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.