Simplicity

We have just completed a huge overhaul of our home’s electrical systems. It started in Brasilia and finished yesterday at last in Uruguay. Our problem was apparently a defective battery system monitor which sent mixed signals to our 3,000 watt inverter which read low voltage signals at inopportune moments. So far the problem has not reappeared so as we prepare to enter Argentina at long last after several false starts we think it’s finally fixed.

One of the selling points of living on wheels is the urge to simplify, to live with less, most straightforwardly to live in 70 or 80 square feet. But is it the simple life that we have chosen? 

We aren’t nomads to save money or live simply or be rebels, but in order to travel. The other stuff is nice but living on the road is a pleasure for both of us.

Compared to many travelers we are much less goal oriented in South America. We did start with a fixed point on the horizon but   after we reached Ushuaia in Christmas 2024 we found ourselves enjoying just being in South America. As always when taking a self portrait I assume the posture of a hostage under duress:

Other travelers we met in this road have completed their South American expeditions, long since, and have shipped home to resume daily life or in many cases have taken up European journeys yes but we have settled into a long squiggly meander to nowhere and everywhere. 

We designed GANNET2 to be our home in retirement rather than to be a vehicle to reach the southernmost city or to drive the longest road in the world. To be our home we wanted a certain level of comfort which creates a level of complexity not necessarily seen in overland vehicles. 

Starting out from Florida air conditioning was a requirement, at first 110 volts but this was revealed to be inadequate and after sweating it out in the Amazon we wanted a more efficient 12volt unit. That was a big expensive change. 

We have a microwave and we use it. An air fryer…induction stove and a decent sized fridge which started out as a 110 volt unit but in Buenos Aires we also sought more energy efficiency and had it converted to 12 volts.

We made a very deliberate decision to build a suburban home on wheels. Most recently we added a gasoline heater fed by our fuel tank to heat our home, a feature as necessary as air conditioning we discovered when we lived through high altitude and high latitude journeys. For winter in Uruguay it’s a life saver. We live small but we do not live simply by the standards of most travelers. We have our own toilet too which is often preferable to suffering through public toilets or shrubbery. In some respects we blend in perfectly with the homes we park amongst on urban streets.

We don’t have hot running water or an inside shower but we are sybarites compared to the more run of the mill would- adventurers seeking goat tracks  to drive in the Andes. Hugh and Sue from British Columbia currently in Denmark:

Overlanding for good from Utah now back in the US:

A pop up camper on a Toyota Tundra for a family of four seen in Argentina:

A European couple we met one afternoon in Ecuador, naked not noted in my photos because I wasn’t too bright: 

Hubert and Agnes from Germany first crossed paths in Chile then Paraguay and latterly Brazil now home spoiling their grandchildren:

And now here we are driving in circles still marveling at things to see from the comfort of our only home, our not so simple home filled with wires and dreams and plans. Ecuador two years ago: 

Webb Chiles, a sailor who has been around the world in an 18 foot open boat and who rounded Cape Horn alone bailing his sinking boat remarked on my notions of simplicity as we struggled over the past several months to modernize our electrical systems. His sixth circumnavigation he undertook on a 24 foot sliver of a boat fully equipped with a toilet bucket and jugs of water for plumbing and rechargeable lights for an electrical circuit. Heat is from clothes and cooling from the breeze. Seen in Marathon in 2017 this is GANNET, the original after which our Promaster is named. 

Built in Santa Cruz California where I used to live (I delivered pizza in my youth to the man who designed her), a weird coincidence. This lightweight downwind racer was never designed to be a home or to sail around the world. But this one did and it managed somehow without a microwave. The great cabin of GANNET: 

Webb said it was okay to use these photos of his home afloat and I wanted to point out rapidly I would have a tough time spending months at sea aboard GANNET crossing an ocean. Webb revels in it, out of touch eating freeze dried food, reading, thinking and sleeping. Coping with actual simplicity. 

Search Webb Chiles in youtube for various videos describing this sailing life.

We have spent twice as much money on our refit as Webb spent buying GANNET in the Midwest and trucking her to saltwater years ago.  Simplicity is a relative concept. 

If it isn’t already obvious let me say it out loud: my level of simplicity would keep a peasant family living in the Andes in the highest level of luxury they could imagine. I don’t miss hauling wood for the fireplace these past two months or breathing wood smoke. I may enjoy my Walter Mitty fantasies of being a simple man but I know I’m not that. I have evolved for good or ill into a sybarite who likes his comforts. 45 years ago I traveled without even a tent sleeping under the stars. Today I am rather different. The Tropic of Cancer in Mexico 42 years apart:

Our plans for European travel? After Rusty we could buy a 90 day Eurail pass, first class of course, for a thirteen hundred bucks each and travel like our youthful back packing selves leaving the driving and the fuel costs and the parking headaches to someone else. Travelers evolve, for better or worse. My idea of old age simplicity: 

No microwaves allowed. I will suffer manfully in old age. For now we drive. 

Updates

A cold rainy day dawned Tuesday back at Adrian’s workshop and there we were again aboard GANNET2. Adrián got to work which pleased us as we are living with fear of yet more delays. Apparently Victron recommends twin positive cables from the batteries to overcome the low voltage messages from the inverter so that’s what he installed.

I have no idea what this is all about do I say bundled up fingers crossed and open for the best. 

This whole set up is grind my ability to comprehend. 

He did some updating with the laptop and peered at whatever it is one peers at. It’s all very mystical. 

Rusty takes it all in stride. 

And now we have another hassle afflicting travelers on land and at sea. Without warning Starlink has changed its terms of service for travelers. Instead of offering unlimited service within continents on a “residential roam” plan. We started it in Colombia in February 2024 until they stopped ours a month ago. We tested the new travelers plan and it is awful. I posted this on the PanAmerican Traveler’s Forum: 

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“Starlink Global Priority Roam 

We entered South America in February 2024 and as was the habit we sold our Starlink to ourselves using a fake Colombian DNI (National ID number) using the address of our Air BnB in Cartagena de las Indias. We used the residential roam plan across South America until last July.  The cost went up of course from US$60 to $115 a month this year with unlimited Giga Bytes. 

We were advised in July we had to reregister our account and our fake ID failed the test. So we decided to try the Global plan. US$150 a month for access and $100 for 50GB. It looked bogus from the start but we decided to try it and see what happened when we burned through the priority 50GB. 

The loss of priority service resulted in a service reminiscent of dial up access (remember that?). Essentially useless so we have ended the experiment. We may try a residential plan in Chile as we want to revisit remote Patagonia on both sides of the Andes. By judicious use of time in Argentina we may be able to sustain service for several months in a cell phone wilderness. 

I mention this for those wondering what happens on the global plan which is decidedly priced too high but also fails to deliver service even at that price.$650 for 500 GB is a ludicrous offering.  For us this Starlink drama is merely annoying as we don’t earn money online but for those that do, you have my sympathy for what it’s worth. Perhaps slow travel with constant address changes may work but when a country requires the use of an ID number (DNI, DIN,CPF,RUT or cédula) I don’t know what to do.  

My own observation is that this situation highlights the unreliability of Starlink not as technical innovation but as social tool so we shall see if Starlink cares about the revulsion of a few thousand travelers on land and sea let down by sudden changes in user plans. 

Furthermore I was idly thinking about GPS, a satellite service brought to the world free of charge by the US government so smoothly no one thinks about it or questions it and yet upon which we rely in so many ways known and not known. Too bad satellite internet access can’t be equally reliable. Best wishes to all and may you each find an answer to suit your needs.”

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So as far as my page goes I haven’t a clue what’s going to happen. We’re hoping Starlink wakes up to the unreasonable service offering but we are so few I doubt they will notice us travelers dropping off so we will be relying as best we can on cell phone service and campground, gas station and restaurant WiFi  which typically aren’t that reliable.

I am totally well aware of how we traveled in the good old days; I did it before the days of Google Maps, video streaming and kindle books  and I enjoy living aboard GANNET2 with the commodities of modern life and not having to stop at intersections to confirm my location on a paper map. And we go carry paper maps of all these countries. Losing Starlink is annoying but not fatal to the enterprise and we will be out of touch from time to time. In the Amazon we’d have been offline for a week at a time…and Patagonia may be the same later this year. We shall see. Now we are back on our way north toward Paraguay and I hope with no more messing about with electronics. The conversion of our van to modern electronics has taken its toll but the payoff should be greater autonomy on the road. Too bad we may no longer have Starlink.

Groundhog Day

We left the gas station where we had spent  the night and were on our way by 8:15.  Indeed we arrived at the vet before they opened.

I have to say it was the fastest vet certificate encounter we have ever had. They wrote down Rusty’s details, his date of birth and microchip number and so forth and then copied mine from my passport, we paid $65 and we were done.

They were going to submit the form to the ministry of agriculture for approval and WhatsApp our permit to us. Sure enough by four o’clock we had the form which allows Rusty to cross Mercosur (Southern Market) borders for 60 days. That should cover Rusty to go to Argentina, Paraguay Chile (but not Peru!) without any more vet visits. Not bad.

So by 9:30 we were driving north to the town of Salto where we planned to cross into Argentina as soon as we got the certificate. And then the day went wrong.

It was a cold raw wet crappy day, the sort of day a man might want to drive with a hot cup of tea and no sooner did Layne fire up the electric kettle than the inverter monitor flashed a low voltage signal (not visible in the photo). Dammit.

We agonized over what to do but Layne was right and we turned around and once again aimed for Adrián’s workshop three and a half hours south. The thing was all the other screens were showing everything working perfectly, except for the inverter bizarrely showing low battery voltage. It was our last chance to make sure everything really is okay before we leave Uruguay. We had no choice. 

Somehow we had managed to use up our tollbooth tag almost perfectly but now with a journey back into Uruguay we had to add some more money to the account. I walked into the office at the toll booth, gave him my license plate number and in seconds I had added $20 for five more tolls. In Uruguay each toll is four bucks and you can’t pay by cash or credit card plus you have to buy a toll reader which you have to pay for and replenish with a credit card, or mess around with an online account. It works very easily in practice but I prefer to add money to my account in person at any toll booth. The roadside offices are open 24 hours to solve problems. 

Each time you go through a toll it shows your balance which makes it easy to know when you need to add money to your account.

The drive south was the usual countryside, rolling fields and forests bisected by a smooth asphalt ribbon:

Roadworks; maximum wait two minutes.  

Logging the monoculture forests. Not a tree left standing.  

Back at Adrián’s shop the investigation began and he got his laptop into the inverter like a doctor with a stethoscope.

We found two young Argentines who had stopped by to have a leaky shower fixed. An interesting young couple José and Geraldine. They travel with two dogs and work remotely for a US corporation so they speak fluent English.

They gave us useful information about places to visit in northern Argentina. He also told us we are privileged travelers in his country as there are high tourist areas of Patagonia where RVs aren’t welcome. With a short visitor season the two months of summer are focused on high spending hotel visitors. And foreigners in RVs get a free pass. Nice to know! 

José also told us about a low cost electronics shop in Paraguay which caught Layne’s attention as we want to get a new larger iPad. Our old eyes are struggling to watch movies in the tiny screen of our mini iPad…good knowledge we will act on later.  

As far as the low voltage problem goes Adrián tested everything and consulted with the Victron agent he deals with  and it turns out there is a software update to take care of the sensitivity to heavy duty use. Nice to know and as soon as Adrián gets the update he will install it. Today I hope, as we are ready to go. 

When you read this I hope we will be driving for our chosen border crossing five hours north from here. Please no more hold ups.

Inching Out Of Uruguay

It is an odd position to be in, to be a nomad but to find oneself restrained from movement by the days of the week. We awoke Sunday morning still only 90 minutes from the vet with the plan to arrive 24 hours later to start the paperwork dance Monday morning.

Nature lent a hand by dropping rain on the campground which forced Layne and Rusty to stay abed, a symphony of snoring while I looked out of the back window and read, for a second time, a Tony Hillerman novel set on  the Navajo reservation, and why that appeals right now I couldn’t say; perhaps because it doesn’t rain much there and it’s raining a fair bit here. It’s an easy read and I do miss the desert southwest some days.

The campground is free and it has trash cans and power outlets (our batteries are full now) and rather dubious toilets.

However they do flush so we can empty our cassette into them which is helpful. I haven’t seen one of these in a long while: 

One more reason to be happy we have our own toilet onboard. I haven’t seen to admit this campground is a mystery, I’m sure in summer it’s a delight with a beach on the lakefront and splendid views.

It’s a tourist area and maybe a free campground is a loss leader for the town. It sure is handy for us. 

And so in the early afternoon we made our way to the outskirts of Paysandú where a gas station offers a place to spend the night just a few minutes from the vet. Slow travel indeed. 

Two Uruguayan vans showed up and we met them at the loo while they were showering and I was emptying our toilet- life in the road. He said the water was hot which is just as well as it was still cold and damp. I expressed surprise they offered us free services and they had no explanation for the largesse. I said it’s sure not like North America and we had a laugh. Uruguay can be surprising. 

What a strange place with a man living in a tent with a bicycle and two dogs who came by and said hello explaining he lived five years in New York City and Fort Myers Beach of all places. I had no idea what to say.  

So we got on the road and immediately crossed a rather impressive dam. Check it out: 

Yesterday was as you can see a gray day, not my favorite. 

The road to Paysandú was nothing surprising.Uruguay is not a surprising country. 

I couldn’t tell you the name of this village, one like so many others about 40 miles from Paysandú.

And then we arrived at the gas station where we planned to spend Sunday night. 

We asked the lady in the convenience store if was okay to stay the night (“dejar la noche”) and she said no problem. Then she added we should move round the back by the black car. 

It’ll be quieter there she said . I bought a beer Layne got a vodka lemon in a can and caused to watch Spain pulling a draw against Messi and Argentina. 

This puts us ten minutes from the vet who will prepare Rusty’s exit papers for Argentina. He’s worth it.