Home Alone

While Layne is away in Brazil chasing jaguars:

I’m going to be walking Rusty and reading. So I figure there will be nothing to photograph and less to write about for the next couple of weeks. More precisely we should be on the road to Uruguay to get our warranty battery replacement September 22nd. I’ll probably have some pictures from hanging out in Buenos Aires before that and I like posting my pictures here but for now I will leave the page alone rather than try to find things to say.

Driving through Luján I saw a couple of classics which may be of interest: 

There are tons of classic cars, daily drivers of yesteryear across Argentina. 

Check out the mall where the supermarket was located. It’s five miles from the campground and I might have been in Miami.

The funny part was parking a 21 foot box. I parking across three spots in an empty corner of the lot like this: 

Sure enough as I aired Rusty out on the grass up came security, a motorcycle and a car, no less. So we had to move down the vast parking lot and park in the bus and trailer area. I found some pretty good cover:

It reminded me of being back in the States. Heaven knows how we will cope after years of coping with no rules, few rules and largely  ignored rules. Plus there are no liability lawyers lurking hereabouts so if you screw up it’s on you. Mind you the Jumbo supermarket was worth the hassle. 

We picked up just a few things from the deli to keep me happy while the cook’s away. Outside the store we passed by a maté shop where you could buy Stanley brand thermoses and mugs to drink that disgusting bitter national drink of Argentina.

On the final few miles to the campground Friday night we passed a ton of people out having an end-of-week subset picnic. On the freeway shoulder. They were having a great time and they cracked me up. Check them out:

See you in a couple of weeks more or less if I can hold out that long without posting. 

Two Old Dogs In Argentina

Layne is in São (pro: San) Paulo on the coast of Brazil preparing to fly to the vast marshland called the Pantanal in the interior of the country where she will meet friends from Florida and together they will hunt jaguar in the marshes. Rusty needs me here so we will spend the next ten days coping on our own.

The campground where I decided to wait out Laynes vacation is half an hour from downtown Buenos Aires where we will rent an apartment when the three of them return from Brazil next week.

This campground costs $15 a day and offers electricity at one outlet point, a single hot shower/toilet building and room to store quite a few vehicles. The fact is this is more of a storage place at US$5 and they also rent RVs if you ever want to explore the countries in this region.

andeanroads.com

This is a lovely quiet location in an upscale neighborhood and we are parked surrounded by trees and birdsong. It’s low season for RV rentals so a couple of workers show up in the morning and leave at five. 

Evenings and weekends we are alone. Pretty nice for a man and his dog who like solitude and who found Zapparancho too busy. This is perfect.

My bathroom which is alone for one bit would be crowded for several campers. 

And the single electrical post has four outlets. Check them out, designed to take the plugs of any country and I’ve never seen that before:

Below I’m showing you my cord which has a three straight prong Uruguayan plug and in my fingers the weird angled three prong Argentine plug. The outlet would accommodate my US plug but it’s all 220 volts. 

Rusty again, just because he loves being top dog in his own garden. 

The supermarket is 30 minutes away by Uber but we’ve loaded GANNET2 with what I’ll need. If I get bored I can go to the mall which looks just like a mall in Miami. I’m set for ten days here. 

We squeezed in to plug into the electrical outlet. 

Our Promaster, a similar Promaster stored from Alberta, a locally owned Peugeot Jumper and the van on which all four are based (on the right) the Fiat Ducato from Luxembourg. The European vans are diesels but the chassis are the same. 

A German built Italian owned expedition truck. Too big for me. 

Originally tagged from Liechtensten:

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An Accidental Pilgrimage

We left the Zapp campground Friday morning and drove half an hour to find a laundry Layne had discovered online. She had sent the owner a WhatsApp message and he, Gabriel replied that we could have our clothes back the same day. Deal!

We are fans of Brazilian style do-it-yourself laundries, an opportunity to pause and watch the machines spin round but in most of Latin America someone does the work for you which is fine by me but leaves my persnickety wife annoyed at the outcome from time to time. Luján looked like it might be the answer to the traveler’s prayer. We had no idea…

Our first hint that something was up with Luján was the twin spires peeking above the rest of the town’s skyline. Meanwhile Gabriel was waiting for us outside his laundry in a rather rundown part of town. 

He offered to have the laundry done by six but Layne asked if it could be earlier and he offered four pm. We set off downtown to find a park to let Rusty lie in the sun while we did some paperwork.

I found a free park with lots of grass, some horses grazing at random and a picnic table. All free courtesy of the city, with some helpful information boards explaining climate change. In Florida if state officials mention c…. c….the governor of the free state has said they will get fired. Golly. An Argentine VFW hall: 

On our way over we passed a dude grilling something in the median. There was no parking so we stopped, facing traffic and turned on our four way flashers, as you in Latin America (except in Chile). He was selling choripan, the national sandwich.  Three dollars each for a crispy long bun with two Italian sausages in side with a vegetable salsa. If you come to Argentina you need to try the various regional variations. It’s worth it.

We stopped at the Vea supermarket which had a spacious parking lot with no height restrictions, another small victory. Rusty was keen to go for a walk. Really keen. 

We walked to the church where I let him off the leash and got busy with the camera. The Cathedral spires are 350 feet tall which is why we saw them across town. 

Luján is a city of 100,000 inhabitants founded in 1755. And thanks to the cathedral is a center of pilgrimage for Argentines who occasionally show their devotion by walking here from Buenos Aires 45 miles away. Just to be clear we drove though we do count ourselves among the six million visitors who visit each year.

The cathedral is dedicated to Our Lady of Luján, the patron saint of Argentina. It was designed they say, by a French architect Ulderico Courtois, and construction began in 1889. 

The cathedral was completed in 1937 and it created a whole new industry in the streets surrounding the church. Literature about Luján notes, a bit snippily I thought, that the old downtown merchants had to remove themselves to make way for restaurant and souvenir stores that sprang up around the cathedral.

We wandered around the square a bit did Rusty and I. In his old age Rusty likes being on a leash, I think he finds it reassuring and it encourages him to walk which is good for both of us. 

The city also boasts a few murals including one I recognized depicting the Mothers of the Disappeared. About 30,000 Argentines were murdered by the generals that governed the country in the 70s and 80s, many of them young people who were arrested tortured drugged and thrown alive from helicopters into the Atlantic  Ocean. Their mothers, those few still alive, walk in silent protest in front of the presidential palace every month. An uninterrupted protest maintained for decades. 

Theres more to see in town but we had to get to Buenos Aires as Layne is flying to Brazil today. 

If I start thinking about all the places and sights we’ve had to pass by we’d be here forever. It’s better to be glad we’ve seen what we’ve seen. I’d come back to Luján. Oh, our laundry was ready before three o’clock. And Layne was pleased with the way Gabriel washed and folded our clothes. $23 well spent.