Brazil’s Pantanal Jaguars

Porto Jofre is in Brazil’s Pantanal whence Layne sent me these photos which I thought you might enjoy. Rusty and I are well and plan to spend this next week in Buenos Aires when Layne and our friends from Florida get back here on Wednesday. 

Home Alone

While Layne is away in Brazil chasing jaguars:

I’m going to be walking Rusty and reading. So I figure there will be nothing to photograph and less to write about for the next couple of weeks. More precisely we should be on the road to Uruguay to get our warranty battery replacement September 22nd. I’ll probably have some pictures from hanging out in Buenos Aires before that and I do like posting my pictures here but for now I will leave the page alone rather than try to find things to say.

Driving through Luján I saw a couple of classics which may be of interest: 

There are tons of classic cars, daily drivers of yesteryear across Argentina. 

Check out the mall where the supermarket was located. It’s five miles from the campground and I might have been in Miami.

The funny part was parking a 21 foot box. I found parking across three spots in an empty corner of the lot like this: 

Sure enough as I aired Rusty out on the grass up came security, a motorcycle and a car, no less. So we had to move down the vast parking lot and park in the bus and trailer area. I found some pretty good cover:

It reminded me of being back in the States. Heaven knows how we will cope after years of living with no rules, few rules and largely  ignored rules. Plus there are no liability lawyers lurking hereabouts so if you screw up it’s on you. Mind you the Jumbo supermarket was worth the hassle of pretending we were in suburban Florida. 

We picked up just a few things from the deli to keep me happy while the cook’s away. Outside the store we passed by a maté shop where you could ok buy Stanley brand thermoses and mugs to drink that disgusting bitter national drink of Argentina.

On the final few miles to the campground Friday night we passed a ton of people out having an end-of-week roadside picnic: on the freeway shoulder no less. They were having a great time and they cracked me up. Check them out:

See you in a couple of weeks more or less if I can hold out that long without posting. 

Two Old Dogs In Argentina

Layne is in São (pro: San) Paulo on the coast of Brazil preparing to fly to the vast marshland called the Pantanal in the interior of the country where she will meet friends from Florida and together they will hunt jaguar in the marshes. Rusty needs me here so we will spend the next ten days coping on our own.

The campground where I decided to wait out Laynes vacation is half an hour from downtown Buenos Aires where we will rent an apartment when the three of them return from Brazil next week.

This campground costs $15 a day and offers electricity at one outlet point, a single hot shower/toilet building and room to store quite a few vehicles. The fact is this is more of a storage place at US$5 and they also rent RVs if you ever want to explore the countries in this region.

andeanroads.com

This is a lovely quiet location in an upscale neighborhood and we are parked surrounded by trees and birdsong. It’s low season for RV rentals so a couple of workers show up in the morning and leave at five. 

Evenings and weekends we are alone. Pretty nice for a man and his dog who like solitude and who found Zapparancho too busy. This is perfect.

My bathroom which is alone for one bit would be crowded for several campers. 

And the single electrical post has four outlets. Check them out, designed to take the plugs of any country and I’ve never seen that before:

Below I’m showing you my cord which has a three straight prong Uruguayan plug and in my fingers the weird angled three prong Argentine plug. The outlet would accommodate my US plug but it’s all 220 volts. 

Rusty again, just because he loves being top dog in his own garden. 

The supermarket is 30 minutes away by Uber but we’ve loaded GANNET2 with what I’ll need. If I get bored I can go to the mall which looks just like a mall in Miami. I’m set for ten days here. 

We squeezed in to plug into the electrical outlet. 

Our Promaster, a similar Promaster stored from Alberta, a locally owned Peugeot Jumper and the van on which all four are based (on the right) the Fiat Ducato from Luxembourg. The European vans are diesels but the chassis are the same. 

A German built Italian owned expedition truck. Too big for me. 

Originally tagged from Liechtensten:

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