisely (I’m in danger of sounding as though I know what I am talking about here – I really don’t 🙂 ).

Frustratingly, whilst all of the above was going on, regular checks on the ‘wobble’ revealed that it wasn’t reoccurring very often and certainly not getting worse, so it wasn’t entirely clear whether the job needed doing at all! Hmmm decisions, decisions… what to do? Puerto Montt is not a bad place, but we were really itching to move on. In the end we decided not order any more of Iveco’s (massively overpriced) parts from Italy and Marcus is not going to attempt the repair quite yet.

We are hitting the road again, keeping a close eye on the wobble. We now have most of the necessary parts with us, so if the wobble gets worse, Marcus can do a reasonable fix. In any case, we still have the ‘joy’ of a return visit to Puerto Montt to look forward to in a couple of weeks when we collect the other spares that we ordered at the time of the service.

Anyone with a fascination for the workings of an Iveco Daily 4×4 rear differential and a burning desire to understand: (a) the full technical detail of Cuthbert’s woes at this point; or (b) how Marcus used bananas to calibrate a make-shift rotating torque-wrench, can click on the link to check-out the detail in Marcus’ technical write-up.

Otherwise without further ado… let’s get back on the road and explore Chile. We’re off to see volcanoes. Hasta pronto amigos 🙂 !

Link to next blog: Place of many volcanos     Link to full South America Blog

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