Progress

I am not proud but truth must out and I confess we got a slow start yesterday. Indeed we almost didn’t start but by 3:00 pm we were on the road. It was a nice spot, a park outside Nueva Helvecia,  where we spent the night in perfect silence. 

As parks go it was rather under utilized and I attribute that to it being winter but Saturday morning dawned sunny and lovely. That didn’t last long and fog rolled in and it got damp and drippy and we had to fire up our gasoline cabin heater. I love that thing.

We drank hot drinks and read improving books and did some exercises, we like The Body Project videos from Australia done with a good dose of humour, not taking themselves too seriously. Rusty made a friend and they peed copiously to seal their connection.

After lunch the cook had to take a nap, obviously, but we did get going eventually and the fog hung around a bit to make the day look gray and unappealing. I am a simple soul, I like bright sunshine and strong shadows and glittering colors.

It got brighter the further inland we drove but Uruguay remains an Iowan landscape of farms, rolling hills, and copses and contented grazing farm animals.

Not forgetting tidy unremarkable little villages.

Our first goal of the afternoon was a hot shower, long overdue at a gas station. That was incentive enough to drive.

We saw several little official rest areas like this one and as tempting as they were we needed to drive further. 

Rain is forecast for next week so the likelihood is we shall have gray skies and we need full house batteries as we shan’t be driving much as we wait for Rusty’s exit papers. 

We had a cunning plan to plug in GANNET2 to shore power for the night. 

The gas station charged us 300 pesos (US$7:50) for both of us to shower and it was divine…

…with abundant high pressure hot water in a clean modern tiled bathroom. The sink had a mirror ideal for shaving.

Such are the joys of van travel in South America when everything comes together. 

And check this out, a typical understated Uruguayan business. It’s located in a residential building with no advertising except a small unobtrusive sign. Very modest and lacking in self promotion, this dentist. 

Up next a free campsite. We’ve never paid for camping usually by street parking or using parks in towns but on this occasion Layne found an official municipal campground that charges no money and offers electrical plug ins. It sounded too good to be true but it was real. We just had to get there before dark if possible. 

With the late start we got obviously we were going to arrive after dark which we normally dislike but in Uruguay driving at night isn’t any worse than in the US. We got there at 7:15 after 45 minutes of easy night driving.

We had devised alternative plans if this too good to be true campground had been a chimera. It was real, we found a power outlet and plugged in all before the rain started.

You will notice we are plugged into 220 volts with a local cable. Pretty slick eh? 

We are 90 minutes from the vet in Paysandú and we have to be there by 9 am Monday  so we aren’t planning any early starts.  I love retirement.

The black line is the border with Argentina. Two days drive across Argentina should get us to Paraguay. Onward.

Team Lost

Some days just turn to garbage and it’s lucky we’re retired with no bosses and lots of time. We sure needed time and patience yesterday as we ended up back where we started at Adrián’s workshop. What a day.

GANNET2 is so well insulated we can stop for the night in a rest area and not be bothered by the noise of traffic, but additionally night traffic especially in Uruguay but across Latin America tends to get pretty light. Truckers here like to sleep.

We faced a four hour drive across the middle of the country to the vet close to the border with Argentina where we would start the process to get Rusty’s exit papers. We got in the groove and settled in for a boring day. If only…

The coolant level looked good which was a nice start but I want to make sure it stays at the proper level over a few days before I pronounce it fixed for sure.

I had noticed the clock on the microwave had reset itself to zero so I asked Layne if she had turned off the 110 volt inverter, the box that converts our battery voltage to household electricity for our appliances. She insisted she hadn’t so I knew something was up. We stopped and pulled out the microwave and checked the plug to make sure it hadn’t worked loose. It was fine. 

Bummer. So what was wrong? I wracked my brains as I drove. 

Then we turned on the Starlink and we found suddenly both 110 volt appliances switched off briefly in unison.  Huh?

Then the low battery voltage light came on. That was the last straw. We were 90 minutes from Adrián’s workshop so we diverted as shown below roughly with my fat finger. 

We showed up around noon and Adrián started poking around the fuse box. Then he looked into the Victron app and studied the entrails and eventually reached a conclusion.

Basically we didn’t have the muffin fan on to cool the battery box and electronics, and the heat this week went up, we’ve seen highs near 80 degrees in fact. At some point the batteries overheated and shut down the DC to DC engine charging system to protect the batteries.

The problem is that it takes human intervention to turn the engine charging back on. And I didn’t know what to look for among all the apps and numbers. I never noticed the engine want charging the house batteries.,,

Now I know how to do it so this fiasco was part of a learning curve. The solar panels couldn’t keep up under these cloudy days so our plan to drive around and test everything worked out perfectly.  I hope. This is just a partial list of the electronic boxes powering our house, lots to learn. 

Plus there’s the DC to DC charger and the solar controller and the shorepower controller as well! When power ran too low the inverter shut down. When the solar panels charged up a bit they turned back on and the engine was adding nothing. So now I feel even better about our ability to be energy independent once I get my homework sorted out. We plugged in for a couple of hours and put some energy into the batteries, then we said another goodbye to Adrián and Maria-José. We went to get dog food, milk and some other stuff at the old familiar grocery store in Colonia Valdense, like the good old days of being stationary. 

It’s like there’s a giant elastic band holding us to this place but Saturday we are determined to break free. We’ve tested our systems, learned some stuff and are ready to make tracks. Dammit. 

We decided to spend the night in a city park where we slept the night when we first came to this area to buy the cheeses they are famous for producing. We can’t buy more cheese as Argentine customs will confiscate them so we are eating what we have. We are focused on border crossing now which is excellent. New Switzerland:

Scenes from  the road yesterday.  

We’ve had a slight heatwave lately with highs over 80 degrees. Weird for winter but I like it. No idea what’s going on but being warm is enjoyable.  

Much money being spent to widen an underused rural highway where city streets everywhere in Uruguay could use some urgent repaving. 

I love the tree lined highways. 

Hunt The Veterinarian

To enter Argentina Rusty must have a certificate of good health from a vet along with an export certificate from the Department of Agriculture. We’re used to the vet circus by now but let’s admit it we screwed up by forgetting the weekend, those two days government officials don’t work.

We tried the nearest vet we found on iOverlander but weirdly enough they only do the paperwork needed to export your pet to Europe. So we had to press on. 

We’d heard the beach town of Piriápolis is pretty and our idea was to run down the coast to check it out before turning west to Argentina. The black line below is the border between the two countries. 

Layne sent a message ahead to the vet and they said they could do the certificate so we set our sights on Piriápolis an hour due east. We were told they were busy and they would call us when they were ready.

We went in after three hours and found the employees standing around talking. No the certificate wouldn’t be ready before Monday by now… faced with a weekend in Piriápolis dealing with this disorganized office we decided to head west and deal with the paperwork in Paysandú, the border town where a competent vet is listed in the iOverlander app. First we had to have lunch at Cafe Picasso:

Layne said it got excellent write ups so I left the ordering to her. The granddad showed up and brought us an unexpected fish to try.

He says he likes it as a pick-me-up when he gets tired and hangry in the evening. He doesn’t like to eat late as locals do and prefers to eat dinner early like us gringos, but work gets in the way so he turns to a plate of pickled anchovies:

It was despite the odds delicious.  The anchovy fillets are soaked in salt water twice and pickled in apple vinegar and served with garlic parsley and olive oil. No fishy taste just fresh fish lightly pickled. He was delighted we enjoyed it. 

We ordered a plate of fried calamari to share and in short got a small mountain:

We had planned to order a plate of fish in a blue cheese sauce, highly recommended but we were full. So we paid and that plate of calamari (the anchovies were in the house) cost us thirty bucks which in South America is expensive.

Yesterday was a day that sort of drifted by. We went to a supermarket to pick up some stuff forgotten the day before, sometimes it seems as though food shopping is what we are here for. Anyway after Rusty got his walk and the skies opened for a bit we set off for Paysandú six hours away across the country. It was 3:30.

A few photos of Piriápolis the beach town when we arrived:

As we left town the vet called back to say they could do the certificate but it would be ready no sooner than Monday. Why they were touring for business after brushing us off was a puzzle. Maybe the boss saw some easily plucked foreigners slipping through her fingers. We pressed on.

Rusty was being a trooper but we decided to stop after a couple of hours on the road. We probably weren’t going get the certificate before the weekend but there was no point in killing ourselves to get there early.

Good bye Piriápolis. 

And off we went  across Uruguay which doesn’t change much but as it happens there are some hills behind Piriápolis. 

And then Uruguay goes flat again. 

We passed a truck stop rest area, a paved pullout basically so we stopped. Leftover Indian food for dinner and bed.  What an inconclusive day.