A Short Drive

 Playa Kiyú, Uruguay

We awoke to a cold wet drizzly gray Saturday morning in Uruguay so all three of us promptly put our heads down to get a few more minutes refreshing sleep.   I don’t know how 14 year old Rusty does it but he goes all night quite comfortably without peeing, twelve hours easily, he must have a bladder of steel so if it’s cold out he curls up next to me and starts snoring as I lie in bed wondering if Lady Blakeney will ever figure out that her husband Lord Percy is actually not a dandy but the dreaded Scarlet Pimpernel, savior of the cream of French society threatened by Madame La Guillotine.

Back to reality of a Saturday morning in cold wet Colonia Valdense, the French travelers blocked the communal toilet so Adrián has been forced to act and called in the builder (and his son) to get an estimate on rebuilding a bigger and better drain pipe.

Meanwhile he’s had to bow to reality and installed a waste basket for toilet paper which is normal across South America where drains can’t cope with toilet paper debris. The only country south of the Rio Grande where you flush toilet paper is Suriname. Go figure.

Rusty excluded from lunch in a house full of cats. Saturday lunch was at two in the afternoon. 

José the Spanish businessman with the small dog is in the GAP shirt and the French couple  sit next  to  him.  Grilled beef, roasted root vegetables, a Spanish potato omelette confusingly called a tortilla in Spain…

The French lady was a patissier in her former life where she owned a pastry shop in the Savoie region of France near the Italian border. She spoke wistfully of her creations and the mountains and the winter snow which she will look forward to seeing in November when they go home. She produced some superb lemon pies for us:

She is also expecting their first child. I’m guessing travel may no longer be a priority. 

I was ready for a nap but we had a date two hours away Sunday so it made sense to get on the road and make some inroads. Driving away on the open road is always a pleasure. 

Uruguay has little traffic, no hills to speak off, an orderly tidy unpretentious country you never hear about as there is no drama here, no corruption, the peso has been pegged at 40 to the dollar as long as anyone can remember. 

Education is free, as is healthcare, gasoline is $9 a gallon so driving is an expensive pastime, nothing happens, motivation is low in this backwater and energy is not wasted on being speedy or efficient. 

For me it is a pleasant break traveling South America but I think it might be too laid back for me to live here permanently. 

It is becoming a popular place to retire to, as it’s easy to qualify for residence and you get ten years tax free if you settle here. In an uncertain world Uruguay is far off the path of drug dealers or intercontinental ballistic missiles. 

The beach had chosen for the nights in iOverlander, the travelers’ app. It looked promising.

If it didn’t work out there were gas stations nearby for back up places to sleep.  We had a place to aim for.

There was a large clearing and we pulled to one side to park for the night. Of three cars there before dark all had left by sunset.

The River Plate looking south toward invisible Argentina.  

Rusty got into it and sniffed the whole place out.

Snake warning. Don’t panic. No one has died of snakebite in Uruguay since 1986 which seemed reassuring. This is a popular spot in summer apparently. 

A possibly seasonal pizza shack: 

“I love N Y C” I think. The beach is down a steep escarpment slippery after rain. 

Memories of youth: 

We ran our space heater off the batteries which was enough to stay warm till we went to bed.  

Total darkness; total silence. On the road again.

Camping Stories

Our electrical system is at last properly installed with nothing else  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.