Day 1 on the Dempster

Today we start our drive on the Dempster highway. But first, we have a load of things we need to do, First, run some duck tape over the door seals in Rodger’s rear end. Then put some plastic over the air conditioner to stop dust coming in.

Then we just seemed to procrastinate. We needed more water, dust masks, marking pen (more on that later if we need it). Then we were told we needed to take cash. The bank would only let us get $400 out. I asked Mike to transfer some money to my wise account so I could get some too. Oh, no internet. So we went back the the campground where there was internet. Oh, no more money in our account!

So I tried transferring some from nz but it wanted to send me a text message to my nz phone. So I got Mike to put my sim in his phone. Oh, no cell coverage. We have a weekly transfer coming in on weekends, so I’ll just have to hope my credit card works until then. But they’ve been known to block me for using it abroad.

Anyway, we finally got on the road about 1.30pm. It was hot, going to be a high off 29 degrees. Not ideal for a van with no air conditioning, with all the windows shut on a dusty road.

The road started ok, a few corrugations in places. It was slow going, about 30 to 40 km/hr. On some of the smoother bits where it has just been graded, we got up to 70.

The drive is beautiful, through the tombstone mountains, then into more open areas with tundra. There was quite a bit of traffic on the road in places, mostly people going the other way, but very fast kicking up dust.

We stopped to help a young English couple from London who were having trouble with their solar panel falling off. They’d just bought their van and were having a lot of problems. They’d been stuck for an hour. Someone had given them a strap to strap it down but they didn’t know how to tighten the ratchet strap. So Mike helped them secure it. They are driving all the way to Argentina so we’ll follow their journey on instagram @ramonthepanam

After the initial apprehension of driving the Dempster, we had a great day, driving just over 200 kms. We found a lovely spot off the road to camp, overlooking a river and lakes, with mountains around us. A perfect spot and nobody else here!