Chapter 5: Testing our Metal / El Salvador

By Paul Fast

It’s 12:30am, and I’m trundling a baggage cart through the parking lot of the San Salvador International Airport, looking for a place hidden from the lights and the security cameras. There is a ticket to Vancouver in my back pocket, and I am the only one here. Despite the late/early hour, the heat lingers, and my permanently damp t-shirt is laminated to every fold of my body. I’m looking for a place to ditch an 81 pound transfer case. A very polite young airline attendant had just informed me that I am not able to check in a box that heavy. She is very eager to make the right impression for her boss in the corner, and there is no door open here for a discreet favour. I find a large banana tree in the back corner of the parking lot, and heave the chunk of broken metal behind it, covering it with underbrush. Something in me feels pleased to offload this miserable burden. I contemplate giving it a final kick, wisely reconsider, and turn the empty baggage cart back into the departures terminal. I walk back up to the baggage counter, and the attendant seems very confused. I can see her trying to figure out what I’ve done with my oversize box. Ask me….I dare you… I’m thinking in my head. She wisely decides to put aside her questions and issues me my boarding pass. Then, because I am one of only a handful of people in the airport, she escorts me through security and points me to a specific boarding gate that’s been roped off. There are a dozen Somalis camped out, sleeping on the floor. I throw my pack on the ground and join them.

It’s Christmas dinner at the Fast House in 2021 and I’m sitting at the table with my Uncle Greg. Greg has been battling a bad form of cancer for the past three years, and while I didn’t know it yet, this is the last time I would see him. Greg is mechanically inclined, and I’m pressing him for advice on what spare parts I should be carrying for the Duramax. I know Greg well, and I’m expecting the usual, carefully considered, thoughtful answer. A list perhaps, or the name of a guy I can call. Greg leans forward with his elbows on the table, and says “Paul, why are you worrying so much about breaking down? If you break down, God will have a very good reason for why, when and where you break down. So don’t sweat it.” I sat there letting this piece of unanticipated, somewhat unwelcome piece of advice sink in. A smile broke out on his face and he added, “maybe take some spare injectors with you.”

Mechanical issues on a trip like this are as certain as November rain in Vancouver, and it’s part of the journey that every overlander must expect. We had prepared ourselves for breakdowns at some point, and I’d packed every spare part I had room for and could afford into the back of the truck. We had some slush in our schedule and our budget allocated for breakdowns. Despite this, it somehow never goes the way you think it’s going to go.

Our itinerary had us crossing through El Salvador in two days, and Honduras in one. We were told by many people that El Salvador was now safe to spend time in, but Honduras is a different story. El Salvador is an interesting place. They recently elected a new president, whose first act was to round up every guy in the country wearing a gang tattoo and throw them in jail, skipping any and all notion of due process or trial. The human rights groups screamed foul, but every local we talked to is immensely grateful. Overnight the streets were made safe and businesses could operate without paying “protection money”, in many cases up to 40% of their monthly revenue. The reputation of the country has begun to turn a corner, and the surfers have brought international attention to the stunning, mostly undeveloped coastline. His second act as president was to make Bitcoin the official co-currency of the country, next to the existing US dollar. There are ATM’s scattered throughout the country where you can actually withdraw US dollars directly from Bitcoin accounts. Crypto has been hailed as significant strategy for combatting economic equity in developing countries, where many people aren’t able to open bank accounts or to pay the fees big banks charge. Not sure how this will play out.

We spend one night at a surf beach, and the next day we drive clear across the country to our final destination before the border. Our accommodation for the night is a Puma Gas Station. I slip the guard a couple of bucks and he shows us a parking spot and promises to keep an eye on our vehicle for the night. He also recommends the pupusa stand down the street, so Nathaniel and I head over to buy our dinner. It is from here that we plan to stage our border to border run of Honduras the next day. Honduras still has a pretty bad rap. In December their president issued a state of emergency to allow the military broad measures to combat gang violence, which was responsible for some of the highest murder rates per capita in the world. That said, many travelers spend time there without any issues, and like most cases, it all depends on where you spend your time. We simply decided that with an itinerary that was already being compressed by a shipping date we couldn’t change, and many miles still to go, we would skip Honduras and spend our time in Nicaragua instead.

The night was uneventful, minus the awful smell. Our friendly guard had parked us right next to the wastewater outlet. We woke the next morning at 6am to fuel up with caffeine, and sent the boys into the Puma to stock up on snacks before we hit the road. Two borders is a big day, and I had prepared all of our paperwork and researched the processes for each crossing the night before. We rolled towards our first customs checkpoint and had our Temporary Import Permit for the truck canceled. Our Duramax was officially out of the country. Our next stop was immigration a few miles up the road. As Daniella hit the gas and gathered speed something went wrong, and I rolled down the window. It sounded like someone had thrown a bunch of bolts into a blender at high speed. We would later determine that this was the sound of gears eating bearings for breakfast. We pulled over immediately. We were in no-man’s land, trapped between the El Salvador Aduana and Honduran Migracion. This is not the place you want to have your truck fail you, and inside my gut my gears were doing some grinding of their own. This was not good.

Daniella parked the truck on the shoulder and I ran across the road to some guys sitting on chairs under a tree (Central America has no shortage of guys sitting on chairs under trees). One of them had been watching and asked “Mechanico?” Si, I nodded. He called a guy, who called another guy and I was assured that someone was on their way. 10 minutes later a Corolla pulled up and a gentleman stepped out and got straight to business. He figured it was a hangar bearing, and I breathed a sigh of relief. That was a pretty straightforward part to replace. He directed us to follow him and we limped the truck back down the road to El Salvador, the drive shaft turning and grinding the whole way. Our friend from the chair under the tree knew the Aduana (customs) guy, and hitched a ride to help explain our situation. No problem I was told, and we re-entered the country.

As we limped down the road following our new friend, I started going through our options. In my mind all of these options had us sitting in an air-conditioned office, while an expert mechanic replaced our hangar bearing in a spotlessly clean shop. It would take a couple of hours (tops), and we’d probably make the Nicaraguan border by nightfall. A couple of clicks down the road and our friend pulled into a vacant lot littered with scrap vehicles. This was Santa Rosa de Lima, the nearest community to the border, and it was clear that we weren’t going to make it any further. Santa Rosa is a very poor community that is the modern day equivalent to a one horse town (albeit with representatives of three major American fast food chains). It has one main paved road, and it suffers from its proximity to the Honduran border, which tends to attract desperate types of people. I pulled in and found a spot.

The lot was carpeted in garbage and was located across the street from an Auto Hotel (Central America’s version of a highway motel used for nighttime liasons). Our friend disappeared behind a cinder block wall and emerged a few minutes later with the head mechanic. Otto did his business in flip flops, jeans and T-shirt that doubled as a filter when recycling transmission fluids. He mumbled a greeting and dove under the truck, barking orders for tools from two younger apprentices. He emerged a few minutes later with the diagnosis. We had no oil left in our transfer case and the complex arrangement of gears inside that relied on heavy lubrication had literally started to eat themselves. The culprit was a faulty tail shaft seal, which had slipped out and allowed the oil to drain suddenly. I pulled my service records for the truck and sure enough, the tail shaft seal had been recently replaced (as an extra pre-caution!), right before our trip. I was fuming.

Daniella and I react differently in situations like this. I am the perennial optimist, which tends to mean I embrace reality in a cascading, increasing series of doses that gradually acclimatize me to reality. Daniella goes straight to the worst case (most often the real case) scenario. I could see the look on her face. This wasn’t going to be easy. Fortunately, Otto’s son Brian spoke English, and suggested we pack the rest of the family off to the Burger King in town for food and A/C .

I spend the rest of the day under the truck with Otto and his apprentices. By Canadian standards, the place is a total mess. There is garbage everywhere, old cars lurking in the corner, and the floor of the shop itself is a constantly shifting landscape of cast-off transmission casings, tools and plastic oil containers. It’s 44⁰ C outside, and no matter how many fluids you drink, the sun keeps draining them right out of you. Otto’s guys keep me supplied with little bags of purified water. Everyone walks around sucking on these bags of cold water, hooked up to their aquatic IV’s. I’m on my back and something catches my eye. There’s a herd of goats circling us, and they step carefully over my legs. The truck was jacked up on some logs. The guys pulled the entire driveshaft out, dropped the transfer case and assessed the damage. It is not an encouraging thing to watch a twenty-year-old disappear under your truck with a sledgehammer and listen to them tearing the guts out of your vehicle. A couple of hours later they had the transfer case out and disassembled. It was a mess inside, but Otto figured that he could remove the really badly worn gears for the 4x4 and reassemble it to get us back on the road with 2WD. This would get us to a place where we could spend more time on a lengthy repair. All he needed was a few seals.

Otto drives an old, super charged Ford Escape that has been flawlessy tuned, and on which the maintenance for any non-engine or drivechain related component has been completely ignored (probably because you can’t find any Ford parts here). This includes door handles, windshield wipers, AC, sound system, seatbelts, and on occasion the ignition. I jump in the backseat, and we head to the parts store. Otto drives like it’s his last day on earth, and I regret being a in a car with no seatbelt. He is a known entity at the local parts store, and the first order of business for him when he shows up is a sampling of the local moonshine (cane sugar alcohol). The guy behind the counter looks at the seal and consults his computer. No problem he says, he can have the parts here in two days. I breathe a sigh of relief - at least we can get back on the road.

On the drive, I learn a little more about Otto and his family. Otto is a native El Salvadoran, but spent some time in the US where he worked as a mechanic before being deported to his home country. His two oldest sons were told to stay put and go to school in the States, where they had citizenship by birth. Brian, the second oldest son has just returned home. Otto hasn’t seen him in 10 years. Something clicks….this sad story is responsible for landing me in the shop of the only mechanic in eastern El Salvador that knows American transmissions.

I get dropped off at the Burger King and relay the good news to Daniella. There is only one hotel in town, and we check ourselves in to the only remaining room. The hotel has breakfast service, AC, cold showers and an approach to customer service that leaves significant room for improvement. We collapse on our beds and go to sleep exhausted, but with a plan in place. The next morning there is a voicemail in my Whatsapp inbox. We have a problem - one of the seals is not available in El Salvador, and we are back to square one. My heart sinks.

Over the next two days we explore every other option. GMC never sold trucks in Central America, so there are no parts available anywhere. You don’t even see them on the road. Daniella burned up the Whatsapp chat lines trying to track down the parts we needed in El Salvador. I finally located a remanufactured transfer case in Vancouver and started calling shipping agencies. One by one each option hit a dead end. DHL told us it would be no problem to ship the part, and then sent us a quote for $5,500 US. The parts stores (when we could communicate and when they returned our calls) didn’t deal in parts for American cars. Shipping companies told me they could get the case there no problem, but by the time you added up shipping times, import costs and red tape, it was unlikely to arrive inside of a month, and would cost thousands in import taxes. That’s assuming you can get it through El Salvadoran customs. We spent frantic hours leaning on every contact we had. All were willing to help, but none had access to what we needed. Part # 24228417 (that’s written from memory) was haunting my dreams during the few hours of sleep I was getting.

Otto ambled over and figured we should check the scrapyards. A buddy of his said he saw an old Chevy Suburban sitting in a back corner somewhere. Chevy’s are built by GMC, so just maybe…. Otto, Brian and I spent the better part of the day alternating between racing heats on single lane El Salvadoran country roads and scavenger hunts through acres of rusting auto carcasses. It was in the back corner of one of these yards, in the shadow of a stripped down Isuzu flatbed that I hit my low point. Our best chance of getting out of El Salvador at this point was finding a very rusty needle in the middle of an iron-age haystack. A lizard cocked his head and fixed his beady eye on me from the wheel well. I could see him thinking….you’re screwed sucker. Even if we had found an old transfer case here, there’s no way the seals would still be in good enough shape. This was just another dead end, and the lizard was right. We were screwed.

We headed back to the shop. Otto, in his limited English tried to lift my spirits, but I could tell he was fresh out of ideas. He busied himself with the line-up of other customers that he had neglected over the past couple of days. I sat in a lawn chair in the middle of his shop, surrounded by discarded transmission cases and spent water bags, feeling like the momentum driving our quest had taken a serious nosedive. I knew Daniella was hoping for an update, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I had no idea how we were getting out of this place, and so I left the buzzing phone in my pocket.

Sometimes the bottom of the barrel is a good place to find ideas. I started contemplating whether I could fly home and bring the transfer case from Vancouver via checked baggage. This was not without risk. The airport was 4 hours away. I’d have to get there within 12 hours to avoid the planned lock-out due to strike action by bus-drivers. That meant driving at night. GM would have to be open on Saturday to pick up the part. Air Canada would have to let me check in an 81lb piece of machinery that could look an awful lot like a weapon of mass destruction. The part would have to fit, and there would be no way of verifying with 100% certainty until I got it here. One wrong bolt or missing seal and we would be back to square one. There would be no running back to dealership. The worst part of the plan, the one that really got me tied up in knots, was having to ditch my family for 4 full days in a heat baked, dusty town on the Honduran border. It was an ugly, all or nothing kind of plan, the kind of plan that only looks like it has a chance after you’ve combed El Salvadoran junk yards for two days.

I laid it out for Otto. A smile broke out on his face. “Yyyyeeeesss. Good plan.” I sensed a collective spirit of optimism developing in the shadow of the later afternoon Friday sun. Within the next twenty minutes I book flights, arrange for a driver to take me to San Salvador, triple check with GM that they are open on Saturdays, verify with my Langley mechanic that I have the right part on order, and solicit the help of my in-laws for pick-ups and moral support. Then I call Daniella. I’ll spare you the details of the conversation, but she took it like a champ, and we both felt relieved that a plan was in place. Otto packed up the old transfer case in a cardboard box so I could bring it to Vancouver and have the mechanic there do a forensic analysis on it, and then, in the same dirt stained set of clothes I had worn for the past several days I climbed into the back of a mini-van and headed for home.

There is much to the following 4 days that could fill another chapter. The old transfer case (that I was hoping to take back) was rejected at the airport due to being overweight. GM made a mistake, and the part would only be available on Monday. I had to rebook my return flight, but the real blow was the additional 2 day delay for Daniella and the boys. I had to find a mechanic in Langley to take apart the old transfer case so it could be broken down into two, sub-50lb boxes. What was once a very expensive, but guaranteed to work transfer case was now a completely disassembled pile of oily gears and shafts. I was showered with love, home-made food and a full chauffer service by my family at home. Air Canada reluctantly checked in the boxes after making me take them apart and inspecting every last gear. The boxes made it through Toronto to San Salvador, where they disappeared. They were discovered by a helpful baggage attendant in a very random corner. The customs agent in El Salvador who scanned my boxes took one look at me, an unshaven, smelly gringo with an unpredictable look in my eye and waved me on. Daniella had severe diarrahea while I was gone and was confined to her hotel room, where she was supplied with medication by American Aid Workers. The boys were sent scavenging for food at the local supermarket on their own and returned safely. And then, late in the night, I was back in Santa Rosa with my precious cargo. I’ve never felt so much affection for a car part.

I was nervous about showing up with a cardboard box full of parts at Otto’s shop the next morning. He had been expecting a fully functioning transfer case. He didn’t bat an eye, cleared a place on the floor and started barking orders. I sat there and watched a master at work. Without consulting a manual he put the entire thing back together without a single mistake, carefully cleaning and lubricating each part as he re-assembled this automotive Rolex in the growing morning heat. Then he and his apprentice disappeared under the truck with the case. Two hours later Otto reappeared with a grin on his face and motioned me to turn the truck on. We took it for a lengthy test drive while pressures, sensors and seals were check and re-checked. Otto was happy. “No leaks!” he proclaimed. We were back on the road. The sun was dropping into the horizon as I turned the truck down the main street of Santa Rosa for the last time. There were tears in my eyes as the stress of the last week start leaving my body.

For the past several weeks I have been replaying this “lost week” of our trip in my mind. I’m trying to understand why it happened when, where and how it did. I’m glad I can read my son’s blog and see that they weathered this episode just fine. I can tell you that it was one of the most stressful weeks of my life. My Uncle Greg’s comment is playing on repeat in my head. I’d always assumed that when something happened on our trip, it would be so that we could be a blessing or a help to someone else, or that some significant relationship or event would form out of it. Maybe I had it all wrong. Perhaps the reason for this chapter in our trip was so that I could finally learn that I can’t control everything, or plan for every outcome. Perhaps I was supposed to learn the kindness of strangers, like the Salvadoran guy on the border road whose name I don’t even know, but who helped us back through customs and spent hours of his day getting us to the right place while refusing any money. Perhaps it was understanding what it meant to be totally helpless and dependant on someone, and that you don’t really know someone until that dependency exists. Maybe I needed to see that there was a resiliency to my wife that I hadn’t appreciated before.

More than any of that, I had to learn to put my trust in a man that I probably wouldn’t have given a second glance back in Vancouver. A man who worked his tail off for three days straight, who drove all over El Salvador searching for parts, who kept me hydrated, lifted my spirits and paid for my lunch. A man, who dropped everything to help a family in need, when it was hard to get a Canadian mechanic to even answer the phone. A man who put my truck back together with the precision and unwavering confidence of a NASA engineer (in flip flops). A man who after all of this work presented me with a bill for his services that was less than we would have spent on a nice dinner back in Canada.

And so, with the help of several kindhearted souls and one very talented Salvadoran mechanic we are back on the road again. I, for one, find myself feeling a little more grateful, and hopefully a little less prone to judging every book by its cover.