Given Rodrigo’s poor health, we drove slowly to Salta. Thankfully the roads were in excellent condition and mostly down hill! We stopped for fuel and bought an additional hazard triangle. In Argentina you need to have two in your car – not just one. You also need a fire extinguisher and a first aid kit – but we bought that already back in Canada. We actually had 3 police checks in the first 30 kilometers on the road, but they were just interested where we came from, not as in Belgium but just the city we left from.

We arrived at the large Toyota dealership in Salta around 10:00am. The directions that we were given were not so useful, so we had to ask around, but eventually we found it! The security guard knew that we were coming and escorted Rodrigo to the royal parking spot in front of the entrance. Estaban came out to meet us and said he was expecting us. We explained the problem and the vehicle history (including previous maintenance in Costa Rica and Peru) and he said they would get started on it straight away.

They drove Rodrigo in to the big maintenance hall and hooked him up to the computer. We sat in the waiting room until noon and then made our way to the shopping mall for lunch. We had a big meat fest for lunch – we are in Argentina after all! They brought the meat on a mini-barbecue set to our table! The lunch break lasted for 4 hours and we had an ice-cream before heading back to Toyota.

Back at Toyota, Estaban informed us that they could do a temporary fix (to keep driving) by reducing Rodrigo to 7 cylinders and then have a final fix done later. For the final fix, however, a new spark plug is needed which is not on hand in Salta. Tomorrow we’ll go back to hear how we can get the final fix done in Buenos Aires. We drove to our campground with Rodrigo running as smoothly as he did back in Chili. It was a stressful day waiting for news, but we were very impressed with Estaban’s help. And for the record, we didn’t even have to pay a peso yesterday or today. How about that?

Unfortunately our Peruvian alarm seems to have been disabled in this whole process, so we need to figure that out tomorrow as well.

Thinkin’ of you’s workin’ up my appetite

Looking forward to a little afternoon delight.

Rubbin’ sticks and stones together makes the sparks ingite

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NUkhMq_iRo

PS: Yes, we know what this song is about – it’s absolutely hilarious and a personal favourite for singing in the car