Camping Stories

Our electrical system is at last properly installed with nothing rose needed. The batteries are balanced and all is well. Interestingly Adrián discovered our defective battery had been opened, the nuts holding the top plate were loose and he found he could look inside.

Apparently the distributor had found the broken connector on the top black wire and checked to see if it could be replaced easily. Instead they sold it to me, nice people at UY Storage. The famous Timo who runs the well known workshop isn’t getting any more of my business. Unfortunately the heater he sold us has developed a fault which Adrián couldn’t fix because he didn’t want to open the sealed unit. 

The fan blows but the igniter doesn’t  ignite so it doesn’t heat up  which is annoying. He’s packaging it up to send it to the distributor. We ran it at a low temperature for days and the exhaust has carbon build up so I hope it just needs a good cleaning. And we have learned a lesson to heat it on high from time to time. 

It turns out it’s a bit of a unicorn, no one drives a gasoline work vehicle or RV in South America so this thing sat on the shelf till we showed up. UY Storage provided it to Adrián but as usual have no interest in helping to fix it, so Adrián is sending it to the importer. We shall see next week I hope, if it can be repaired or just needs a cleaning maybe. We are back to using our 110  volt space heater till then…which is better than nothing.

All of which is annoying but compared to our French neighbors it pales into insignificance. They called Adrián for help from the northernmost tip of Argentina near Iguazu Falls where their expedition truck broke down. Adrián and Maria José (above smiling as always) took a road trip to see what they could do. It was a saga apparently. 

Adrián organized a tow back to the Uruguay border which set them back US$6,000…and they traveled for two days inside their truck with the front end up in the air. When we got towed with our broken transmission in Peru we at least spent eight hours level on top of the flat bed. 

When they got to the border with Uruguay they had to drop the truck and negotiate with the Uruguayan customs  after Adrian called for a new tow truck to get them across the border and to his shop. Then the customs guy refused an entry permit to the broken French truck.  Adrián said he got mad and told the tow truck to drop the French expedition truck where it stood. The customs guy protested it would block the road. Not my problem Adrián said if you won’t let him in.  In the end they agreed to allow it in and for another US$1500 the expedition truck got towed to Adrian’s shop. 

Apparently they had engine trouble in Brazil and the shop that replaced the head in the engine did a bodge repair of the engine block which held up for 500 miles and then blew up by the side of the road. Adrián said they were pretty desperate with no one to help and no one stopping for them at the side of the road.  Now they are preparing to go back to France and figure out how to import IVECO parts to rebuild their engine.

We offered the wife a ride to the supermarket which she gratefully accepted. We have been told the American habit of immediately introducing oneself is excessively aggressive so we do it the European way which is not to mention your own name on first acquaintance. I think it’s weird but I go along as there’s no point in freaking them out. I tried speaking French to her husband when we first arrived but he just grunted and withdrew as Rusty and I walked past his rig. Layne, who doesn’t speak French said he was much friendlier when he came to meet his wife and pick up her groceries.  I was a bit oblivious as I got the bags out of GANNET2. Then there is José the Spaniard. 

According to Adrián he has made his money and is hanging out in South America managing his affairs back home on line. He gets bored and asks Adrián for jobs to do so he got set to work chopping wood.

Instead of living aboard his Mitsubishi camper he occupies the cottage we used to live in and I don’t envy him. I prefer my own bed but he seems happy enough with his little dog always kept on leash as he tends to wander.  Oddly enough Rusty has taken a dislike to the youngster and growls menacingly when the dog comes close by.  Of course it takes my elderly buddy a  while to rise to his feet so there is no real threat but I keep an eye on him.

José’s dog, name unknown, was found in the road by some vacationers who later claimed they came by looking for his owners but nobody was home. José has a tracker on his wandering dog and traced him down to a house on the outskirts of Montevideo, the capital about two hours away. Apparently he showed up on their doorstep at eleven o’clock at  night and said: “Can I have my dog back please?”

That’s life at the workshop/campground/storage facility. Saturday afternoon we are supposed to have an asado -a grill out- after which GANNET2 will take off for a drive for a few days until the heater is decoked and ready for use or declared dead…I’m hoping we’ll be back to get it installed again.  Meanwhile we’ll enjoy Uruguay as best we can.

Warranty Work

 We have a new battery installed and operating properly and I feel good about that. We have three 180amp Victron lithium batteries and one of them had a broken connector which kept giving us low voltage signals through the inverter, but now with a new connector to the battery monitor we are fully fixed (I think; I hope; I trust).

The screw on connector on the right in the photo was broken from the factory, there were no signs of abuse on it, and the problem is the cable that sends battery information to the system is hard wired into the $1600 battery and cannot be replaced without replacing the battery. Adrián says Victron has acknowledged the weakness of the system and a New Generation installation, as designated by Victron, does away with these clumsy connectors. In the photo below I show the connector attached to the battery monitor:

The right hand screw on connector was the broken one as we discovered in Paraguay but we have it fixed at last. The other issue is the cabin heater which is blowing but not igniting. Adrián contacted his supplier and it looks like we may have to wait for parts or a new heater so we will probably get a few days to tour Uruguay.

By everybody’s account spring is acting weird this year with cold weather persisting far too long. It was suddenly rainy and cold on Thursday with an overnight low of 40 degrees leading to a cold crisp but sunny Friday morning.

We try not to fall into the trap of feeling held back and delayed by these issues, and we still have to overhaul the cooling system in Paraguay where we have sent a bunch of new parts for installation. Reports from the Andes tell of mountain passes still opening and closing due to winter weather. This week the all weather main pass between Mendoza Argentina and Santiago Chile which is built with a tunnel called Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) has been closed owing to strong winds, snow and fear of avalanches. And that pass rarely closes in mid winter. 

So today Friday we will discuss repairs to the much needed cabin heater and if we have to wait for parts we will probably takeoff for a few days to meet a friend in Montevideo and check out parts of Uruguay we quite like. And tomorrow I’ll tell the story of a breakdown and a seven thousand dollar tow for a French truck with a wrecked engine.

That story is enough to keep our self pity in check.

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 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 or 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: