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.