All Done

 I hesitate to pronounce with certainty but I do believe we are repaired and ready to go.  Thomas clambered aboard yesterday and traced our wiring from the batteries to the inverter. 

The wire in his hand is welded into the battery and sends a signal to the blue battery monitoring box and when he wiggled it the red low voltage light came on.  It took an hour but he figured out a repair with some interested German spectators looking on.

What he discovered was that someone presumably Adrián in Uruguay broke the connector so he shrink wrapped an extension onto the broken connector and connected that to the battery monitoring box. 

Thomas removed the extension and took off the broken connector and we zip tied the connection tight now that it has no screw on connector. You have to buy a new battery to replace the wire! 

Obviously we should go back to Uruguay and demand a replacement battery but I am a realist and doubt very much I can prove anything is anybody’s fault but my own.  The connection now is unorthodox but tight. Thomas showed me how to reattach it carefully if it should come off. If it detaches the lights go out so that will be a pretty obvious fix…

While we were getting made whole by Thomas the two German women were getting their front wheel transfer box seal replaced for the second time. Brigitte had one last spare so they got to it and all was well. 

It’s just a fact of life in the road, realists happen. I think we’ve had our fair share. We went into town for some food shopping and to buy Thomas a bottle of wine.

For some reason parking was plentiful and I took Rusty for a walk until we encountered a pack of street dogs. He snarled at them and they backed off but he wasn’t having fun so we went back home.

I like Super Jeni (“yenney”) supermarket notbleadtnot least because they have a deli to go window loaded with empanadas.  I only got to look but the looking was good:

Our plan is to leave after lunch Tuesday and drive an hour to check out a campground we visited last time we were in Paraguay and have a pizza night there and then Wednesday head south Buenos Aires. Layne flies to Brazil in 12 days from there, Rusty and I camp alone  waiting for her. Trouble awaits no doubt, for two old dogs left to their own devices. 

Alpenhorn Day

 By hook or by crook we are leaving tomorrow morning. I hope. Later today Thomas the Swiss expert wants to go over our wiring for our Victron system so we go into the workshop one last time. This goddamned flashing red light hasn’t reappeared since he poked around Saturday evening and I am losing track of what is what but he’s the expert and he wants to poke around so who am I to disagree?

Layne and I were plotting our route to Buenos Aires and our general exit strategy when we heard a deep melodious note wafting across the campground Sunday afternoon. It was Wally (I had had to ask him his name directly). What I thought sounded like a euphonium was actually an alpenhorn, the communication device used before telephone lines were string between Swiss alpine villages. I faffed mightily to make the video. Then we all took turns peering at and blowing through the long Swiss wooden contraption.

I told Wally it was the most useless thing anyone had ever carried on an overland vehicle but he promised to hail me with it the next time we meet on the road then Layne said the next time I complain about crap she loads onboard she’ll remind me of Wally. His wife Connie helped put the thing to bed:

The German women Brigitte and Gertraut drive back into camp unexpectedly. They left a few days ago but after 600 kilometers (400 miles) their transmission transfer box started leaking oil again. They had been spending a few days exploring Paraguay’s eastern wilderness called the Chaco which we had hoped to explore on our way to Bolivia… maybe next year. 

When I asked them if they had anything as useless as an alpenhorn on board they produced a collection of stuffed animals reproduced on the side of their Bremach truck.

Because they have four wheel drive they took off on the notorious backroads of the Chaco and the wilderness nearly left them stuck. It had been raining and they told a hair raising story of slipping and sliding through the mud barely able to keep control. 

They also told us if talking to the German Mennonites who have settled the region based on the town of Filadelfia a German speaking municipality. For a country that appears to be so small Filadelfia is 320 paved miles away. There is one paved road through the Chaco to Bolivia but it is a commitment to drive there and we still hope to do it next year after visiting Bolivia. 

Brigitte said it was an interesting place as the Mennonites claim to have integrated over the last century into Paraguay but she noted rather tartly they own and control everything and she chatted with them in German…I can’t wait to check it out myself. Meanwhile we have to go south to meet Therese and Bernard. 

So now is my time to try to explain for the electro- mechanical nerds what the consensus is on what has been happening with the red flashing low voltage light on our Victron Multiplus 3000 watt inverter. Everyone else feel free to skip this bit, please. 

Step 1 - the installation. Everything installed and running. 

Step 2 the Battery monitoring system box fails and the red light starts flashing. Adrián tries faffing around but can’t fix it so he replaces the BMS (battery monitoring system box). 

BUT - he forgets to reset the lithium battery value (540 amps) in the inverter so it loses track of what the battery voltage should be. The light keeps flashing.  

Step 3. The German victron guy remotely resets the battery value when he discovers it hasn’t been set. The red light keeps flashing. 

Step 4 when Thomas the former Victron employee shows up he hits this secret reset button, the system is finally set up properly and the inverter resets now talking with proper values to the properly functioning BMS box. Problem solved. 

That is the scenario Chris Layne and I have come up with after much discussion. 

The belief is that once correctly set the system will subside into unnoticed proper functioning but it is damned fiddly.  Webb Chiles says it’s not simple enough but he puts to sea in an uninsulated boat with no heating barely any cooking facilities and no headroom. I have a wife. Nuff sed.

A German couple showed up late Sunday on their way to Uruguay to ship their four wheel drive camper home. He addressed me in English as I took Rusty on his evening walk. We talked about travel and constant repairs and stuff. He said in Africa they used to say mechanics repair one thing, ignore the second issue and create the third problem. It is a saying I shall adopt. Though Chris here at Pequeña Baviera is the exception. 

Fingers crossed for today.

Sunday in Paraguay

 I am losing the plot here. Our inverter fix yesterday fixed nothing.  Chris was despondent when we told him the red light was back blinking away informing us we have low voltage when our 540 amps of lithium batteries are fully charged. My suggestion was to put a piece of black tape over the light and move on. Then a new camper showed up, a large Sprinter van from Switzerland.

Chris came by and said the owner is a former Victron employee who would like to check out our system tomorrow (Sunday). Delighted we said and of course at this stage we’d let the Archbishop of Canterbury check out our system if she claimed any expertise. Thomas couldn’t wait to come by and see what’s what. 

He poked around a bit and studied our system on our app and he reset a button saying it wouldn’t fix anything but he’d like to check our batteries and wiring later on Sunday. Delighted we said  and he went away and the red light has not blinked since. Later today he’ll have a more in depth look no doubt and I shall have some more tedious electrickery to report. 

Dinner Saturday night was a grill out en famille which is French for a family gathering except we ate with…

…an Austrian, Rudi the longtime resident waiting for his girlfriend to return from Austria, Thomas and his Asian partner whose name sounds like a sneeze, possibly Snouth but neither Layne nor I were sure and we had our Swiss fire truck neighbors whose names we haven’t yet learned (above on the left).  Chris and Astrid below:

It was a very German evening which in a way made it exotic, the food was excellent as a potato salad showed up in the pot luck (Layne made her famous pesto pasta). The potatoes were sliced not cubed and marinated in a mild vinegary sauce. We also got some kind of succotash salad with feta cheese and a green salad with lots of dressing European style. Chris grilled sausages made locally by a German immigrant  and they were excellent.

One was a bratwurst type with fatty meat and the other tasted to Layne like hamburger which was odd to an American palate but good. This morning Rudi’s box van had his usual forlorn lover outside waiting for attention:

We are told his girlfriend is in Austrian attending her dying mother but we also found out she speaks only German just like him, so how they get about boggles the mind; Google Translate must get tedious. 

Rusty and I watched the campground come to life on this cool sunny Sunday morning, the sound of much road traffic, roosters and our neighbors emptying their pee bottle… the public intimacies of  life  on the road.

On the matter of not knowing their names we were told once that European overlanders find the American habit of exchanging names on contact to be rather weird so we have dialed  it back and only after a couple of days do we say oh by the way…and exchange names. Except in this case we haven’t done that yet. Which I find rather weird  but there it is. 

And that’s all we’ve got for another static Sunday morning. Let’s hope Swiss Thomas can figure something permanent out but right now I need a cup of tea and I hear stirring noises aboard GANNET2, possibly involving a kettle.

Inverter Fix

Saturday has been fix the inverter day. Our brand new Victron Multiplus Inverter converts battery power at 12 volts into 110 volts for our household appliances. Since new every time we charged our Victron batteries it flashed a red light saying low voltage. The rest of the system works fine and the inverter itself does its job but that light has been a bother.

It’s a bright sunny morning in Paraguay, a cool breeze and warm sunshine makes an ideal combination. In the distance roosters are crowing, inside the workshop Chris’ assistant is attaching our skid plate now the water coolant leak appears to be fixed. The skid plate protects the underside of the engine sbd transmission from objects in the road. 

Layne got out our laptop which we mostly use to do taxes and we plugged it in to get online with a Victron specialist in Germany. Chris our Bavarian mechanic found him online and while they talked on the phone the Victron guy was going over our system  - from his home in Germany! He checked all the parameters and found one was missing. 

He checked out our installation and  discovered  that no one had programmed our battery size into the inverter so it didn’t know what it was monitoring. So quickly and easily he found the issue  and it was not yet lunchtime. I have high hopes this problem may be solved today and Monday we may get on the road. I keep hoping the solution is found. I never learned his name but he likes to volunteer his time helping Victron customers around the world. An interesting hobby. He saved us. 

Astrid brought by a cake Friday for our anniversary and as she had heard me praising the joys of bienenstich cake (Bee Sting) she made one. It’s a famous cake in Germany and I first had it at a German campground in Ecuador in 2024. It has cream and almonds and I recommend it, not too sweet but the crunchy nuts and the soft smooth patisserie cream is luscious. Hans the owner of Sommerwind campground in Ecuador giving us route advice before we left. Nice helpful guy, married to an Ecuadoran and between them run a restaurant at the campground with a huge selection of German cakes. Highly recommended.

Astrid’s version was thicker and lusher and made an excellent mark on our anniversary.

We are sharing washing lines with our Swiss neighbors whose English is better than my German which isn’t saying much but the atmosphere is much better.

Their house is bolted firmly back on the truck frame and we have our issues solved so a barbecue planned for tonight should be a merry affair. At last.

Wedding Anniversary.

Layne kept reminding me with hints yesterday so I had no choice but to remember that 32 years ago today we got married in a friend’s expansive back yard in Santa Cruz California. As they say we have passed much water, and a good deal foreign since then. 

More importantly the dongle has arrived though at the moment Chris is fixing the clutch on his Mazda pickup which died two days ago when he and Astrid took a day off to celebrate their anniversary. They came home on a tow truck. Ha ha. 

The coolant leak seems to be fixed. For now. The rain has gone for now and we have sunshine. A departure early next week may be on the cards. We plan to celebrate today’s occasion in the metropolis of Buenos Aires. With friends. How civilized. 

Now I’d better go back to paying attention to my wife and my dog of course. 

Test Drive

 

We went for a test drive yesterday and the coolant level did not change. Chris checked underneath and saw no drops. At long last our leak may be fixed so about that I shall say nothing more in order not to jinx it.

The problem with test drives is they remind you how much you enjoy driving about. But we have one more thing to fix before we can leave to drive south to Buenos Aires. Peru now is too far away so we are meeting our friends in Argentina and not Arequipa.

Might as well take advantage of going for a drive to get a haircut.

Ten bucks and an hour of relaxing in a chair with reggae on the sound system and regional soccer on the tube. Gregorio was quite interested in our retirement journey.

Rusty was ready for a walk. 

He was quite tired when we got home as a 13 year old dog should be after a day on the town. He also got steak for lunch.

As did we. 

At a Swiss restaurant ten minutes from the campground, a bit in the boonies.  

Our place in the workshop has been taken by a Swiss converted fire truck freshly arrived from Europe. The occupants have a reputation here for being withdrawn. Chris told us their brand new fiberglass cabin has broken its anchor bolts and shifted two inches, a situation he can repair apparently. That might explain the owners’ reticence. Meanwhile we wait for a tool to change the settings in our reluctant inverter. It should be here by Friday. 

By then we expect the rain and mist and cold will have moved on and sunshine will return to Pequeña Baviera campground.