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.
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