Weekend Rain

 30 mile an hour wind gusts pushed GANNET2 around all Friday night. We had heat, we had a dry space to look out at the rain slashing through the trees and Rusty came in well before dark to underline how wintery it was out there. By Saturday morning the rain was sporadic and the skies lightened as if sunshine might break through.  It didn’t.

Rusty wanted a walk and I figured I had plenty of dry clothes if the heavens opened. 

Saturday morning in Uruguay in the middle of a week predicted to be wet and windy. Our battery levels went from 65% when we parked to 46% when I got up at 7:30, but with no real prospect of sunshine to charge our batteries it was time to hunt down a campsite to empty waste tanks, fill the water tank, take hot showers, plug in to electricity and thus regain RV equilibrium.

I’d really like to know where summer is at this point, if not here at least in the horizon. I was looking at pictures of Pensacola after the arrival of a category two hurricane, the usual newspaper pictures of flooding, flying roofs and falling light poles, civilization on the ropes drama. For me the worst was always the dreary truce to clean up and restore order long after the drama seekers had moved on to new shock horror scenes. I must say 105 mph winds a category two seemed like ball beer compared to what we have been seeing in years past.

I need no more hurricanes in my life, mind you there is a volcano rumbling into eruption in the back of the van as Layne hunts for a suitable ticket to fly to California. I miss the days of travel agents personally, as computerized do-it-yourself takes over our lives to reduce corporate costs…

I was talking to Jeffrey my tech guru friend in Florida who keeps this page on track when something goes wrong, and he was telling me how he harnesses artificial intelligence to do the mundane tasks while he directs the work and sets the path. While it is making him more productive he can see the struggle ahead for humans to relevant in the AI world that is coming. 

I see photographers playing with imperfection as a way to reassure viewers the photos are made by fallible humans. I listen to Layne arguing with an airline robot as she seeks a conference with a human booking agent. Rusty remains my inspiration as he snores his way past a wet windy robotic powered world.

I suggested to Layne that I’d like to stay in Uruguay while she is in California so she’s going to fly out, according to the robot, on Wednesday from Montevideo’s Carrasco airport.

I’ve been asking myself why I want to be in Uruguay and not Argentina while I’m alone. I know for a fact I don’t want to be sitting still like last time when she went to Brazil but traveling around Uruguay there is a feeling that I am in a familiar place. 

Uruguay feels normal to a visitor from North America, it’s mostly organized, tidy, middle class, with decent roads and street dogs are few and not starving and though there are areas of poverty most of southern Uruguay is quietly, shyly, well to do. 

It’s easy to drive a camper van here in the non summer months, even though campgrounds are usually closed…

There was no one around and as we waited to see if someone would show up I emptied our porta potty into their loo and then we left. We found another campground and that too was locked.

But the sun had been out a tiny bit allowing our 860 watts of solar panels to generate a few amps of electricity alongside the engine generating a few more so we had plenty to spend the night in a weird sort of open space parking lot in a nearby coastal village. Let’s spend the night we said; so we did. 

It’s the obelisk of the town of Salinas and I know nothing further about it. It’s abandoned and there’s trash lying around but I have no concerns about wild camping like this in Uruguay. In Argentina I might not be so sure and that’s makes Uruguay attractive to me at the moment. I feel like keeping it easy, stopping frequently to let Rusty roll in the grass, enjoying the empty beaches and being ready to drive north when she gets home at the end of the month. 

We found a supermarket and Layne of course was grumbling about the quality of the fruits and vegetables but they had everything she was looking for so I counted it a good score. 

Oh and there was pafkibg, always good to find when you are driving a large van.

Yup. Uruguay should be easy for the next couple of weeks, pottering hither and yon like a small sailboat nosing into coastal creeks and hidden lagoons, nothing quite so much fun as pottering about in …vans. 

Some views of Uruguay: 

The automated weigh stations keep flashing at us telling us to drive through. I really need to learn to ignore them. 

Another classic Vespa: 

A giant soccer stadium in the middle of nowhere. 

A Friend For A Reason

One of my least favorite sayings in the English language is “Everything happens for a reason…” which to my way of thinking is an expression of privilege at its most thoughtless. If you avoid a fatal car wreck because your yoga class was canceled that was blind luck in my rather austere world view, but if everything happens for a reason you’ve got some explaining to do, to a mother watching her child starve in Gaza or South Sudan or in far distant Burma. No reason I can think of justifies such misery helped along by abolishing USAid. Nevertheless on a more cheerful note there is a reason why we are stuck in Uruguay and the reason is not one more disaster falling unbidden upon Team Lost.

We are back at one of our preferred camp spots overlooking the River Plate, a wild and windy place as yet another cold front blows up the estuary off the South Atlantic Ocean.

We wandered around a bit checking out the town campsite closed for the season.

It seemed rather depressing so we took off to spend a night on the cliff tops. 

Rusty was heading to the beach when he spotted a big white dog running on the sand. He turned around, the prudent older dog. 

I didn’t see the dog until after I had spotted the solitary person on the empty winter beach, but Rusty, supposedly developing glaucoma was well ahead of me and I had my glasses on. We returned to our cliff top estate. 

The awful weather has impaired our solar panels from doing their job but a 90 minute drive and some mild solar assistance ( up to 15 amps under bright grey skies) we got the batteries up to 65 percent (300 lithium amps) to see us through the night. Layne got busy looking for flights, I walked the pest. 

Layne got a call from a friend in California, a friend from a group of defense lawyers from forty years ago. She has a remarkable ability to stay in touch, with old friends or new friends met on the road in South America. The call intimated one of their number in Santa Cruz is going through a rough patch. It’s part of the aging process, spouses losing mobility and needing nursing, the body slowing down needing more time, fears ballooning irrationally perhaps but causing real anxiety. Layne had been voted  the best friend to help and she answered the call. 

It’s a matter of finding tickets and figuring out a route and spending two weeks in California. It’s the right thing to do of course but Rusty and I have another stationary period to deal with. 

Except my plan this time is to drive around Uruguay while Layne is gone. I’m thinking about seeking out free camps and visiting campgrounds to use the facilities suffered a few days off the grid. I can’t stand the thought of two more weeks sitting still in a campground. School pickup :

Highway 1 to Montevideo. 

More rain promised all week. 

“Put your cap on” police check ahead. 

Not really, as the substation is abandoned. Cops don’t seem interested in us, even the ones at mobile check points. 

Layne is looking to get a flight Monday from Buenos Aires as flights are cheaper than from Montevideo so she’ll incorporate a ferry ride across the River Plate then take an Uber to the airport. I’ll be driving Rusty up the coast.

He takes things as they come. But I’ll tell you he is coming indoors a lot more than usual this week. The weather is too much even for him and he loves being outside. So much for Spring. 

I keep telling myself at least I’ll be driving, looking for places to park and so forth. I am ready to go north but here we are.  

The heater is working nicely and it’s such a luxury to sit in warmth. The engine is still leaking coolant but not badly and so far it’s not getting worse so we can drive which is a very good thing. It’s been a hard year since we decided to drive to the Guyanas and I’m ready for it to be over and put all these modifications and repairs  and flights behind us. But of course everything happens for a reason. Doesn’t it?