Mr Bean Does The Border

We left the Andean Roads campground before ten on Wednesday morning which was Layne’s  arbitrary deadline. Google Maps tried to confuse us by reversing the blue line as we drove out of the gates but we knew by now, after three weeks residence, how to get to the freeway and after five minutes and fifteen speed bumps we were in the slow lane driving north-ish away from Buenos Aires. Our destination was the border with Uruguay  two and a half Google hours away, four GANNET2 hours of driving and stopping to let Rusty the elderly take a rest. There is a dog below in the grass.

I will post a bunch of pictures of what is generally a pretty, if unspectacular drive but I enjoyed it.  The day was cool, barely 60 degrees with bright sunshine and it felt like a spring day in Iowa, bright shades of green, a pale blue sky and puffy white clouds setting it all off. When we stopped to let Rusty rest birdsong was everywhere celebrating the end of winter. It was a great day to go for a drive.

The map shows an alternative route, a ferry across the River Plate but it has a height restriction for vehicles and our Promaster is too tall to fit. I enjoyed the drive even though the Argentine highway was as usual mostly crap, lots of potholes, crumbling cement and badly rippled asphalt, though some bits were surprisingly good. 

There was even some languid roadwork going on repairing chunks of demoralized concrete.  

Road work AI:

Of course on a day like this a picnic seemed to be in order and Claudio had just what we needed for lunch, the sausage sandwiches made by his 70 year old neighbor and they were excellent. 

Choripan (chorizo in Argentina means generic sausage)  is the national sandwich which is best served on crunchy bread. In this case we didn’t even miss having salsa or mustard and having the superb sausage dry on the bread they were that good.  

“Milei and Trump are good friends” he smiled. You will hear lots of stories of Europeans upset with the US but here we get no grief at all and indeed yesterday occupants of passing cars honked and waved and gave us the thumbs up 

Just up the road was a police checkpoint and we got stopped. Police in Buenos Aires province and Entre Ríos have terrible reputations for harassing motorists and Claudio wanted us to have our fire extinguishers and triangles ready to display or face stiff fines. We are fully equipped with emergency gear but we still expected the worst. 

The cop pulled us over but he was exceeding friendly even when I couldn’t find my drivers license. Oh god it was amateur hour among the experienced travelers aboard GANNET2.  What a shit show as I hunted for my license. 

I had to pull out the porta potty to access the safe to get to the document case where I found not only my original license which I took to Florida but also my laminated copies I use in South America and which I had forgotten to put in my wallet when I got back. That was stupid. He was very easy going and waved us on back into the road after I showed him the license.  

It is common practice among some overlanders to have laminated color copies of driver licenses to avoid giving up your original at a traffic stop and after I got back from Florida I forgot to get one out of the safe. Silly me. 

Smart me planned to get gas at the last station before the border.  Regular in Argentina is about $5:40 a gallon and when last we were in Uruguay it was $8:83 a gallon so I looked for the last gas  station before the border.

It’s less than ten miles from the border and a good place for trucks to stop for the night. 

It was a lovely spot and I’d have stopped for the night had we not had an appointment in Uruguay the next day.

Up next: crossing to Uruguay. 

That too became a shit show, not quite on the scale of a hidden driver’s license but still…

First we passed the trucks gathered waiting to do their tedious endless paperwork in the land where useless bureaucracy rules. And on the subject we also had to pay ten bucks to cross the very bumpy bridge spanning the border over the Uruguay River. 

No idea what the provocative statue was about either. 

We’ve been through the Fray Bentos crossing before but it was like our brains turned to mush. First we crossed that expensive international bridge over the mighty Uruguay River:

Uruguay and Argentina conduct border checks at the single large border post on the Uruguay side of the river. You drive up to immigration and the one officer checks you out of Argentina and into Uruguay. Then you pull forward to customs.  

The young customs inspector was smitten by the van and told Layne how he wanted to get on the road one day and as they chatted he poked around a bit but confiscated nothing. It’s weird how that happens but we had emptied our fridge and eaten our fruits and vegetables. We still had a few lemons, garlic, salami and hotdogs (for Rusty) but none excited his interest. On the other hand they immediately asked for Rusty’s $183 papers and had Layne not been on the ball and chased them down later  they’d not have given them back. They are good for sixty days and we’ll use them to get Rusty back into Argentina in a couple of weeks on our way to Paraguay and a definitive repair (!) of our still leaking coolant.

I meanwhile had to cancel our temporary import permit from Argentina.  This was where I came into my own. I left my phone in the van so I could look nothing up as CV I stood at the customs window. I also left the receipt in the van which is a vital piece of paper each agency stamps as they approve you of your vehicle.   Then you present it to the gate guard who lets you out into Uruguay at the end of the process. It’s standard operating procedure at many borders and I left the pink slip in the van. I had not noted down  my address in Uruguay to satisfy customs either. Usually we look for a hotel on Google Maps or a campground and call that our destination for customs and immigration. This time I forgot to be  prepared. We nearly forgot to collect Rusty’s papers. It was like we’d never crossed a border before and I was trotting back and forth collecting bits and pieces of paper like an inexperienced idiot. Eventually the shit show ended in more or less good order but as we drove for the gate the guard waved apologetically and walked off leaving us at the barrier. Huh? 

She came back a few minutes later after completing an interesting chat with a colleague, apologized with a smile, took our receipt with the many  stamps, and opened the barrier. Welcome to Uruguay, land of the laid back.

We had a two and a half hour drive to a park where we could free camp near Adrian’s workshop where we plan to get our house battery replaced under warranty.  Also the cabin heater has stopped blowing warm air so I want him to see what that’s about.  So here are some pictures of our drive across typical Uruguay scenery on a lovely spring afternoon:

We stopped at the first toll booth to update our pass. You have to have a transponder in Uruguay which is easy to buy at the 24 hour offices at each of the toll booths.

Each toll is $4 for a car and you can recharge your transponder online or in person.  We walked in and gave our license plate number and said we’d like to buy the 14 day unlimited pass for foreigners and five minutes later we were done with our credit card receipt in hand and our transponder instantly updated. So fast and easy unlike Argentina which requires an ID number to sell you a transponder. A ID number which we don’t have and can’t get as we’re not residents. 

More from the road through Uruguay:

It really does feel like driving the Midwest especially as main roads here are smoothly paved. 

On this road there are three official rest areas places where we could easily sleep if we needed to. They only have trash cans for facilities:

It’s a pity these simple pull outs aren’t scattered all round the country.  

I think Rusty was in Argentina below, judging by the trash: 

The Wheezer

 I should bet money against myself: stick me in an airplane and know that I will get sick. Every single time. Layne and I have talked about this and I think we’re going to try using Covid type masks on planes. They are a dreadful pain but if I can get off a commercial airliner without getting a fever and wracking cough it would be worth it.

I need to take lessons in self portraiture obviously but before I became symptomatic Rusty was hovering more closely than usual and then as I sat up at night hacking and coughing and trying to clear my blocked sinuses I could hear him switch from deep regular breaths to long drawn out sighs. Layne had earbuds in and her back turned so so it was me and Dusty suffering through the hours of darkness, oh and then at 2am she’d appear clutching Tylenol and solicitude and a nasal spray and I’d seek relief.

In the ordinary course of things old retiree gets sick is not headline material but what has me supremely pissed off is I’ve had to conceal my flight (there it is again) to Machu Picchu. I haven’t been at 12,000 feet for a year so I am no longer acclimated to the Andes, which would be bad enough but to try to tour the ruins in my condition might actually be hazardous. We discussed it at some great length and I have to admit maybes arguments were compelling. Don’t you love those idiot manly statements “It’ll be fine” when the patient is sitting up in bed barely able to catch his breath. “A mere flesh wound…”

Team Lost is, when Layne gets the upper hand Team Commonsense as well so the cancellations have been made  and I’m still browned off about it. 

But there’s good news. Rusty’s bloodwork results came back early and when the vet called I was still able to drive and blow my nose at the same time like act good multi tasker so we drove into town.

The cool young English speaking vet at Vetrix assembled the paperwork for us including Rusty’s leishmaniasis test specific to Uruguay which is the only country to require a negative test for that mysterious disease and then we took the package ten minutes away to the secondary little airport on the waterfront of Buenos Aires where there is an agriculture office that requires no appointment, the vet said. Finding parking was hell.

Parking on the yellow is prohibited so everyone does it in a city with not enough real estate to park cars on.  Layne said action truck cane by and took the car behind us but promised not to come back till after lunch to give me time to finish the paperwork dance in the airport. Thank you Argentina.  

I had my doubts we could get it done in a day but I took my $150 worth of bet papers into the SENASA (agriculture) office where they had me fill out a form with our details. 

While they processed the form I had to go to the bank which was conveniently located next door  and pay 55,000 pesos (about $36) into SENASA’s account so the clerks don’t handle money. It’s protocol in Latin America to keep payments separate to prevent corruption. There was a line.

They were travelers changing money so the line moved fast but by the time I was back in the agriculture office Rusty’s International Veterinary Certificate was ready when I presented them with the several receipts generated by me standing in line at the bank. 

What a lot of paperwork.  Rusty got a walk way home when we stopped to pick up sausage sandwiches, Argentina’s national sandwich called choripan (chorizo and pan) for lunch.

The old dog had some walk in him in the lovely industrial zone behind the airport. 

Truck and bus drivers and warehouse workers come out for lunch at these stalls set up along the street. This is not the tourist area. On the way home there is a dude by the park who sells doughnuts and bread from his van. 

She buys his round fry bread to make bruschetta and it is really quite good. 

At this stage I’m hoping I’ll be fit to drive by Wednesday at the latest when we will get on the road back to Uruguay and a replacement Victron battery. Our mechanic in Paraguay has received our coolant parts from Rock Auto so when we show up there in a couple of weeks we’ll get a new pump thermostat crossover pipe and coolant reservoir. Which invite will seal the leaks. For now, as nothing seems to be permanent. EVs look pretty good right now.