8th February 2013 ~ Traffic Accident

Yes, we have been in our first traffic accident on this trip and hopefully the last.

It happened very simply, we were going up a relatively steep climb and a truck was coming down on the opposite side, an  empty logging truck along with its long emply trailer decided to overtake us on a solid white line about two thirds of the way up the hill and didn’t make it to clear our camper before he pulled in again onto the right side of the road.

We are ok, however we have some damage on the camper.  He has ruined the ‘Vigia’ tyre inflation system on the first axle, left side, he has ripped forward the front vent/spoiler on the drivers side and the mirror on the co-driver’s sid, right –  has been smashed and a long scrape along the entire lenght of the camper on the co-drivers side.

The  immediate problem was to isolate the front left wheel (damaged one) from the inflation system and let the system continue to work on the five good tyres/wheels.  However as there is still a small leak the system in constantly trying to increase pressure on the front right tyre constantly.

The left wheel/tyre we manually inflated ourselves and so far so good. However in the damage created by the ripping of the system, 3 of the wheel bolts have been sheared off and we have several oil leaks and we are not sure yet of the extent of the damage inside the wheel itself.  We are not close to any big cities or dealers yet and are making enquires today, Saturday 9th  now that we have managed to get internet contact in the local Tourist office in Canete!

I will put some photos on the blog gallery when I get proper access to the internet with my own laptop and the photos on it!

We will keep you all informed of our progress.

A quick note on a separate subject, on the Gallery page (known as the Album page behind the scenes, that contains many galleries) the two first ones i.e. the Paso Agua Negra and the Dakar Rally one, had the photos originally inserted as ‘thumbnails’, with the remaining photos all set up in ‘slide show’, I have now put all the photos in the Gallery page into ‘slide show’ mode so you can see them in more detail.