Unlike most house sitting assignments, this one came with a vehicle. That’s a real benefit, especially given the steep gravel road to town we’d otherwise be walking up and down far more frequently than we’d like. Our temporary wheels are a Toyota Hilux 4x4 diesel of unknown year – a well worn but practical vehicle. When we first got here it was pretty hard starting in the morning, then completely non-starting until the mechanic came out and did some magic with a pair of pliers in a fuse box. More recently when Deborah was driving the exhaust pipe decided to meet face-to-face the ground it had only been hovering above all these years. She did her best damsel in distress routine until some locals were kind enough to temporarily re-suspend it for her with some wire. When we brought it in to the mechanic he basically cut off the offending bit of pipe, leaving us with half an exhaust system until he could get a new piece formed (it was an odd twisty shape) in Labassa, which he could then weld into place. For several days in a row the formed piece from Labassa was always scheduled to arrive “tomorrow,” as we meanwhile somehow managed to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning. Today the repair was finally completed: the new piece was welded in place and a new bracket was fashioned to support it where the old bracket fell off and disappeared. It only took about an hour and cost about US$85, which Tobi will pay. There just aren’t any well-stocked auto supply stores here, so the mechanics are pretty creative in finding inexpensive solutions. Hopefully we won't have to test their creativity anymore in our remaining three months here.
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Our ride
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