Like this:

Alright, so I’m back.  It’s hard to keep up with a blog.  It’s really a pain.  I hope you appreciate it!  Just joking.

So me and a few other folks from Yanayacu went down to Tena as a sort of going away party for Mattias, a student who was hear for a while, as well as to go collect some caterpillars and check out Hoatzin nests.  If you don’t know what Hoatzin’s are check em out.  They are these incredible, ancient, bizarre, dinosaur-like birds.    Anyway, the night in Tena went great.  We had lots of fun and got up at 7:00 a.m. to head out of town further down into the Amazon basin to get to our destination with the plan of returning by mid-day.  So the place we went to was a Quichuan community close to the Napo river and was on a side road from the “main” road (a dirt road that dead ends) and really isolated from any sort of town.  The closest anything pretty much was Tena, about 1.5 hours away by truck. So it started off great.  We found the Hoatzin nests, saw a snake hanging out over the lake hunting, and collected some caterpillars.  It was ridiculously hot so we decided we would drive down about another mile or so to the Napo River (big tributary to the Amazon) and go swimming as we were done with our adventure.  Or so we thought.  I went to start the truck, and nothing.

Here is the first broken down shot.  Note the boy carrying practically nothing while the woman has a baby tied around her neck and basket full of stuff hanging from her head, pretty standard around here (they were together).

So the truck was turning over just wasn’t getting gas to the engine it seemed.  First reaction, fuel pump gone bad.  We checked the fuses first and everything was good.  Then the next thought was that the fuel filter or fuel lines were clogged as the gas here is always suspect.  Good idea, we just had no tools to speak of other than a pair of needle nose pliers, 4 flathead screwdrivers (seriously), and a size 11 metric wrench.  Well turns out we needed a size 10 wrench to take out the fuel filter.  We went around to some of the houses but nobody had tools.  But the “platanero” (the plantain guy who has a big truck and buys plantains from the Quichuans and then trucks them to the city and sells them to veggie venders) was around and we were told he has tools.  Luckily he came by and had the size 10 wrench.  He let us use it quickly.  We took out the fuel filter, and it looked fine.  Also tried turning over the car to see if gas would spurt out of the open hose… no luck.  It must be the fuel pump.  We really were lacking the tools necessary to take out the fuel pump as it requires taking off the bed of the truck, or taking off the entire gas tank from the truck.  But the platanero suggested we just get a long hose and a 3 liter bottle and siphon gas out of the truck into the bottle, run the hose from the bottom of the bottle to the engine and get someone to stand in the back of the truck with the bottle up high so that the force of gravity would act as a pump and get gas to the engine.  Brilliant idea, but we decided we would try and fix it properly.  So I hitched a ride with the Platanero to the nearest “big” town about 3 miles away.  Hitching a ride meant hanging on to the back of this huge truck while standing on the bumper.  I didn’t realize he had more work to do on the way.  We stopped at a few places to pick up plantains and papayas from some of the locals and he put me to work.  We finally made it to the town and I went on my quest for a hose to siphon gas, 2 three liter bottles, electrical wire, a philipps screwdriver, and size 13, 17, 18 and 19 wrenches.  I was fairly succesful.  I found the hose, bottles, electrical wire, and 13, 18 and 19 wrenches.  However they all came from different people and all needed to be returned to their respective owners.  And yeah, nobody had a phillips screwdriver!

The bed is off!

It took lots of work (and mind you it was like 95 degrees) but we got the bed off.  And were able to access the fuel pump.  Oh, I should mention that the four flat-head screwdrivers came in quite handy.  We were missing the 17 wrench, remember?  Well 4 of the bolts holding the bed on were size 17 so one person used the 19 wrench while another shoved 3 screwdrivers into the spaces to get the wrench to work.  And well, it worked.

Jose wiring up the pump to test if it is electrical or indeed the pump.

So we took out the pump from the fuel tank and decided we should try and run current to it to check if it was an electrical problem or if the pump had kicked it.  So we siphoned some gas into one of the 3 liters, put the pump in it and then ran the electrical cable from the tail-light cable to test it.  Nothing, and the wires were hot.  Must be the pump!  Yaa we figured it out.  So Jose called his friend in Tena (a feat in itself as nobody had minutes left on their phones except me but I had a dead battery-luckily lucia and i have the same phone so we switched batteries and made it work) and begged him to buy us a new fuel pump and then pay for a camioneta to bring the part out to us.  And luckily he agreed.

Installing the new pump.

So we got the new pump, put it in, fired up the truck… and nothing.  So the apparatus you see in Jose’s hand is the entire unit that houses the fuel pump, the fuel pump itself is just the shiny gold thing you see only the top of.  Well when we checked for electrical problems we ran current to the outside of the unit, we didnt check the wiring on the unit itself (yeah there are live electrical wires in your gas tank).  So we ran current directly to the pump, and it worked!  Must be the wiring in the apparatus.  And sure enough a circuit where the cables plug in (the little white piece you can see if you look close) was completely burnt (this burning happened in the gas tank).   So, next plan of action – Jose was going to go to Tena and try and buy this little white piece in Tena at 10:00 at night.  Impossible you say?  Thats what I said too.  He was sure of it though.  So Mattias, Miguel, Tom and I stayed while he went to tena with the idea that he would return and we would fix it and leave that night.

The bed of our truck in the bed of the truck.

So off they went with the bed to Tena so that if we fixed the pump we could drive it without the bed to Tena and then put it back on where there was actually light.  I soon thereafter got a call that all the auto stores were closed and he wouldn’t be returning until the morning.  Luckily, Jose and I know a guy that lives in a community about 4 miles away so those of us who remained went to his house to sleep for the night.  Luckily he took us in and let us crash there and cooked us a great breakfast in the morning.  So Jose made it back the next morning with good and bad news.  Bad news is that you cant buy that little piece, you have to buy and entire new apparatus, a few hundred dollars.  Good news is that Ecuadorians are great improvisers and the mechanic in Tena gave him some parts and told him how to ghetto-rig it enough to get us back to Tena.

Putting the tire back on and getting ready to head out with no tail or brake lights!

So we rigged it up, re-installed it, and it fired right up!  26 hours later we were finally on our way out.  We returned all of the tools to their respective owners, and made it to Tena in one piece.  There the mechanic properly ghetto-rigged the piece and put the bed back on.  We were finally able to head home.

Sorry this is so long, but it was a really crazy, almost surreal experience that can’t quite be captured in words, although I tried.

Advertisement