While camped near Valparaiso we met two intrepid travelers we have been following online for about a year. I was first curious about “roadside picnic” when I saw them disassembling their home made roof rack to squeeze their large Dodge Sprinter van into a container in Panama.
At the turn of the century Dodge paired up with Mercedes Benz and some vans appeared in the US under the Dodge label. That marriage went sour and later Fiat bought Dodge which union created our Promaster, a Fiat van with a gasoline Jeep engine. GANNET2 is four feet shorter than Roadside Picnic’s giant Sprinter which Konstantin converted himself for his wife Julia and their two cats.
They emigrated to Seattle in 2010 from St Petersburg where they left behind family and friends for Julia to go to work at Microsoft. Since the war began in Ukraine, while they were visiting Russia, they have not been allowed to return leather be arrested. Russia needs all the conscripts it can get and these two are effectively cut off. So they went for a drive and we liked them very much in person. Below you see Team Boring, pavement loving van lifers Cora and Florian included of course at our last full membership meeting. Cora and Florian have taken off to meet their shipping deadline, Konstabtin and Julia have mechanical work to take care of in Santiago but we hope and expect to see them again in Patagonia.
Our last drive with Cora and Florian took us through wine country between Valparaiso and Santiago. It was a lovely drive through budding springtime countryside.
We did go by a rest area on the PanAmerican where Cora had discovered on iOverlander they offered free hot showers. It sounded unlikely but they did for men and women, with an attendant to keep them clean.
And after Layne had her shower Cora the nurse checked and dressed Laynes leg wound which is healing nicely at this point. I took lessons and next week I will be cleaning and dressing the hole in her leg.
The food truck was one of those cultural experiences I enjoy. Two young Venezuelan refugees were running it and they said the classic Chilean breakfast was a churrasco.
We had coffee and waited to see what she while the trucks maneuvered in the parking area.
A churrasco Italiano is a huge sandwich of grilled meat with lettuce tomato red pepper and guacamole to which I added some hot sauce.
Definitely breakfast of champions to which I added hot aji sauce.
As always a to go box came in handy.
We had a crazy idea this winery might let us spend the night in their parking lot despite a note in iOverlander saying they stopped the practice in 2019. “You never know,” my ever optimistic wife suggested.
They didn’t of course being rather taken aback by the notion of parking lot camping. But the wines tasted good.
After years of drinking Chilean wine it was rather odd for me to find myself in an actual Chilean vineyard. Layne has been to Chile before so this sensation was for me alone.
Rusty the uncomplicated dog enjoyed it.
We got a bottle of fizzy wine (not allowed to be called champagne) for my birthday and a bottle of Chardonnay to drink with our departing friends over dinner Wednesday night. They were the better wines and we tasted them and the bottles cost less than ten bucks. There weee lots of interesting looking wines on the shelves for less than five dollars each. Chile is expensive in some regards but alcohol does not appear to be one of those things and I wished we had more room aboard.
There were tears when we said goodbye the next day. I wonder if we will ever see them again.
This next place was bizarre. We went to the sakes and tasting room and they told us no tasting without an appointment.
Sometimes inscrutable Latin America knows exactly how to kill a sale. And there were no other customers.
Our campground for the night is a privately owned swimming pool complex designed for families to enjoy a few days camping. It’s a bit early in the year for outdoor swimming so they were prepping the pool and facilities for the summer rush starting in December.
Cold showers and run down facilities made the $17 a night price tag a bit high but the grass and the warm afternoon sun made it easier the bear.
And then Florian and Cora were gone.
Total engine repair in Ecuador:
