Elvis Lives Again!

About 6 weeks ago we woke Elvis from his hibernation, and he started up regular as clockwork. Unfortunately as soon as I lifted my foot from the accelerator to go into idle he spluttered to a stop. Really strange as I'd driven him only a few weeks before and he was fine.

So after asking around with the drivers at work I found a mechanic who rocked up, listen to me describe the problem and immediately said the problem was with the fuel pump. So the next day we took the 2 hour bus to Managua, the capital, and spend the day hunting for a replacement. After several hours and many, many autopart shops we eventually find one, but they wanted $400 and 30 days for something I can buy off Amazon for under a 100 bucks.

We then traipse back to the other side of town and the customs officials refuse to extend our 30 day temporary import licence :( After much pleading (in very disjointed Spanish) they finally understood we can't drive to the Costa Rican border and we eventually spoke to the man in charge. He was very nice to us (as tourists he explains) and says he will grant it but only after it's fixed and we can prove we are not blagging it. Not quite what we were hoping for but potentially we can use this to our advantage and avoid a fine we were expecting for overstaying.

I ordered the part to my friends at work in the US and they ship it down, along with some old laptops they are kindly donating to some of our sponsorship kids (the humidity just kills laptops here). It arrives right before we head out to the Corn Islands on holiday, so when we get back we only have 10 days left before we are due to leave on our visas.

I wasn't very comfortable with the first mechanic who took hours to do very little, so I went with a recommendation from my landlord. He installed the new fuel pump in super quick time, but then the engine didn't start and he very quickly ran out of ideas, before jumping on his bike and disappearing without even asking for any money!

Luckily a nice dutch guy wanders over who has the same van, and he knows a good mechanic who worked on it. The next day he arrives and finds a blockage in the fuel line, but after getting it sorted the van still stalls - back to square one!! Fortunately he was a decent mechanic and soon found the actual problem and the next day Elvis Lives again!

So we may have wasted a lot of time and a few hundred bucks on the new pump, but you have to look at it on the positive side and now we should avoid a problem with the fuel pump that had done 110,000 miles.

A couple of days later we have finished at Quetzaltrekkers and packed the van up again. Next stop was back to customs in the capital Managua. I wasn't expecting this to go well but we rocked up and although we ended up paying another $30 we got our import extension and will avoid a nasty fine at the border.Read more