Dinner With Friends

 Monday night we went into Caacupé, ten minutes away to have dinner with Sonny and Mark.  Mark, who lives at the campground in a cottage he had built drove us into town in his van so I got to be a passenger and I enjoyed the experience.

Mark waiting for his caipirinha, a sugar cane liquor drink similar to a mojito which he was inspired to order by Layne. Sonny and I had beer but we all ordered burgers as this place is famous for that and pizza. We had several drinks each and shared two orders of fries and our dinner cost us $17 total. This is not expensive Uruguay.

I have learned to like egg on my food which Layne doesn’t, but under the egg  there was a very respectable burger. It was a convivial dinner and we felt we had earned it.

Sonny is a widower from Michigan and he has decided to travel alone in his retirement. We are the same age and share the same sense of humor possibly because we are both immigrants who came to the US as students and he has earned his retirement as a state employee.

Mark traveled by motorcycle and sidecar with his dog for four years, originally from London so we were all English speakers, not something that happens often on the road in a circuit filled with German and French speakers. 

Sonny has three adult children and six grandchildren in Michigan and he’s planning to go home in a few weeks to spend time with them. He’s been on the road four years and marvels how few Americans he meets. Before he arrived at the campground his Toyota 4Runner’s alternator stopped working  so he replaced it by the side of the road because he carries a spare. Thats the sort of manual dexterity I can only dream of and he is obviously well prepared to take in Africa his next planned continent.  He lives in the tent: 

Monday was the day we placed our order with Rock Auto which should be in Miami by Wednesday:

All across Latin America middle class residents use delivery services to order stuff online in the US and they get their orders delivered to a US address which simplifies everything. Stored RVs waiting for their owners:

Then the shipping companies in Miami fill a container and forward everyone’s packages to their countries where they are distributed to the recipients. Our parts are in their way to Paraguaybox, an office in Doral near the Miami airport and every Latin American country has a similar freight forwarder. It’s a clever system that doesn’t penalize people for living outside the US and wanting to place orders online.

So we are on track to repair the wear and tear of 130,000 very hard miles, and Chris may have a handle on what’s wrong with our new Victron electrical system. We fixed our lighting problem by discovering we had accidentally turned off the master switch.  Bernie you see the Porch light, the mood light (neon colors) and the Cabin light master switches. Only the cabin light is on in the photo:

It’s easy enough to make an error but the fact it took us 18 hours to figure out why we had no cabin lighting is a measure of how stressed our electrical issues have rendered us. Not Rusty:

Chris talked with a German friend who showed up in his RV who told Chris (not me, my German is very basic) he had the same identical problem three years ago, the inverter registering low voltage when the Victron shunt shows a full charge and the suspicion is the inverter is correct and the shunt is over reading the power stored in the batteries. So on Tuesday Chris plans to actually test the power in our three Victron batteries and synchronizing them manually with the shunt and maybe thus solving the low voltage signal. It makes sense to me but I am a mere spectator. Fingers crossed. 

Stationary

Things are not going well in Paraguay, but we are all three safe and sound in a good campground.  Our attempts at modernizing GANNET2’s house electrical system are coming adrift and our solution for the persistent coolant leak have revealed a rather dangerous problem and we now have to await the arrival of a care package of spare parts from the States.

What you are looking at in these two rather obscure photos are the right front motor mount (upside down above) which Chris noticed was rather wobbly as he installed our new water pump.  Because he likes mechanical things to make sense he undid the five bolts holding it in place (the engine was already supported for the intricate water pump removal dance) and found the rubber block was about ready to separate and by doing so drop the engine toward the ground. 

It’s a Promaster specific part so we decided to create a shipping order from Rock Auto for delivery in a couple of weeks which means obviously no driving for now.

The idler pulley on the water pump has some noisy bearings so we will also get a new one of those plus it’s companion idler and a spare of each along with a new spare serpentine belt for good measure. Plus we want to order a new metal thermostat a worthwhile upgrade while we are there and a new air filter which is oddly specific to the Promaster. All good things to have.

And then last night the red low voltage light on the inverter control panel started blinking again. That was a blow. And now the light has stopped blinking as it does rather irrationally but our twelve volt lights have stopped working so we need to check that fuse  and see what’s what. 

Once we have GANNET2 rebuilt mechanically we probably will have to go back to Uruguay two days south of here and revisit the Victron problem at the importers shop. He has invited us to so do to solve our unending electrical issues. Below is Chris blowing out our air filter before we knew we would be ordering a new one: 

Luckily this is our fifth year on the road and we have learned to take setbacks in stride though it looks like I will be forced to postpone visiting Machu Picchu for another year.

For now we are comfortably parked in a pleasant campground where the owners also rescue animals in distress. I’ve never seen an ostrich drink and Layne videotaped this nandú doing just that. It looks like it’s fishing but it’s not. 

You can see GANNET2 in the background in the workshop which is obviously far more interesting …Also Webb Chiles suggested we rename GANNET2 ( which we named  after his boat) as  BOOMERANG in honor of our repetitive need to go backwards, which isn’t a bad idea. It reflects reality I suppose. As usual Team Lost isn’t doing what we thought we wanted to be doing but instead we will do some sunbathing as we read next to our snoozing dog. It’s not all bad.

Getting Stuff Done

 Thursday was productive. 

We bought four new KO2 all terrain tires for $330 each compared to $550 in Chile. We used them because they are noisy  and wear out in 25,000 miles especially on the garbage roads we’ve been driving but our front wheel drive Promaster fully loaded at 9400 pounds copes with very bad conditions using these tires. Richard was one of the best tire installers I’ve dealt with. 

He asked me what pressure I wanted the tires at and they use pounds (libras) here not bars (kg per square centimeter) as Europeans do so that was easy. He used a torque wrench to tighten the lug bolts which is the professional way and he inquired  about the status of our spare. Everything you want in a tire tech plus the tires are balanced and the pressure monitor has resumed normal operations, ie: no idiot light on the dashboard I had a suspicion Rusty fancied  his pretty daughter who came by looking for her dad and my dog kept her under close observation. 

We took off for the capital city 30 miles and ninety Google minutes away. The streets of Asuncion are a nightmare of unmarked speed bumps, potholes, lumpy asphalt, with deep open drains at intersections and uneven patching everywhere. On top of that the traffic is wildly aggressive with cars shoving and pushing like they have an urgent need to get to heaven. I just ignored them and let them come to their own understanding of how pig headed some gringo drivers can be. It was a long drive to the Ram dealer. We stopped by a fancy Chinese place for an expensive lunch, $47 for two. 

They had their own parking lot which was excellent but the food was just okay. It was a buffet of Cantonese style cuisine more popular in a country that has no love for chili peppers so we missed out on the Hunan style we prefer.

But it was Chinese food so that hit some spot or other. The Ram dealer was perfect  and I felt like we lucked out  once again. The few times we’ve been to dealers across Latin America they have been very helpful  and in this case they took our VIN number and produced a water pump for us even though they had never seen a Promaster before. Chris had called ahead to hopefully make sure they had it in stock and they had told him they had. 

Ram puts all VIN numbers into its dealer database so even though the car isn’t sold in that country they can cross reference a part that fits another car in this case the Dodge Journey which was sold in Paraguay. The parts clerk was very careful and made sure to include the required seal and I bought a gallon of Mopar coolant as well. 

The coolant pump sells in the States for $47 but in Asunción they charge $320 which wasn’t pleasant but they did have it in stock and that’s what counts…

One unfortunate thing about the Promaster is that the V6 Pentastar engine is fitted sideways in a small space so removing parts can be quite awkward and I know Chris is not looking forward to squeezing his arms in… but I’m hoping that we will be ready to drive before dinner today, Friday. The red low voltage light has not returned to our inverter so theoretically we could be in Argentina again this weekend. Asunción I don’t need to see again thanks. A lively busy city but not my cup of tea. So far Paraguay has been good to us in our mechanical distress, and for that I am grateful.

Electrical Nerdery

 If you have no interest in 12 volt electrical systems it may be better to skip today’s offering. Rusty is doing well, Layne has been overseeing a major clothes wash and the weather in Paraguay has been over 80 degrees and sunny with cooler good sleeping temperatures at night. We share the campground at Pequeña Baviera (Little Bavaria) with rescued animals not always to Rusty’s liking.

We came here for three jobs, new tires which are cheaper in Paraguay; fix our blinking red low voltage light and have a third try to fix a persistent tiny coolant leak. First up we seem to have fixed the low voltage light on the inverter  and that’s a major success. Chris at work:

The problem was the system worked perfectly, batteries balanced, charging systems doing their jobs but every time the batteries were being charged the inverter showed low voltage and occasionally shut down momentarily. The weird part was we could use the electricity with no problems. Sitting parked, cooking, running the a/c whatever, the inverter showed no problems. It made no sense.

At first it seemed like it might’ve the negative cable coming out of the dc to dc charger. Chris wasn’t convinced. He did some research and cave to the conclusion the batteries were incorrectly wired. This trial and error took all afternoon. Chris wanted to switch the location of the negative cable from the three batteries. He figured it was in the wrong place reading only one of the three in the battery bank. From here:

To here in the battery closest to the bus bar.

A test revealed no blinking red light as I started the engine and charged the batteries  as part of the test.no blinking red light. This could be the fix, re routing the negative cable from the long red line to the short one as marked by my finger tracing below:

I am not completely clear how this works but apparently this minor change gives a more accurate reading across the three batteries for the inverter. And that seems to have solved an insoluble problem. Up next a minuscule coolant leak in the engine already fixed twice so third times the charm. Maybe. 

Post Scriptum: 

One update we also ended up reducing battery charge voltage from 14.2 maximum to 14.0 maximum on the advice of a German submariner friend of Chris (!) and after 16 hours of charging by shorepower and by engine we have not seen a new red light. Yet  

Up next new tires and unhappily a new water pump which will hopefully fix the coolant leak.

Driving Paraguay

It took a long day of driving to get from Encarnación to the middle of the country 90 minutes from our destination at a campsite we have visited previously. 

We left the ruins and decided to follow Google’s alternative route through countryside that looked at least slightly interesting.

After a couple of miles our attempt at adventuring ground to a halt. The asphalt ran out. 

Once upon a time we probably would have given it a go but after tens of thousands of miles of South America and several misdirected attempts to find back roads in several muddy dusty difficult countries, Team Lost decided caution was the better part of valor and we turned around. 

So we took off across Paraguay Sunday afternoon and this is what we found in this little visited country.

A friendly man selling chipas, rings of cheesy toasted bread. It’s a cultural experience and he wished us a happy journey. He looks fierce doesn’t he? He wasn’t. 

Paraguayans are known for drinking cold maté and if you ask residents of neighboring countries where it’s drunk with hot water they think it’s barbaric but to me hot or cold maté is horrid and bitter.  Weird people drink weird stuff. I drink tea. 

Did I mention cows in the road? Paraguay is a poor country and curbside grazing is free.

Some of Paraguay Highway 8 was a wreck and some of it was freshly paved. We hit a speedbump at  speed once which shifted the load in our lockers but miraculously seemed to do no damage. That was a discouraging moment as I tried to concentrate on the road. This one was obvious: 

And we came across an accident marked in the usual way:

Don’t know who went in the ditch but they had it in hand. 

Rusty break on the road so he can stretch out in the grass and we can contemplate the meaning of life.

We took all day to drive most of the way to the campground in Caacupé and stopped at a little restaurant we saw when we were here in Independencia last summer. It looked intriguing with a sign board in Spanish and German.

Would you know it some kids told us it was closed for winter when all the Germans are back home for the season. Layne got a bit gringo complaining they had posted anything on Google so we had breakfast for dinner and slept at a gas station as usual.

Misiones to Caacupé where we hope to get new KO2 tires cheaper than we can buy them in Chile or Peru.  

Bolivia continues to have problems keeping up with demand for fuel and messages we have read from travelers say it takes a lot to fill the tank so we are postponing visiting Bolivia for now. 

“ From our perspective, the diesel situation in Bolivia is not good. We were unable to get diesel in Sucre, and it is also very scarce in Uyuni, with extremely long queues.

We were allowed to move to the front because the petrol station employee permitted it. Understandably, the other people waiting in line were not happy about that. The employee also told us that they only had enough diesel left for another one or two hours. Nobody ever seems to know exactly when the next delivery will arrive.

We managed to get through Bolivia with diesel, but we also carry several spare fuel cans and spent a lot of time waiting, discussing and negotiating. In some places, we were not allowed to fill up because we are foreigners. Overall, the situation is very chaotic.”

So we plan to bypass Bolivia on our way to winter quarters in Arequipa Peru.

A friend from Florida will be meeting us in Peru and she and Layne are scheduled to do a jungle tour in Brazil while I have finally knuckled down and got myself on a tour to Machu Picchu with 6,000 of my closest unknown friends. They let 6,000 people a day in to tour Machu Picchu and demand still outstrips availability. Just my kinds of crowds. Oh well.