Wednesday 26 March 2014

Lorraines - A Homely Week

A year or so ago Lorraine put a post on the Hubb inviting weary travellers to stop and take a break, maybe help look after her dogs and for any handymen to help out around the house with small jobs as she was building.

We answered saying wow that would be cool but we are a long way off.

Fast forward a year or so we contacted Lorraine again to see if her offer was open and like a true traveller welcomed us with open arms.

Lorraines place from the beach



Having hauled some big days down through the northern Chile roads we were tired so the timing to stop for a few days and catch our breath was welcome too.

So, first things first, a shower .....had not had one for fours days , Lorraine asked if we wanted a shower .... it was further discussed that Lorraine would want us to have a shower .

Next up, so how can we help while we are here, food, Ellens specialty cooking of dumplings and sushi...that was a given.



Chats netted a few jobs that Lorraine said if possible it would be good to get done, one was find the roof leak.

After settling in, gathering our breath and getting sorted we climbed onto the roof, there were various cracked tiles and some sealant that had come away around the chimney.



I sealed the chimney and it was decided that a trip into town was in order to get two new roofing sheets, at that point Lorraine hoped up off the roof where she was sitting and broke a full sheet, so make that three sheets to buy.

In between time we established that our toilet was not flushing the goodies away, I followed the pipework out and dug down, clearly something was not right so I dug all the way along the pipe top to form a big trench all the way down to the septic tank which I finally found buried about 800 mm deep, the digging was easy though in sand which was cool.

On finding the tank we established the tree roots etc had grown into the tank and pipe blocking any hope of a flush. I had the short straw and cleaned out the roots and other stuff, Ellen tipped a bucket of water down the toilet outlet in the house at which point there was a burp, fart and bubbling noise and the head of water cleared the blockage I had loosened and removed, such was the force from the head of water that poos when everywhere for a second or so ..... luckily we had stood back a bit.

Plumba Handi Andi



.....a clean flush is better than a full house, mission accomplished.

Back to the roof, three sheets and a couple of hours we re-roofed the bottom section rearranging the new sheets to better cover things and utilizing the part sheets to add more laps ....X fingers it does not leak ... time will tell.

While we were there we met Charlie and Mahsa who are travelling two up on a F800GS BMW, he has a seriously cool high capacity tank with custom paint and graphics.

Very nice guys and great to meet them.



A few other odd jobs were completed as well as helping out with taking Fluffy for a walk, Fluffy is an old fello and is now paralysed in his hind legs, taking him for a walk is a mission for anyone but Lorraine has cleverly come up with a system using bicycle tubes which works a treat, we all shared the load taking him for walks.



She has two other Chilean dogs Lunar and Widget who are a heap of fun and beautiful looking dogs, Widget smiles like our Boxer used to do curling her lips up with a stupid grin, I have not seen any other dogs who do this so it was a little treat.

Pictured here is Lunar, beautiful girl and she knows it



Amongst the work and help we did get to relax and play, the location lending itself to sitting with a coffee and watching the sea.



Also on the op deck with Charlie and Mahsa as well, awful day



She also has a fire pit and wanted a log for seating so this was towed home by the van and wrestled into place providing a groovy twisted seat, that night we tested it to make sure it was all good, lit the fire and cooked our pork chops ..... perfect.



Next - Santiago for massive moto servicing etc.

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