Alone At Andean Roads

 Layne spent ten days in southern Brazil’s Pantanal Jungle with photos already reproduced on this page of her sightings of wild animals. Rusty and I stayed at the campground a half hour out of Buenos Aires doing nothing much. 

I glued the fridge door closed, a license plate collector came by and the starting battery died. Other than that it was a quiet-ish week in the campground.

I’m an idiot and forgot to write his name down but we chatted for a while after he introduced himself. The funny thing was I’d already found his Instagram page and knew what he was doing, collecting photos of license plates.

Then I went to start the engine after a week stationary and there wasn’t enough energy to do more than light up the dashboard. That was unexpected. In our original installation I could start the engine using the house batteries by pressing a button installed by Custom Coach Creations but that clever little aide was cut out when we got the new charging system to replace the second alternator. (Note to self: we need to buy a jumper power pack now). The battery is the same size as those used by Andean Roads in Sprinter rental vans. I discovered that after I showed them an online photo: 

…so I figured it would be easy to get a new one. Mine was three years old and was ready to be replaced obviously. That happened on Thursday and by Tuesday there was no sign of the promised replacement so I had a bit of a gringo moment (“in the US a battery gets changed in half an hour in the Auto Zone parking lot..,”) but they called a different supplier and in one hour a two man crew showed up to do the job for $200 which was cheaper than my original replacement US battery.

Anyway the alternator is charging as it should  so we are assuming it was just excessive hard work and old age that did for our 2023 battery. And this whole van has driven 135,000 hard miles sheafs fully laden since we took delivery in June 2020.  Our shake up cruise to Michigan that year is a very fond memory still.

But I’m temporizing as I face the explanation of how I spent my time also gluing the fridge closed.  A long time ago when I was getting used to van life I swung the fridge door and unaccountably cracked the lowest door shelf, the most useful one that holds the big bottles, milk wine water and that sort of stuff. So we couldn’t find a replacement, and we tried and fell back on glue.After the Amazon debacle which wrecked our second alternator and filled the van with heat and red dust I found the shelf was a bit wobbly  so I got out the waterproof JB weld stick and smeared putty on the affected area.

Much to my surprise the repair, as ugly as it was, worked, and didn’t I feel manly as Layne relies on that shelf…then I had the idea as I mooched around the campground to make some improvements. What could improve the crack repair? Why a dose of superglue of course! Brilliant! What could possibly go wrong? 

Allow me to say first that my ministrations worked as the shelf seems secure. However the superglue got all over my fingers which stuck together and needed urgent attention, so without giving the glue fine to dry I closed the door. After I disentangled my fingers I found the fridge was glued completely shut. That caused some panic  and I sat there wondering how I was going to unfuck the situation before Laybegot back. I was not feeling at all manly. So I struggled fearing awful breakage but the foot would not yield. Finally I resorted to Google who advised using a solvent life WD 40 to clean up the glue. Oddly enough that did it bit it was fearsome hour and a half of worst case scenarios. And I broke nothing in the whole cursed operation. I amaze myself. 

This time tomorrow I should be in Miami for 24 hours as replacing the batteries in our elderly iPhone 12 minis has apparently screwed up the SIM cards and the Apple Store in Buenos Aires said they can’t transfer our Verizon phone account to a new phone so me, the man who hates flying and is the nominal Verizon account holder is taking the red eye to Miami tonight and coming back Wednesday. I am instructed to get Saran Wrap and poppadums and I shall get some Yorkshire Gold tea  in addition to two new fully functioning iPhones. Next week after I get back I fly to Peru to see Machu Picchu so my dislike of flying will be surely tested.

Walking Buenos Aires

I find when traveling that my perception of places changes on return visits. The first time we went to Puerto Rico we did not like the place at all. We braved a second visit and something changed, us no doubt not the island and we enjoyed our second visit a great deal. A third visit, a stop over en route to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico felt pleasantly familiar.

I wondered if, on our second visit Argentina’s vast capital city might let us down but I find I still like it more than any other large city we’ve visited in South America. 

Officially three million people live in this city founded in 1536 but 17 million live in the whole metropolitan area of the capital and its residents known as “porteños” act like big city residents anywhere, all hustle, no eye contact, social impatience. Yet the city is beautiful, clean, and in the wealthier center safe to walk day or night we find, with a massive police presence promised by the government to cleanup a city plagued by a history of street crime.

It’s a vibrant city, packed with cars and lacking parking so we left GANNET2 at the campground half an hour away where US$5 a day to park our home safely seems like a bargain. Cabs run on meters and Uber is everywhere, so we are not going to figure out the copious and complex bus system. 

The town has a multitude of statues, unmarked many of them and some even with street names attributed to them.  How did I know the statue was a person call Alvear? 

Layne showed me a new trick with Google lens:

There are parks everywhere too including the United Nations park with the extraordinary Floralis Generica sculpture that Rusty and I admired.

It put me in mind of the Chicago Bean but this thing opens and closes with daylight and is illuminated at night. 

I looked it up the old fashioned way and got a delightfully clunky translation from the Spanish. 

It is said there are more dogs per capita in Argentina than in any country in the world and I can believe it, yet the sidewalks are clean you may be surprised to know. I am not alone in walking Rusty with a plastic bag…

These curious benches look like they are stuffed cloth seats but they are moulded cement which sounds uncomfortable but you would be surprised. 

The city is full of life, stores everywhere not yet replaced by delivery though online Mercado Libre is available. The city thrives with small business commerce and people doing things. The first thing we did was go to the vet to get Rusty his exit papers for Uruguay where we have to go next to replace a battery under warranty. Uruguay requires a blood test for leishmaniasis some obscure disease that only Uruguay worries about. The result will take ten days to arrive the vet told us in her fluent English.

Rusty took the needle as unfussed as ever, and we were not surprised by the $120 charge to get his papers together though a two week wait did seem excessive. In Brazil the vet did an instant test but shortly after we got that the Uruguayans changed the rules requiring the more laborious test. Oh well.

Old age has slowed Rusty down and his walks these days last fifteen or twenty minutes, a block or two from the Airbnb building’s front door. When he’s ready he walks right back to it because he still knows exactly what he wants. The walk is his time as long or as short as he wants. 

We park him in the  apartment and leave him snoring on his favorite rug which gives us time to go out and explore the city. In this case Layne was missing her Jewish roots so we tried an Argentine bagel. It was a bit too bready but the sandwiches were good enough.  

We also wanted to get new batteries for our elderly iPhone 12 mini’s. We can’t buy new phones as the technicians at the store told us they couldn’t guarantee we could get our Verizon service on a new Argentine phone. So new batteries it was then.

The only inconvenience was we had to spend four hours without our phones and before you get snotty about the good old days remember we were at 1899 Santa Fe Avenue and our apartment was at 734 Avenida Del Libertador and the bagel place was as I recalled two blocks right three blocks left from the Apple Store. 

If you don’t believe me how disorienting it is to be without your phone and it’s applications, try it next time you are in an unfamiliar city. 

Google Translate - gone. Uber - gone. Maps? Forget that. Your books? Nope. And so forth. I did have my camera (a Panasonic GX9 with a 24-64mm lens) which if I fidget with the controls can give me the time. But it is useless for mapping. 

After we got our phones back we decided some museum time might be in order and we took an Uber to the Museo de Bellas Artes not sure what to expect. It’s free with a $4 “donation” payment if you don’t have the balls to press no on the credit card machine. We’re tourists so acting like impoverished students or elderly locals seemed churlish.

It was a surprisingly busy place but it’s open till seven thirty at night which seems civilized to allow workers a chance to check out the place. Balzac by Rodin:

What surprised us was how European most of the collection seemed to be. More Rodin:

Gloomy and fearsome Goya donated by two men in 1958. Good friends probably. 

Penitents above had war below. Life was much harsher back then I guess. 

The impression I got was that a hundred and fight years ago when Argentina was a leading economic powerhouse a lot of wealthy locals must have made grand tours through Europe and come back with some treasures, as you did in those days. Then they donated them to the public. It’s an astonishing collection but we rather failed to find the local art. 

12th century sculpture of you can believe it: 

And we got some Argentine contributions before we had to go home. A slave sculpted in 1882 in I think Brazil where slavery persisted longer than other places: 

Poverty in Argentina:

This one had a QR code, “Without bread or work.”  

The walk home seemed as crowded as the museum. 

You may have heard the Muslim mayor of  New York made a stir by putting out trash cans. That cold hat in Latin America. “We pick up between 7pm and 9pm. Neither before nor after.” 

Then we stopped for some expensive fruit. Argentina is no longer the cheap country but once was. A small bag of quality fruit cost $30.

And this stuff is never heard of was translated by Google to “summer squash:”

And himself was ready for his third walk of the day. 

Thursday in Buenos Aires.