Waiting

 I like living in a van. I miss not being aboard GANNET2. I have four rooms at my disposal plus a bathroom with a hot shower and a toilet which can cope with toilet paper, which in South America is not normal. And yet I miss living cramped in a small space which requires me to empty my own toilet. I am coming to think I must have a Mongolian yak herder in my not too distant ancestry.

I’m guessing she takes a shower about as often as I do. I hear other people living in vans complain about something they call “decision fatigue” and they use the term to describe the aggravation of finding somewhere to park to sleep each night. After five years of living in a van I feel no such fatigue, indeed now I am in a cottage awaiting GANNET2’s electrical modernization, I positively miss the nightly decision.

I am old enough and experienced enough in my life to know I will wake up one day and decide I’ve had enough and it will be time try something new, most likely a rest home at this stage, but for now I live in a van and I like it. 

Rusty by likes home life and our first full day in here on Tuesday he did t most of the day on his bed snoring, catching up on rest his nomad life denies him. Wednesday night we had a massive thunder and lightning storm which freaked him out which I haven’t seen in a while as he seems to find GANNET2 reassuring in those conditions where in the house he paced around and panted ignoring my efforts to calm him. None of us got any sleep.

Before the dismantling of our electrical system began we drove into New Switzerland to buy food and have lunch which included a Swiss fondue of course which I only remembered to photograph as we reached the dregs of the pot.

The Swiss traditions are expressed in cheese making but the locals are pure Uruguayans.  The language is long since lost unlike some German communities we have seen in Brazil. 

We got some smelly cheeses which can be hard to find in Latin America, land of bland white cheese. 

Other than that we sit and wait for parts to arrive. The idea is that after this rebuild we hope we will have a home suitable for more years of living with power to sustain our electric home.  A couple more years in South America then home to see what a mess you have made of things in our absence. All with  modern self sustaining electrical set up I hope. Fingers crossed indeed we will be testing it in a couple of weeks wild camping Uruguay  land of empty beaches and shy little national parks.