How To Keep Bad Spirits Away

Are you in process of building your own house? - How can you keep luck on your side and bad spirits away. Here is the true bolivian solution:

Visit the witch market in La Paz, you'll find it along and around Calle Santa Cruz in the center of the city. Look out for a nice size Llama fetus. - Yes, no kidding. - Negotiate the price with the witch - eh, sorry - the sales person...

Take the dried creature home with you. Make sure it sits as much in the center as possible of the concrete foundation of your future home. Once as solidly covered in cement as the feet of disobedient Mafiosi in Siciliy before exploring the Mediterranean, it will protect you and your family and any one in your house from bad sprit and guarantee you luck as long as you live in that house. 

What are you waiting for?

Who is Who on the Panamericana

The Who is Who of the Panamericana Roadies has recently been up-dated. Check it out HERE and meet a lot of cool folks.

Just A Few

...but soon it will be more. The first pictures...

...are now...

...in the Bolivia Photo Gallery.

Come back soon...

...for more.

Click HERE and...

...enjoy!

Being High And Still Taking-Off

The cabdriver that is bringing me back to Hotel Oberland from the Airport in El Alto, Bolivia proudly explains that this is not just the world's highst seat of a governement, here in La Paz but also the world's highest commercial Airport. Right here in El Alto at over 4'000 meters over sea level. I am not challenging Juan, my driver, a good man. But I am questioning if that really might be true. A couple of days later the question hits me again. Since the first flight to and from the highest Airport in the World makes it to the news. And it is not El Alto Airport, even though it's altitude of over 4'061 meters over sea level is impressive, the highest Airport in the world, that has just been opend is in Tibet, Daocheng Yang Airport at an even more impressive altitude of 4'411 meters or for my US american readers, 14'472 feet. 

But Daocheng Yang Airport was not just topping El Alto,  three other Chinese Airports are located a couple of hundred meters higher than El Alto is. But one thing El Alto is for sure, the highest commercial airport in the Americas. Neither topped by the US, who love to have the biggest, the newest, the best, neither by any Europeans who claim to be "the old world" and having discovered the rest of the planet. 

Maybe not the world's, Juan, but for sure the highest of the Americas.

More pictures for Aviation Nuts: HERE.

More pictures of Bolivia: HERE.

More information about the highest Airports of the world: HERE

Two Years Ago

Sunday night flashback. 22. September 2011, Baja California. 

Update for Nuts

The Photo Gallery "For Aviation Nuts" has just been up-dated!

Check it out and see hundreds of things that fly or once did.

Click here to take off!

Faces, Faces

Look who's looking! Have you checked out the Photo Gallery "Faces" lately? It has just been up-dated, so go and look who's looking at you: HERE!

Travellers Service Site: Webasto Airtop 2000ST Cleaning & Maintenance

Here on my german blog you will find a detailed photo report about how to disassemble, clean and reassemble your Webasto Airtop 2000ST Diesel Heater. The blog post includes links to the maintenance manual and further information about the most compact air-air Diesel heater currently available. 

Click HERE to get there!

Check it out!

Meet the Roadies! - Meet and Greet has just been up-dated. Check it out!

For the Overlanders, simple and effective tool

Yesterday I did some preventive maintenance on my truck and replaced some old fuel hoses. Since the main and the auxiliary fuel tank are full, I have used a tool that I had made myself at home which has proven extremley valuable. And I thought I share it here with the overlander community to be copied if you wish so.

This simple and easy to make tool allows you to cut off the flow of liquids anywhere where you have a rubber hose, i.e. fuel tubes, water cooling system or alike. This means you can i.e. work at the radiator or it's hoses without draining/losing all your coolant. Yesterday I used it to replace the fuel hose that was down in the chassis and is lower than the tanks, meaning I would have had a flow of fuel until I fittet the new hose. Or to be safe and not messy would have had to drain some fuel. Naturally you will need at least two of those to make it work. You can also use it to just cut some system off if you have a leak and get to the next place to get a permanent fix or replace the hose. 

On the left it is in use, on the right how the tool looks.

The metal tubes are from an old kitchen stool and a little less than a finger thick, the length is about 20 centimeters, at the fix end I just used two little flat metal piece drilled two 6.5mm wholes and used M6 screws with self locking nuts, since it needs a little play at that end. The other side is pretty much self explaining with the picture, 6.5mm whole as well and an M6 screw of sufficient length with a butterfly nut. You will open it entirely on that side, slip it over the hose and tie it with the screw to squeeze the hose.  

Caution with hoses that have a metal lining, like most brake or hydraulic lines hoses i.e. You might squeeze the metal net and it may not recover by itself. However for an emergency repair in the field or mud, still a suitable option. This also might safe you if you do not have sufficient of the liquied aboard that you need to replenish after your field repair. If you have a brake fuel leak at one wheel cylinder you can cut that one wheel of the braking system as an emergency repair in the bush and still have the other brakes working without loosing brake fluid.

Any questions? Leave me a comment! - Happy fixing!

Finally!

Finally, after almost three years on the road and a year of workshop time before that, the blue truck "business" cards are in the making.  -  Are you gonna be the first one I meet on my trip to get one?

Wanna see all the ones that got handwritten unique ones? - Click HERE to Meet And Greet the Roadies.

Keep on Trucking

Interesting who you can meet on a flight from Lima, via Santa Cruz to La Paz. All in LAN's inflight magazine. Yes! I am back. After almost 2 months of Switzerland I am back in the Andes, back at the blue truck, for the time being back at Hotel Oberland. 

The quiet times on the blue truck blog are over. - Come back soon to read more about the trip through the Americas. And even if you're not the Kennedey's, even more so actually: Welcome Aboard! 

It's not my fault...

...that I have a thing for things that smell of burnt oil, rubber, metal and make noise. More than a decade ago I have had the pleasure to join a small group of gentlemen that share this passion. And ever since, once a year we have set off to visit an event where we do not much else than this.

Fortunate enough, my short trip home to Switzerland was matching with the scheduled date for this years event, the Arosa Classic Car. A hill climb race in the mountains around Arosa. The classic cars are racing up the 7.2 Kilometers to Arosa on the regular road that is closed for the public for a few hours while the race is going on. 

I don't really think you need to be a classic car nut to find the beauty in those vehicles.

German 911 generations.

British coolness, I love the Minis, had three so far in my life.

Two-wheeled

Fourwheeled or...

...three wheeled.

Fun and concentration

Once Europe's fastest production four door car, Alfa Romeo Giulia TI Super.

When tires were still fat...

...and steering wheels huge.

Well sounding names...

...impressive edges and...

...and an illoustrious audience on there way home after the race. 

You want to see more pictures of the Arosa Classic Car 2013? Check out the newest photo gallery HERE. Or visit my german blog for another selection of pics. 

Do you want to learn more about the Arosa Classic Car or even find out how you might get yourself listed for the 2014 race? Click HERE to get to the web page of the event or HERE should you desire to follow it on facebook.  

And why is it not? Not my fault? - As you I was born, but most probably unlike you I wasn't born at home, neither at the hospital. I was born in a car. That is what I blame for my passion for fast moving things, whether cars, planes, bikes, I just can't help being fascinated by 'em.

If you want to see the Renault Ondine (a classic itself nowadays) that I was born in, simply click HERE.