Time for a break, whether we like it or not.

After a positively memorable week spent with our Friends Andrea & Olga in Desenzano, it was time to say goodbye and go back to #vanlife. We said our quick "see you laters"on Monday morning and took the road towards the Dolomites. On the way we decided to make a stop in the city of love Verona. I've said it in the post "Italia part 1", Aliona & I have seen so many European cities that we've grown a bit desensitized to old buildings and fancy architecture. Verona, however, delivered. 

The city center has something special, I'm not really capable to put words on it for the reason I will mention later. 

We stayed an hour-ish in the center of Verona but wished we could have stayed longer. We then headed towards the Dolomites. We drove on the highway, nothing memorable. The drive was quite long about 3h, which borders with our allowed limits. We arrived around the area in complete darkness and as we were approaching the village of Misurina, our gearbox decided to quit before we could do our final ascent towards the Tre Cime national park. It was 20h pitch black, no street lights and in the last turn, impossible to shift to 2nd gear. Tried my usual solutions, nothing does work, the gear is gone, long live the gear. My idiot stubborn brain tried to convince itself that we could finish the climb in 1st, whatever, it's only 8km. We stop on the side of the road, compose ourselves, and go again. After 200m, it's just not happening, there's (conveniently) a full fledge camper van rest area to our left. Ok, do the right thing, stop, spend the night, let the steel cool down and maybe tomorrow will be a better day. We stop in the dark, head pounding, tired, stressed, panicky, and make food and ready ourselves for a cold night (Altitude: 1,754m - Weather forecast: -1°C). We sleep (kind of, considering the relative panic of being stuck and having definitively broken our gearbox) and woke up to a fresh morning with the plan of finishing our climb. Aliona makes breakfast and we decided to have a look at where we actually are in broad daylight. So we go outside. 

We weren't prepared for such an incredible sight. Everywhere we looked was stunningly beautiful, the morning light caught by the bare stone, revealing all its details, the jagged edges rising against the blue sky. We spent a good 20 min awestruck taking pictures and videos trying to make sense of the towering giants bowing their peaks all around us, forgetting about our mechanical issues for an instant. 

Once we came back to our senses, we prepped the car for the climb, started the engine and let it warm up a bit. Time to shine. 

Or not. The 2nd gear doesn't want to go in, end of the line. 

We call the insurance explain the issue, they tell us they will send the recovery to a garage, then two options, either it can be fixed in a week in which case they will cover the hotel costs or if it cannot we have to head back to France and come back to pick up the car once it's fixed. The recovery is scheduled to arrive in another 3 hours, we decide to try to walk our feelings off. It's almost too easy to take good pictures around the lake of Misurina considering how everything around is majestically monumental and beautiful.

Anyway, after those two hours, the recovery arrived, now, for those of you who have known my experience with vehicles in the UAE, I feel like I've been seeing my vehicle taken on a recovery a little bit too frequently over the last couple of years. 

The recovery took us to the garage in Lozzo Di Cadore, 30 minutes away where the French speaking mechanic (what are the odds) confirmed the diagnostic. Gearbox has lived it's time and needs to be fixed or changed. Unfortunately, it's not that easy to find a 16yo gearbox for the weakest engine that was ever made on the Master. By the end of the day, he had not managed to find anything so he advised us to wait until the next day where he would have confirmation that the part was available and they could fix it. We spent a cold and pretty dreadful night on the parking of the garage grinding our teeth with expectation...

The next day, by 15h, we had confirmation that it could be done but it would cost and it would take 10+ days. 

So here we are. We are forced to take a 10+ day hiatus until we can get our SVOT back with a new transmission.

Until then we will be in France around Le Puy planning our trip down under.