This time, Yazd came to our rescue as the engine cooling radiator pipes had given up. While on the road in the direction of Yazd, we noticed that the temperature gauge had gone up. As we had just come down a mountain and the weather was hot, we thought we give the car a little rest and it should be fine. After half an hour, we went on the road again, but almost immediately the gauge went up again. Checking the water, there was water in the overflow reservoir. So Saeed said: “I am going to do something dangerous”, and opened the actual radiator (not to be done when the engine is hot!) which turned out to be empty! As we had done a stop and go two times, we had been noticed and police stopped kindly to help. They offered us their bottles of water to fill up the radiator (“Don’t use your mineral water for that”, not knowing that we had filled our mineral water bottles with tap water;)), and suggested we stop at the mosque 5km further down the road to get more water and buy coolant.
We stopped at the mosque, where we bought coolant and added it together with more water to the radiator. Lots of trucks around filling their ‘ice’ reservoirs, of which I took many photos. I have become very fond of trucks and discovered so many different types!

We continued to Yazd, but were being held at a police check point for unnecessary curiousness and nosiness. What we noticed however, was that something was leaking and due to the colour of the coolant (greenish) we saw it was the radiator water which had leaked and it couldn’t have been air conditioning condensation drips. When the police finally let us go, we continued to Yazd, having a quick lunch in a Lonely Planet recommended restaurant, which turned out to be below average. Upon returning from lunch, again liquid under the car. We found a place to drive two tyres on a curb and some stones, so Saeed could go under the car and have a good look himself. This meant the bottom protection had to come off, wet patches found, a close look with torch, and discovery of what was wrong. Some rust on the pipes had given way due to coolant having an anti-corrosion content, which didn’t work to our advantage as it created a gape in the pipe! We knew we were in trouble and had to get this seen to asap. On our search to ‘sanayi’ in Yazd. Asking around is the best method, so we were directed to Mohammed, an incredibly kind man, who left everything behind and did our job. Resourceful as they are in Iran, he first had a look and welded some bits. More holes were discovered and so he suggested to get a piece of firm rubber pipe, also used for trucks, and stick that in. With two of these pieces and the day light having gone into dusk and darkness, our TLC was saved.

As the parking attendant of our previous Yazd stay had kindly given us another park to stay at, we found it on the map and headed for it. A delicious burger was waiting for us in park-e koohestan, where we had a long chat with the owner of the pizza/burger sonati restaurant. The young man who was serving was hard-working, but could not deviate from bringing us our drinks before dinner as he had to take the receipt upon delivery of food & drinks. We had a lovely evening, happy that TLC had been taken care of and we too! We sat against the pillows, out of the wind, looking onto a hill with the full moon above it, waking over the park.