My new life begins: overlanding!

So far, so good. 

I met my new Overlanding travel companion at the Mendoza airport on Thursday night. I'd booked into a hostel (always best to be on the safe side), so I stayed there on Thursday night, and moved into the camper on Friday. 

So far we have been getting along really well and my new travel companion (shall I just call him H?) seems like he'll be good company. He even did something yesterday that proved him to be way better than the last overlander I tried to team up with. 

Let me tell you what happened last time. 

In 2006 I was going to Iceland to meet my friends and prior to arriving I'd met online an overlander who was looking for a travel companion. We communicated online a bit and decided to meet in Iceland. If it worked out I could perhaps continue with him in other parts of the world. It lasted just 2 days. 

Iceland has a fair bit of trouble each year with visitors taking themselves where they shouldn't and then needing rescuing. So this overlander and I were driving down a road and there was a turn off onto a road with a road closed sign. This guy was adamant about going down the road regardless of the sign. Although I argued against it we headed down the road, and shortly onto it we got very, very bogged. 

Really it was fortunate that we got stuck so soon onto it as we were able to walk back to the other road (still not major) and flag down a truck to pull us out. He made no apologies, but grizzled that Iceland should have all paved roads, like his home country. 

The next day he told me that the Icelandic terrain was worthless. 

And the following day he corrected the English of the Lonely Planet guidebook, to which I was in agreement, and told me that the Lonely Planet author, its editor, and myself were all wrong but he was correct. English was his second language. 

H has already proven to be muchmore respectful company. Yesterday when we were informed not to go down a road, due to snow fall, we turned back, even though it meant that we had travelled about 50km unnecessarily, and would have to go back  those 50km and go a different way. This is a good sigh indeed. 

This morning we have a bit of car trouble, due to the cold. So we are hanging out waiting for some warmth. 

The view out the front windscreen yesterday as we headed into the Andes. We had to turn back further on as they had closed the road. 

This mornings view from the campsite. It cleared up nicely overnight.