Adventures with the Clio!

Our plan was to spend the weekend at the Secret Garden near Cotopaxi, a nice relaxing weekend outside of Quito.  I was looking forward to relaxing in the jacuzzi, hiking to the waterfall, enjoying the inclusive meals, not having to cook or clean up.  It would be such a nice weekend!

Hoping also to get some better pictures of Cotopaxi!!

The trip started off so well – I mean the car didn’t even have any flat tires (rare for our car that has them about weekly, even 2 at a time sometimes)!  And we (to my surprise) easily manage to shove camping equipment for 4 of us along with a guitar and 4 not so small people into our teeny tiny little Renault Clio – without strapping anything to the roof!  We head on out into Friday afternoon traffic and I opt to get out and walk to the ATM instead of continuing to drive to it in the car.  I get to the ATM, get money out (without any issue!) and walk back to the car just a few minutes after they arrived at the corner.  We soon arrive at bumper to bumper traffic we find out 20 minutes later that it was caused by a lane ending a mile or two up the road.  We get through that and are on our way to Machachi!  20 minutes later we again arrive at bumper to bumper traffic caused by construction that would result in one lane for each direction on the Pan American highway – at least we still had a lane and it wasn’t one lane to be shared by both directions! 

We get through the traffic, get some gas, stop at Tia for some beer and snacks, and finally start up the cobblestone road, it was 17 kms on this road to the Secret Garden.  The road probably should be only for higher clearance vehicles but Sung carefully makes his way up the road while drinking some Club (Ecuadorian beer).  We bottom out a couple times and then while going up a steeper section the car completely dies, I mean, the engine cuts out.  I assumed that he had stalled it accidentally and initially I thought nothing of it.  He starts it up and we continue and it dies again.  We repeat this a few more times until the car won’t start at all.  We all get out and are thinking about the options – do we try to make it to Secret Garden?  Can we make it to Secret Garden?  How far to Secret Garden?  Should we go back to Machachi?  Can we coast back to Machachi?  Is there a place to stay in Machachi?  Should we camp here?  Can we leave the car here?  Where are we?  So many questions, it was tough to tackle all of them at once.  But first we need to put on some warmer clothes.

We add layers and then Phil calls the Secret Garden and they tell us that we’re about 30 minutes away by car but they offered to pick us up.  Sung and I weren’t so sure about leaving our car and then having to deal with it from the Secret Garden the next morning.  We decide we better cancel the reservation and attempt to coast the car down the hill back to Machachi.  We push the car to turn it around and the car continues to die every 5 seconds which means that Sung has to use all his strength to get the brake pedal to work and he has no power steering either which makes it even more exciting.  He gives up about 10 minutes later and says that this is just not going to happen.  He pulls the car over as we finish off the 2 6 packs.  We get out again and kind of look at each other not sure what to do.  There is a farm house right there so we push the car into the driveway which completely blocks it.  We know we can’t leave it there so we walk toward the house at which point the dogs start barking and lights start turning on (it is now pitch black outside).  We talk to two ladies and a guy about our situation and they give us permission to leave our car in front of their house for the night.  We push the car into the spot and then stand there, not quite sure what to do.  We have no plan from here.  How are we going to get to Machachi?

We ask the owners if someone could take us to town.  They say of course and the guys pile into the back of the truck and I go in the cab with Jorge.  Jorge explains that he is a dairy farmer and he also raises crops like potatoes.  The two women are his sister, he is single without kids - I was shocked, I don't think I have met a single Ecuadorian who is his age who doesn't have kids.  He asks all about us, where we are from, if I’m married, if I have kids, we talk about food, the usual questions and chit chat.  We finally arrive at Machachi and he drops us off in the back alley of a hotel where there are already two Ecuadorians waiting to be let into the hostel, one of whom is wearing a ski mask.  We hope that the ski mask is for the cold and not for some kind of robbery that they were planning!!!!

We wait and wait for about 10 minutes and finally this really young girl lets us in the gate and we go upstairs and are finally shown a couple of rooms by an older lady who is not in a night gown.  Our room smells of sewer and had a bunch of really weird stuff in it.  I avoided the bathroom unless it was an emergency because the smell in there was worse than the room itself.  Just outside our window was a bar that had pumping music and yelling people until all hours of the morning.  Between the smell, the sounds, and the worry over how we were going to get the car off the mountain, I got very little sleep that night.

The bar outside our window the kept us awake the entire night before:

The weird stuff in our room:

The piglets and the shoe???  This should be a nursery rhyme or something, maybe I missed it as a kid?

Of course, the room would not have been complete without the kissing swans!

Next morning we eat breakfast and the older lady offers to drive us to her mechanic to ask him about the car - so nice of her - it is amazing how nice everyone was to us!  Of course before we leave we have to load a bunch of really heavy bags into the back of her pick up truck.  No problem, we're happy to help, but it's just funny it's so Ecuadorian.  We head to the mechanic (luckily his shop is at his house) who tells us that we need a tow truck but that he didn't know of one in Machachi.  But next thing I know he's on his phone calling someone and then he tells us to wait at our hotel, that the tow truck would arrive at noon.  After that we dropped off the cow feed or salt or whatever it was in the bags and headed back to the hotel.

We wait, and wait, and wait, and 2:00 PM rolls around and we are sick of the sewer smell and have to at least leave the hostel.  I'm starting to get anxious because all the mechanics close on Saturday by noon (if they're even open) and Sundays they are all closed.  This tow truck is probably never going to show up.  And I still have no idea how we are getting the freaking car down the mountain.

Sung hanging out in the hotel:

We finally give up on this tow truck ever arriving and head out to eat some lunch and as we're eating our chancho (pig roasted on a spit), potatoes, mote, and salad mixture feeling pretty helpless I suddenly remember that our insurance comes with roadside assistance!!!  Sung texts our insurance lady who responds and says that the tow truck will meet us in the plaza in 45 minutes!  Horray!!!  We were SHOCKED that when we got to the plaza an actual tow truck DID SHOW UP!!!  Amazing.  We rode with our savior up the mountain 45 minutes to the farmhouse where he expertly hooked up our car and secured it.

We head down the mountain and the car is shaking all over the place, alarm going off from all the movement, Sung constantly hitting the alarm button to shut the thing off.  After a LONG ride down we finally got off the cobblestone road and into town.  We brought it immediately to the mechanic that we had met the day before and OF COURSE! he wasn't there!  But his dad was and he allowed us to leave the car and he assured us that he would be able to fix it.  In all other car repair scenarios in the past we've had to go to the Renault parts place and buy the parts and bring them to the shop before they'd even think of doing the repair.  So I'm thinking my next week was going to be running to Machachi a bunch of times.  But the dad said they would get the parts and fix it so we'll see!!

Monday Update: the car is ready!  There was a crack in the oil reservoir (probably from us bottoming out) and they repaired it and added new oil - $100.  I'll be on my way back by bus tomorrow morning with the cash - hopefully it's as simple as handing over the money and driving the car back home to Quito!