Monday night at the beach turned into a perfect hellscape of no sleep. Around eight pm when it was quite dark there were groups of people walking and enjoying the sea air but they were replaced by clumps of young people with loud exhaust and music and so forth.
We cc put up with it for a bit but sheep was out of the question so we did what makes sense when your home is on wheels and the neighbors are out of control. The plan was to drive twenty minutes to the airport where we know of quiet parking but on our way we passed the end of the beach which appeared very quiet. We stopped. There was a large green Brazilian Sprinter van already parked and I pulled in nearby but not, I hope too close. The airport parking lot is on Highway 12 below. The black line is the border with Perú:
By now it was nearly midnight and I was totally awake, and annoyed even though I really had no reason to be frustrated. We had parked in an obviously popular place and though we were surprised by the crowds in a weeknight in winter it was an obvious place to congregate. So I sat on the sea wall reading a book on my phone. I got a book about sailing English rivers in the 1920s in the Internet archive “The Magic of the Swatchways” an evocative series of stories about inland sailing in tidal waters which took me away from my irritation. Then people started walking by and trying to engage me in conversation. I pretended not to speak Spanish but in the dbd I had to retreat morosely aboard GANNET2. One in the morning and they wouldn’t disappear! Then the kids started to go and loud cars and stereos thumped by into the night. Eventually it fell silent. At last.
Of course in the morning we were surrounded by cars and dog walkers and where we had been Monday night was empty. We left and drove to the vet we visited in May to get Rusty’s health certificate. The vet was closed and the building was emptied. I noted “permanently closed” on Google maps. So then we had to find another vet. But the back up vet was away teaching at the university we were told:
Meanwhile we went to the market to get a cheap lunch. Parking was impossible as the area was packed for blocks around. We threw up our hands and drove back to the beach for empanadas.
Bu then with nothing done we took a nap. Driving back to the city we passed a vet. They did health certificates. Rusty still weighs 24 kilos (50 pounds) which weight he has maintained at every border since Mexico.
Good enough. It took ages but it was our first success of the day. Up next shopping at Jumbo so I walked Rusty while Layne went into the store. I saw the Montana registered Promaster van of course:
If you see a Vermont or Montana tag there’s a good chance it’s a vehicle driven by a foreigner who bought it in the US to drive south. In this case they are a Spanish couple and we talked about their road ahead as they plan to be in Ushuaia by December. The van has been trouble free.
We drove out to the airport for a quiet night away from the water.
The lights of the border two miles away. Maybe Wednesday.
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