Orbit Completed

 Webb Chiles the noted writer (new book coming out November 14th - Gannet 6 - on Kindle) is also a traveler and he gave me grief because I did not include a photo of the buried hand at Punta del Este so I scurried to the internet to repair the error. Someone was proud of their ride to the beachfront spot and posted it and I thank Google for it to make up for my slackness. Behold the hand: 

Joking aside Webb inadvertently opened a line of thought provoked by my recent solo two weeks driving Uruguay. It has come to feel as though what started as a journey to South America  has become merely a ramble around South America usually with a camera in tow. My Lumix GX9 with my favorite travel zoom.  The photos are for me (and you) not Instagram which tends to mangle them or demand I make a video which I don’t like. So I do as I please and am grateful I don’t need to beg for money online. 

Layne has returned from California and has set about emptying several suitcases of essential supplies from Trader Joe's and elsewhere, making life aboard a bit crowded. 

I retreated outdoors to test my new folding stool which is surprisingly comfortable and I am slowly learning how to deploy it as rapidly as the instructions claim it can be done. 

Two weeks alone with Rusty took me back to basics, as we explored this small underrated country by camper-van. I paid for one night at a formal campground as I recall, otherwise we free camped in one other of Uruguay’s many parks or in roadside rest areas or on the slivers of wilderness found here and there. This below is a Fiat Strada pick up, a vehicle fascinating to Bruce who has not seen them before but are commonly seen in Mexico and points south. 

The solo drive was not about finding Instagram worthy pictures or notching up tourist attractions and that realization only dawned on me towards the end of the two weeks when I found myself noticing how much fun I had had accomplishing  nothing.  I was like Ratty in The Wind in the Willows, doing  the equivalent of messing about in a boat and thoroughly enjoying it. In this Swiss Paradise HOA the streets are named for Swiss cities. Bern the federal capital the street outside the campground: 

Summer is coming which is the three month window of opportunity to explore Patagonia again so the southern wilderness  calls but my idea in the coming year is to try to recapture the mindfulness of short hops, slow travel and long pauses. I hope I can succeed. Ramble is the order of the day. 

This vehicle really is a weird one. Theo a German emigré to New Zealand is making a new life in Uruguay and he and his wife travel in this origami camper built by Mercedes Benz called a Unimog. 

It’s an interesting machine but too much military off road style for me. It’s like a tree house to climb into with a top speed of fifty miles per hour and off road capability I’d never use. The folding box in the back is clever but it wouldn’t make a home for me. I like the wood and permanence of our home aboard GANNET2. 

Rusty makes his home where the shade is:

Today’s my 69th birthday and like lots of old people I feel 25 inside and slightly puzzled where the time has gone. Next June this page will be twenty years old and that will I think be real a mark of the passage of time. More rain is in the forecast for today. What a drag.