A Very rough week, my Father Mr William Dooley RIP died on Monday 14th and was buried on Thursday 17th, the family members are now picking up the pieces and trying to recover from the loss we have all experienced.
My mother and siblings thank everyone who has made contact with any family member during this sad time.
From today, the children are starting to disperse from our Mam’s home in Dublin starting with one of my sisters who will return to the west of Ireland later today. My brother will return to the UK tomorrow (Sunday) and my sister in Australia will return at the beginning of February.
My travel plans to depart Dublin this coming Tuesday when I will travel to the Netherlands, on the Wednesday I expect to reach Argentina and then by Thursday hopefully catch up with Jan in Chile.
On the SPOT tracker, Jan’s movements are visible and his route in my absence has been as follows: From Antofagasta airport, where he dropped me off, he travelled further north to a place called Calama in an attempt to see the Dakar rally up close. He managed to park on the finishing line on the Thursday (10th) but was unsuccessful in visiting the rally bivouac. No visitors allowed without security pre-clearance. He did manage to see and speak to his friends. On this visit, they made arrangments to meet again on the 17th January in Copiapó and this time all the ‘clearance’ documents would be set up in advance, so that Jan would be allowed visit the bivouac itself.
Since then, he has been travelling very slowly south. One of his major disappointments is that he has not had Internet contact with the outside world since he has been left on his own and while not travelling or looking after himself, he has plenty of time on his hands.
He even managed to visit a hospital this week in Taltal and all his wounds and ailments he was informed, are now on the mend. He assures me that he has managed to drive, navigate and look after himself in my absence, I still have to await and see if he has managed to take any photographs or video clips of this part of his journey.
On Thursday 17th, he did meet up with his friends and was allowed into the bivouac and told me that he was there till about midnight. He was very impressed with the visit and informed me of the size of it when we went to look for one of the friends, it took him quite some time to locate him.
Yesterday, he continued south and has overnighted in Huasco. As mentioned above, our plans are now to meet up in La Serena this coming Thursday if all goes according to plan.
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