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. 

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.