March 10/12 - Argentina

By April | March 19th, 2006 | No Comments

Day 221/223 - As we headed south from Buenos Aires, on route 3, our spark plug cable came off. It had been loose, but it was nothing duck tape couldn’t fix at least until we got to a town for the night and could replace the cable. We had known about this problem and it was our plan to get some extra car parts once we were out of the city. I guess our van just wanted to make sure that we did it sooner rather than later. We bought some parts in Azul, the town we camped at for the night.

The next day we continued driving south on route 3. Everything was going well ~ birds were chirping, the sun was shining….until all of a sudden a very deep, loud thuddering noise came from the engine. Jason, who had been driving, immediately turned the car off and coasted over to the grassy roadside. We sat there, looking at each other. That sound was no good at all. We finally mustered up the courage to get out and take a look under Henry’s hood. We popped it open and saw the spark plug cable loose and the spark plug sitting happily all by itself, next to the engine. It apparently had decided to ‘pop’ off and it wasn’t going back in……you can imagine our exclamations (which aren’t appropriate put in writing). Jason hitched a ride to the nearest gas station and got a tow truck, since the van wasn’t moving anywhere without additional help. Sean and I stayed in the van and waited, and got to watch a beautiful sunset over the very flat, windy plains. At least it was better than being stuck on a busy four lane highway.

This is our first major breakdown outside of the states, and fortunately it wasn’t too terribly far from a medium sized city. We got towed to Bahia Blanca and paid, in the end, 190 pesos ($63usd), even though we were quoted a lower price. The driver added on a “transportation charge” of 23 pesos for letting us ride with him from where our van stopped, to the town. I guess he could have just left us there on the roadside and we could have hitched in… it was pretty ridiculous. The van was put in a garage that was owned by the towing company guy, who was also a mechanic. He wouldn’t be open until Monday, and it was Saturday night. So, we left the car in the shop, since it was secure and we couldn’t fix the problem ourselves anyways, and got a hotel. We spent the next day seeing what Bahia Blanca was all about.

Overall the city was nice and clean. We had really good pizza and empanadas. Sunday night we watched a fashion show that was at the town square. We think they were modeling clothes from stores in the area for the upcoming winter season. During the breaks between models they had teenage dancers, who danced to advertise for the sponsors, it was definitely entertaining.