We filled the tank from close to empty before we drove to the caves earlier this week and we spent $175. At $8:25 a gallon car travel in Uruguay is a privilege and light traffic on the highways shows the effect of these prices.
Layne was looking into rental prices for places close to the water just in case we have to stop one day in the future at least for a while as Rusty is getting old, and she found places to rent between $600 and $1200 a month just as a guide, without further investigation. Certainly not US prices for prime waterfront rentals,
Our $3,000 inverter/charger has arrived and I expect it will be installed by the end of today, Friday. With this piece onboard GANNET2, our 16 mpg home will be electrically speaking, whole. There are a few more jobs we need to get done before we leave but the electronic transformation of our house is complete.
Give us a moderately sunny day and we can generate all the electricity we need and if we don’t use our Dometic air conditioner all night at 21 amps per hour we can generate more than we need to live in our tiny suburban house on wheels with electric cooking Starlink and charging our devices all day long.
I wonder how much this system will cost in a year after all the disruptions of war in the Middle East and riots in Bolivia which has immense poverty and huge lithium mines. The cost of fuel one can mitigate slightly as we don’t have to move, we aren’t commuting, the cost of rent we can ease by free camping, and so forth. The anxiety of a well fed world eager to tear itself apart to feel the pain of our ancestors a hundred years ago leaves me utterly baffled. We seem to be led by a class of human beings completely out of touch with the aspirations of the least among us, a home, a family and some predictability in our community.
Robert drove up in his Toyota Land Cruiser with a Montana tag on the front. Montana makes international travel easy with permanent registration and easy residence requirements such that when we met a camper ostensibly from Montana we assume (I know) they aren’t even Americans. Robert on the other hand lived just off Flagler Avenue years ago and built a company in Key West close by the Conch Train roundhouse. Imagine that.
He got the opportunity to buy a custom built four wheel drive camper and has been on the road for eight years based out of St Petersburg. He is ambling slowly south aiming for Buenos Aires next after he gets some work done on the camper.
He has so much in common with us as far as traveling goes it is surprising and also reaffirming. He likes to fly fish and watch birds which we don’t but he likes to eat out and study cultures as he travels which we do. I told the story of our Andean breakdown last year:
And he added his own tale of woe breaking a universal joint on a dirt track high in Peru and spending three days stuck waiting for the tow truck to arrive which itself sank in the mud and had to be dug out for hours before they could drag the Land Cruiser on the bed. Our drive downhill to Arequipa was eight hours of main road where Robert had to negotiate single lane tracks and narrow tunnels which just barely accommodated the tow truck and load. 
As you might imagine the encounter has raised the morale of Team Lost. We have had dinner together and gone shopping and sat around drinking the national cocktail of Argentina. It sounds gross but don’t knock it till you’ve tried it:
Layne has been looking at the map and has discovered an Indian Summer in Paraguay, land of 70 degree days which sounds a lot warmer than coastal Uruguay and a lot cooler than 100 degree summer days all with cheaper gasoline. We may make a stop there on our way to the Pacific Coast. It is nice to think of warmer days than 50 frigid degrees and north winds here, gray skies and a dawn that shows up barely at 8 am. I took this picture at 7:22 this morning: 
People who hate daylight saving need to spend some time in Uruguay in winter where it doesn’t get light till 8am. I find it weird. I need to ask Robert what he thinks and that should provoke a discussion which will be bound to be interesting. 
Mid 40s by night and mid 50s by day but it feels a lot colder.
Feeding the insatiable beast to survive:
Gratuitous Rusty pictures:
Happy as a clam, delighting in the cold, he prefers the cold outdoors to his bed near, but not too near, the fire.
No comments:
Post a Comment