Eclipse Campground

Afternoon high of 73  degrees and an overnight low of 50; tell me that’s not perfect. 

Rusty and I walked down to the lake yesterday morning after a very quiet night sleeping on the streets of Villarica, though I should point out we were hardly alone. Two expedition trucks did t the night in a parking lot across the street at the cultural center…

…and two tents were set up in the park on the waterfront. Coming from the US where this sort of behavior is not tolerated Chile breathes its own sort of freedom. 

Lake Villarrica had ever appeared to be a layer of smog which seems unlikely as the main industry here is tourism but the sunrise was lovely. 

There were also a couple of vans, a German and an Argentine tag and this VW from Colombia. I often read on the travelers’ pages about concerns of those planning to drive the PanAmerican and then I see something like this. No four wheel drive, no high clearance, just a lot of ingenuity. Hats off to them, whom I never saw as they had no dog to roust them out of bed:  

We had business to attend to and we were at the doors of the Agriculture office well before opening time at 8:30 in the morning. The front desk cheek out he through the wringer asking about Rusty’s details, my details and scrutinizing his health certificate and the details of his anti parasite treatment and his chip number. He loved his vet visit as you can see. 

I shuffled documents like a croupier at the poker table, made up an Argentine address as my residence and finally promised to back Monday to pick up the 60 day border crossing certificate for my pain in the ass dog. (Love you Rusty).  If we get to French Guyana Rusty is getting a European pet passport.  

Then we went for another walk in case they checked and found something wanting we’d be close by to make corrections. 

I quite like Villarrica on the lake. It’s hectic on the tourist waterfront but much quieter away from the tourist part of town. 

And it’s full of businesses and pedestrian traffic and a feeling of purposeful business pervades the town. 

We did some shopping at Lider, the Walmart owned store in Chile and drove to our campground place of find memory from our journey south last November. 

The owners ordered a new voltage regulator for us as our old one burnt out in Chiloé Island. The new one is a bigger 2000 watt model to reduce vintage from 220 volts to US style 110 when we want to plug in to shorepower to charge our batteries. 

There’s an online delivery service here similar to Amazon called Mercado Libre and the owners have an account so they ordered the $80 voltage regulator for us. It should be here on Saturday.

On Mercado Libre it was a few dollars cheaper even than on this website. Meanwhile we have a ferry reservation for Tuesday afternoon to ride across a lake to Argentina from a place called Fuy, pronounced “Phooey.” 

Meanwhile hot showers, WiFi, deliveries and sunshine. We will co to it to muddle through.