The Downside of Van Life // Hasta Alaska // S02E10

Hi, I'm Ben. Meet Alaska, the Caribbean explorer and his capito, our Chilean bug. For the next few years, this is our house. The world is our garden and you are our family. We don't know the time of day or where we'll wake up tomorrow. All we know is we're on the ride of our lives, most of the time. So join us and see what unfolds on this epic adventure. Last time on Astro Alaska, we found paradise, then got stuck there. This time, we pay for it. Benjamin, where are you right now? We're at Volkswagen Mechanics. Yeah, baby. Today's like Christmas for us. We found a very rare Volkswagen Mechanic. There's loads of beetles and buses outside. We knew the next few days were going to be full on. So before we checked into Hotel Mechanico, we set off for some fresh air and a rare hot bath. Our only plan is to improvise and it's crystal clear that I don't ever want it to end. If I had my way, I would never leave. Keep building these random memories, turning our days into melodies. But since I can't stay, I'll just keep laying back these fragments of time. Everywhere I go, mental shine. I'll just keep laying back... Capito must know that we had a day off yesterday and that we're going to the mechanics today because two minutes into the drive, the clutch cape was just snapped. It's just one thing after another, but I counted this morning 26 separate problems in the last two weeks. So now we have to drive 45 minutes in first gear, hoping that nothing stops in front of us with these hills and these speed bumps. It's not going to be easy. We've struck it lucky again. These guys are letting us do some of the work ourselves to reduce the cost. Take a look at the clutch. The first thing we've got to fix is the core clutch. We've been through a lot trying to get up that hill. As usual, when you open the engine, you find more problems than you were banking on. We didn't expect to be taking the engine down to this stage, but in a minute we're going to have to take the head off and tighten the re-do around the thread that's gone bad inside the block. What are we doing today? Today we're going to go into town to have a list of things to purchase and then move on, out of here. No more problemas. There's more than a few bloody Volkswagens in there. Proper mechanic's lunch. It's amazing to think we're here again in a Volkswagen Mechanics just 6,000 kilometers after we spent three months rebuilding the entire engine. This time everything's shaking loose. I'm not sure if it's the roads, I'm not sure if it's the rusty threads, but the engine's just falling apart. That's why it's going wrong because it's just shaking itself loose. Day three, we're putting the engine back together. I hope it works because I never want to have to do this again. This dog has chained up every day, all day. It only moves once or twice a day, about 50 meters. It chained up straight away again. It doesn't even have enough room on its chain to get away from its own faeces. It's absolutely starving. It was growling at us like crazy when we first got here and now she loves us because we're the only people that give her any attention. The first day we got here we gave it a load of food that was in a bucket, some slops that we found. It ate so quick that it threw everything back up. I've never seen a dog eat so quickly in my life. It can't even stomach its own food, it throws up everything it eats. It makes me realise how lucky Alaska's got it. They just don't give a ---- about their dogs here. You're not such a bad dog. And that's about as exciting as it gets. It's really not that much fun even having to live in a garage. Fortunately for us, a city full of Latino culture was just the other side of the gate. Be warned, you're about to hear some colourful four-letter words. The reason I started doing all this work in the first place is because I couldn't trust the mechanics. It's easy enough for a mechanic to pull the wool over your eyes anyway, never mind when they're speaking some version of Spanish which you can barely understand. The other day when we had our brakes fixed, I saw him break these pistons from the brakes. If you have a look at these, five days later we've got to take him off again and we paid for the work. Definitely an uphill struggle, pun intended. It was raining all night long which means the ground outside is going to be really muddy and we've just decided that if we stay in here all day long that all our problems will go away and we won't have to be in this car anymore. You know, I'd be thankful for Sian. She's been an absolute legend. I couldn't ask for a better company. Not only is she keeping the show rolling, passing me tools, reading stuff from the manuals, cleaning stuff, installing parts when I'm working on other stuff. But most importantly, she's keeping me safe. Honestly, I don't know what I'd do without her right now. The frustration set in. I don't know how much more of this I can take. Start a bonfire and blow this thing up. You never want a true test car, you know? Why Volkswagen? When will this be over? Day whatever in this ---- show. More and more ******* problems. We wake up in the mechanics every day at like six o'clock. Six thirty, we're already working, our hands are freezing, there's dog piss and crap all over the floor. The floor is muddy. We're cold and dirty. I've got grease in my hair. And they turn off the water at something like 4.30 in the afternoon, so half the time we can't even wash our bloody hands afterwards. We've been here for a week now. We're over it. I'm completely over it. Filthy. Everything we touch turns into another problem. Everything we try and fix turns into another problem. The only reason why we're here is because we wanted to fix the clutch. Now we've taken the whole engine apart and we're redoing the brakes a million times. The only good thing about being here is there's lots of Volkswagens. We can steal parts off. That's disgusting, Negra. I learned a lot about myself and about patience in Costa Rica through all the problems I had for almost three months. But you know, right now I'm getting frustrated and I'm getting angry and pissed off at the world. You know, it's just situations. Emotions are just your reaction to situations and we have a choice over our reactions, so you've got to remember that. Today's D-Day. Today's the day we get out of it. Yet, when we go to start it, it doesn't start. Now, we tested the battery. We had an electromechanic come down and he told us the battery was bad, so we went to town, bought one, came back on the public bus, installed it, everything's fine. All the problems are fixed. But this morning, nothing. The starter motor now is dead. Another 200 bucks. How is that possible? We've never had a problem with that before. It's like Camito just wants to die. He doesn't want to go on anymore. Ten days later, we're still in first gear. It's just not pulling in seconds. The brakes are stuck on. We're going to have to go back to the garage and get this problem sorted. We're going back to the original idea that it's the brake, no, that it's the master cylinder. I can't really do much to help, so I'm just reading about the master cylinder. We're definitely going to have to go to Mexico because the engine's not running well. I just wish all the problems would have solved now, but it's not the case. I just hope that we can get to Mexico once we're there. We can fix everything and we won't be stopping every 10 days and sleeping in a mechanic's and being dirty and filthy. We'll actually get to see some of the beautiful places these countries have to offer. Today's day 60, 7.30am. There's definitely a problem. The guy behind me, the mechanic guy is telling me, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. He just wants us to leave. He's not helping us at all. I have no idea what the problem is. We cannot leave until we fix these brakes. Alaska, we'd like to meet you. We've just spent 16 days in the mechanics. I think we've had about four showers in that time. We took the car for a test run. It's not working great, but the brakes are better, so hopefully that's just going to get us across the border to Mexico where there's a Volkswagen factory and the most perfect Volkswagen mechanics. It's going to be Volkswagen heaven and everything's going to be amazing. We'll get it done really quickly and come back to Guatemala for more adventure. This is it. We're never going to have a problem again after this. This is the last problem we're ever going to have. It's all plain sailing. Hasta Alaska. Hasta Mexico. Next time on Hasta Alaska, we do make it to Mexico, just about. I'm really nervous that we're in the wrong place to do this. But the land of the Holy Grail gives us more questions than answers and some of the toughest times in our Hasta Alaska journey.