Let me tell you a little story about this car of ours. As I mentioned before, this Land Rover arrived from Japan with a blown head gasket. It was in the shop for 2 weeks.

When we finally got the car back from the shop we wanted to go on a camping trip to the Khama Rhino Sanctuary for the long Labor Day weekend. We were all very excited to get out of the city and see a bit of the country side. After we drove for about 100km I began to notice that the tachometer and the speedometer were acting erratically. At first I thought we might have a short in a wire somewhere, but it became apparent that the the entire electrical system was shutting down. I realized that the alternator was going out and we needed to head for home quick. I shut off everything electrical that I could in the car, and started heading back to Gabs' as quickly as I could. We got within about 60 km of home when the juice finally completely drained from the battery and the car stalled. I got a jump from a nice guy who pulled off to help, but that only took us a couple of kilometers before it died again. We were in the middle of no where.

Thankfully we were able to get a cell phone signal from where we were. After making a few calls, we got the number of a tow-truck that would come out and get us. We sat on the side of the road for 4 hours waiting, but the truck finally arrived and loaded up the car on to a trailer. There wasn't enough room in the beat up old tow-truck for all of us, so Dillon and I, and one of the tow-truck guys sat in the Land Rover on the trailer for the trip back home. The trip home was slow going, and we were afraid that the tow-truck was going to need a tow-truck of its own as it slowly strained and sputtered all the way back home.

The kids were upset about not getting to go camping so we set up a tent in the back yard and roasted some marshmallows over the barbecue.

After searching all of the auto parts shops on Gabs' I couldn't find an alternator for this Land Rover, which seems a bit ridiculous because this is a very popular vehicle here. I went to the Land Rover dealership and they could get me one in a couple of days, but they wanted almost 9000 Pula (over $1200 USD) for it! I had a good laugh about that with the parts guy at the dealership, who I had met a few times before when dealing with my head gasket problems. He told me I should go to South Africa to get one cheaper.

I decided just to order a new one from the States for about $180. So now we are just waiting for the mail. It's been 2 weeks now and we will be lucky if we see it by the middle of next week.

This ends chapter one of what I am sure will be a thick novel on the never ending problems we are going to have with this vehicle.