17th January 2015 – Puyuhuapi to Coyhaique

We got up early this morning, it was a drizzly & overcast day, so went down for a spa before breakfast.  It was lovely the pools ranged from 35 – 39 degree C. What I forgot to mention yesterday is that we left our bathers in the car which is parked on the other side of the lake so we both went in in our undies (like being a kid again).  The view from our room over the rainforest and spa resort:-We caught the ferry back to our cars at about 9:30 and were on the road by 10 as we had a 233 km drive today, quite a bit of it on dirt roads that we were stopped on due to the roadworks. Most of the stop go sign operators here are women, who are usually very young &  attractive.  We had to get through 2 lots of roadworks today before the road was closed at midday.  They are blasting through enormous rock cliffs with explosives to build the new road so they need to close it off while they do that. We made it through the second lot of roadworks in time so we stopped for a tea break. Each morning at breakfast we make up thermos’s of tea with milk to drink along the road with our biscuit or sandwich made from the breakfast buffet.When RIP started his engine he was blowing a lot of white smoke out of the exhaust and as he was driving along you could smell Coolant.  A few more kilometers down the road confirmed the worst that RIP had blown a head gasket and we were about 125km from our overnight stop.  Fortunately the road was all bitumen, windy, with not too many up hill bits. So Shiraz towed RIP into Coyhaique.  It was a fairly intense trip as Michael was concentrating so hard, I was calling the gear changes over the radio to Dave and it went pretty smooth.     Consequently not many photos today, but I have some good video footage of RIP on tow behind us.  We were clipping along at about 80k/h, except when we hit a hill and we were back to 1st gear.  Shiraz got a bit warm at one stage so we pulled over to let the motor, clutch & Michael cool down.  Once we arrived at our hotel it was all hands on deck and some of the guys had the head gasket changed in a couple of hours (while Michael had a rest) and RIP was ready to go again.