6th March – The skin of our teeth…

Right. Well. Update time. I’m not sure how to properly start or introduce this update apart from how stupidly lucky we are. Dad and I made it through by the skin of our teeth. Setting of the scene: Driving from one town in the middle of nothingness to a smaller town out near bum -(insert explicit word)-ville. Going up a steady hill about to overtake a truck on a straight portion of road (travelling a a sturdy 95kph) and then all of a sudden something fell off the back of the truck and bounced along the road. I instantly thought it was a stick of timber than just rolled off. This U.F.O. seemed a little bit under 1meter in length and had a very solid look about it. Turns out, it was the light bar that housed all the rear lights on a truck, and it was made out of 5mm plate steel and weighed just under 15 kilograms. Falls off the truck and bounces on the road, instantly going in any random direction after contact. I swerve and brake in every direction it WASN’T going and after bouncing 3 or 4 times I was on the other side of the road and still managed to hit it. Smashes into the front of us in a shower of glass and our windshield was getting sprayed with coolant. Ohhhhhhh shit….. This is not ideal. This is much much much less than ideal. This is actually the complete OPPOSITE of ideal. The truck driver was 100% unaware of what happened and kept driving, regardless of my single finger salute and symphony of horn blasting. The instant investigation of damage went from ‘catastrohpic terminal damage’ (from inside the car) to ‘by the ears of a llama this could have been much worse’ (pondering our predicament from the front).

The flying monstrosity of steel with the help of some devine sand-desert-gods managed to simply impale our CAV headlight (demolishing it more than standing on a coke can) and just flip up and sit in the well between our bonnet and front right mud guard. Only just dinting our radiator on the way over. The force on the radiator only pushed apart a lead solder join in the german

silver at the top and we lost less than 500mls of fluid. The hole was nothing a dab of Sika-flex Silicone couldn’t fix in an instant and after a bit of an ugly gooking job we were back in business. And now Penny just looks like she is winking at you, all the time. The saucy girl that she is.

So, dodged that bullet pretty well I suppose. Laminated glass would have done nothing to stop the flying javelin of steel tumbling into our pretty faces.

Tomorrow we dip into Argentina across the continental divide of the Andes. We leave the Chilean customs border control and then instead of a 100meter or so gap of no-mans-land to enter the next country, we actually drive 150km’s up and over the Andes before even entering Argentina. 150km’s of un-ruled and lawless driving. Huzzah! Can’t wait.

James