Oil and Water Project

We woke up this morning camped on the side of the road. As we rolled out of bed, we were immediately swarmed by papparazi´s.

The second we arrived in Los Angeles we were greeted by the Mayor and Governor and enough cameras to occupy a Japanese field trip.

A special thanks to Nester and Johan from BioEiberger…and new company in the area that is building a plant to produce Biodiesel, BioEthanol and BioGas here in Chile.  They sponsored all our accomdations on our visit to Los Angeles.

They put us up in this sassy hotel, and Tyler and I have our own rooms. That is a good thing. We have our one year aniversary of living in the fire truck on March 17th. Those folks in Ushuia better be ready!ª!!!!

Special thanks to the Ritz Carlton for putting us up in the best rooms of the trip! The day of March 4th might have been the craziest one yet. It started with a live interview on national television, and a visit ot the University accompanied by the US Ambassador, the Minister of Aggriculture and President of the University. After a couple more media engagements, we were at the US embassy to meet a team of 3 embassy mechanics who unveiled the problem with our Raidiator as a faulty water pump. 900 bucks later at 10 pm, we were filtering vegetable oil in front of Mcdonalds…..our last fill up of the trip. We also collected 15 gallons of Soy Waste Biodiesel from Biodiesel Chile…thanks guys.  After, we drove most of the night south…..still overheating.

We can´t thank Dinah enough for the wonderful job she did in Santiago coordinating our activities.

We made our first ascent….and descent of the Andes, with our temperature guage in the red!!!

We were greeted at Mcdonalds with a mob of press, Chilean Ambassador Craig Kelly, and our wonderful host Dinah Arnette from the US Embassy.  They had over 200 gallons of nice oil waiting for us….our last fill up of the trip!!

We arrivedin Mendoza late-and got a sweet taste of the annual wine festival.  There was a parade, and loads of good food.  We slept in this morning before starting toward Chile.

After hanging around all morning drinking coffee in Mendoza, we set out to try and find a Vineyard to go visit.  We got a late start, and missed our wine window.  However, to make up for some serious time off the water, we found a sweet waterslide and used a plastic saucer to slide down it!

whoosh, N. Argentina is a big place, just pulled an all nighter and are only half way to Mendoza. We are amid a total epic trying to get to Santiago on time via the wine festival in tonight. The Radiator is not giving us much love…we have to stop, de-steam and re-fill every 100 kilometers or so. I guess it wasn´t the thermastat. We can´t find where it is leaking…we might have a blown head gasket…..ouch!

At least we are breaking down is some beautiful places.

And we have Alex to entertain us with her wikid break dancing moves.

This has been a bummer of a setback for us. Instead of stopping off and kayaking in all the spots as we had planned, time restraints have left us driving straight on through day and night…..

So 20 minutes after we left for the first road trip with Alex and Jody….the thermostat went out (at least we thought it was the thermostat). We have removed it and are traveling without one until a replacement can be found.

Jody is an engineer and builds airplanes for a living. He jumped right in and started helping us.

Alex has is an MD and has a PHD. She constantly reminded us about the similarities between the human body and the inards of a vehicle.

First look for the obvious symptoms. In this case we replaced the cap to the radiator.

Since that didn´t work we tried some straight up tender lovin care to the thermastat.

It is so frickin awesome to have these guys along with us after a month of just the two of us. We are so psyched for the annual wine fest in Mendoza this weekend, then a boat load of presentations in Santiago and South of Chile. Stay posted this weekend for tons of new photos!

Yeah! We got Dr. A and Tylers brother. We are headed to Argentina…the wine country! We will stop for a little kayak session this afternoon just north of Bermeja, the border town of Argentina and Bolivia. The roads are paved all the way to Santiago. Yeehoo.

A speical thanks to all the folks who helped us to make such a great program in Tarija!  As well thanks to Andrea Frangoisia, Sarah, Kristian and Priscilla from the Bolivian Peace Core for saving all this oil.  As well shout out to Mario Moreno from Santa Cruz, Bolivia for sending us 40 gallons of the wonderful Soy Biodiesel.  Thanks Jody for pumping in into the tanks!

Sunday afternoon we had another presentation at the Centro Integrada de Santa Isabel (or
C.I.S.I) in San Lorenzo, Tarija. The C.I.S.I is home and haven to about 65
Bolivian children ranging in age from 7 to 18 from poor adjacent areas, which provides
shelter, food, and guidence to the students.

We got to do a roll session with some of Bolivia´s Olympic Kayak polo and slalom team. They came really close to getting their rolls!

We noticed that all of our radiator hoses were very swollen on our trip through death road. So we spent the last days coordinating new rubber! yesterday, once complete, Kristian…a boater from Oregon took us south to this river north of Bermejo. We loaned him our extra boat (it didn´t come back home the same afterwards, but regardless…it came back). We expected class 3 and got some sweet 4plus with some great scenery. On the way home one of the hoses blew off, we over heated, and spent half the night getting back to Tarija, where we couldn´t find a parking place for the life of us! We settled for a nice spot in front of the Police station at 2:30 am.

We were up again this morning at 7am to present to over 600 primary school students….followed directly by a hazy press conference with all the local media.

The kids had some great questions and they all brought in the waste oil from the mom´s kitchens for us to use on our journey south!

In the afternoon headed over for a around 750 secondary students.

The primary kids at this school didn´t get our presentation, so we took them for laps around the soccer field.