Repair Day

After enjoying a fun Sunday, Monday finally came and was officially repair day. We spent the better half of the day running around town looking for parts to repair the van. We broke the stabilizer/sway bar a few days ago, and in the process, it broke the speedometer, so our first task was to see if we could get the suspension welded back together.

We soon found a VW part store, but the guy at the counter wanted us to take the swaybar off so he could see what he was dealing with. As luck would have it, when we pulled around the corner into an alley, we parked right in front of a metal fabrication shop. A few bolts later we had the bar off and we went inside the fabrication shop to take a shot at maybe having them weld it. Sure enough there was a German gentlemen who spoke english, and he said he didn't know how well it would hold, but would have his crew give it a shot. While we were waiting, I examined the speedometer, and found that it wasn't actually broken, but when the suspension pinched it, it just pulled it out of the wheel hub, so it wasn't spinning with our velocity anymore. An easy fix! About a half an hour later, the welding was complete, and we had it buttoned back up. Unfortunately though, when the piece broke, we lost the top washer that holds the bushing in place, so the swaybar still wasn't really tight, and not doing much.

We went to another VW part shop to see if maybe we could get another sway bar, just in case the weld didn't hold. He didn't have one, but told us about an old guy up on the hill above town that had the equivalent of a VW bus junkyard. So the exploring started, trying to find the road up the hill. After a few missed turns and getting stuck on one way streets, we finally found him. Sure enough he had a bunch of vans parked around his little shop. Unfortunately the Westy's have a little different setup for the particular part that broke, so he couldn't help us. He did have an early 90's vanagon that had some parts we could have used as spares, but to our dismay he wouldn't let us tear into it! He was nice enough to give us the washer that we needed to tighten up the sway bar though, so we were set!

We started to head out of town late in the day towards Antigua, but when we got to the turn to the highway out of town, the police had the road blocked, so instead we had to head to Totonicapan to find a place to stay for the night. Totonicapan sits high up at the end of a long valley, where the jungle begins to turn to pine. It was funny because it almost looked like we could have been back in CO! We found a very nice hotel just below the town, which was packed with people due to some type of fair. This was the nicest place we have stayed yet, probably a five star hotel for Guatemalan standards!