Argentina

As you can see above we crossed into Argentina over the Pilcomayo Bridge, which river is the border with Paraguay, and we achieved that milestone around 9 am Thursday.

The border crossing was fast and easy as we had read the iOverlander entry and knew to stop at the white trailer to hand in GANNET2’s Paraguayan Temporary Import Permit. Argentine Immigration logs you out of Paraguay and logs you into Argentina in one stop then vehicles Ca like ours that aren’t in the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) have to get a new import permit.

And with that, less than an hour, we were in Argentina driving south to Buenos Aires 14 hours away. 

But before we took off across the Chaco wilderness of northeast Argentina we had another problem I had had to handle the night before.

We pulled into this modern gas station around five after our last day driving Paraguay. We took the day slowly, Layne cooked Rusty’s hot dogs so customs wouldn’t confiscate them. In the event customs checked his papers and our car insurance but ignored our foods. You never can tell at borders which is why we always carry all potentially necessary papers. Our route to the gas station took us back to Caacupé past the campground, but we stopped at our favorite eatery run by a Swiss immigrant. Spetzle and stroganoff, with a creamy mushroom sauce.

Then we took on the traffic  in the capital Asunción which is among my least favorite cities to drive. 

We made it to the gas station around five pm and I was ready to stop. It had been a very warm 90 degree day and traffic in the capital on potholes streets had been tiring. That was when I discovered one of our new Victron batteries  wasn’t showing up on my Bluetooth screen. 

It felt like the last straw after all our struggles to get the new system working properly. We regrouped and put in a WhatsApp call to Thomas our Swiss victron guru. He said the battery is still working even if it’s not sending Bluetooth signals and that was a relief. After a while it came back and looked normal so that was a partial relief. 

However this minor failure was a harsh reminder that the communication cable for all the batteries hangs by a thread. Thomas said if one battery fails the whole system shuts down so we thought about that for a while knowing one of our batteries, a brand new $1600 beast, was hanging by a thread. I worked myself into some anger and fired off a note to Adrian  who installed the system. He tried to deny he installed a bad battery but in the end he promised to install a new one under warranty. I was surprised.

Rusty enjoyed sitting out in the breeze as the sun went down and looking at him all serene calmed my aggravation. I do not understand why, after installing a battery with a bad communication cable built into it, and seeing the red light come on he didn’t just say “it’s the battery cable” and put in a new battery. He kept hoping his shrink wrapped connector would work, and all he had to do was send the battery back to victron as defective. Damn him for an idiot. 

The problem with the cable is it’s built into the battery and you can’t replace it separate from the battery  but Timo Adrian’s support has steady agreed to send it back as defective. Meanwhile we struggled in the dark trying to make it work. I feel betrayed. So now the plan is go back to Uruguay and get the new battery after our friends from Florida fly out of Buenos Aires on the 20th of September. The start delay  isn’t significant for our goodbye tour of Argentina as spring is just now firing up but it sure is annoying. Anyway that’s the story and I leave you now with some pictures from the road. First Paraguay.

Next year we want to come back and stop a few days the Alte Liebe farm, green, shady, lots of grass for Rusty and a pool for us. We might even rent a cottage. 

Speed bumps, always speed bumps. 

We met a young man who saw our US license plate at the gas station, who told us of his travels. His family exports bananas from Ecuador’s port called Guayaquil, a place we never visited as it is renowned for drug related violence. The cartels export their product through the city and he said violence is getting worse so he took off on a Honda 500 five years ago and has toured all South America  and he spoke good English too. 

We traded stories about traveling the Amazon and he went to put up his tent in back of the gas station. Then in the morning we found a young couple in a Paraguay registered Chinese built truck having a breakfast of coffee and pastries on the hood. Felix and Elena:

He owns a carpentry business in Germany but he lived two years in this country though he speaks no Spanish. I’d bet he had relatives who emigrated to Paraguay but nowadays he comes back for a few months of the year to tour and then goes back to Germany to run his business and go skiing in winter. Not a bad life. 

And so we did the border and took off south from Paraguay. The Chaco wilderness that stretches across Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil. Dog (and child) transport: 

This is not exciting driving so we were all relieved to take breaks to help Rusty relax.

It looks like the Everglades to me with swampy areas :

Isolated ranches: 

The idea is to arrive at a campground just south of Buenos Aires by Saturday lunchtime so there’s lots more of this long straight driving to come. Lucky us.

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.