Chore Day

I took Sunday off reading and hanging out with Rusty but Monday morning we were out of bed at 6:10 on a 55 degree morning and got busy preparing GANNET2 for the road. It was only a twenty minute trip but I enjoyed driving especially as the commute hadn’t started. 

We parked outside Renzo’s shop and after I walked Rusty, and he loves this neighborhood, we sat and watched traffic taking illegal u-turns until a motorcycle cop showed up and spoiled the fun. 

And with that traffic flowed smoothly without back ups. Then Renzo arrived and we drove in. 

The hope is he can install a flex fuel system to allow us to burn ethanol up to 85% similar to the flex fuel you find in the corn states in the US. This is required for gasoline engines in Brazil as they have a national minimum ethanol of 27 percent in gasoline up to pure ethanol. Brazil grows sugar cane to be energy independent when they combine cane alcohol with the petroleum they drill in the Atlantic Ocean. 

We hoped they would get on with it but things here move as slow as they move and we were prepared to spend the night. So at one point I took an Uber and spoke to an immigration officer about my entry stamp in my old passport now cancelled and he said just show them both to officials at the border Easy peasy.

Then we went to have lunch at our favorite fish restaurant where the perky capable server has been replaced by a dolt. The ceviche and fried fish was as good as ever but they repeatedly failed to remember our lemonade and the sauce tray never appeared. Oh well. 

I have this fantasy that as an old man I shall live in an Andean village dressed in white linen accompanied everywhere by my smelly faithfully dog. I shall be the old gringo, tolerated but misunderstood (my life’s work). I thought this house on Cruz Verde (green cross ) street might be my restored refuge. Then I remember all the buses that roar down here all day. Well, that’s another fantasy crushed. 

We paid our third visit to the tailor’s shop (sastreria).  We dropped off some broken clothes last Wednesday and paid to have the modifications done. Ready by Saturday said Mr Castillo. 

He lied. When he asked if we could be back in 90 minutes we should have lied and said we’d be right back but instead we said see you Monday. 

His buddies hang out and read the paper but Mr Castillo (below) cuts and sees and deals with customers who are a constant flow. We sat and waited this time. Look at that gorgeous sewing machine:

Eventually I took an Uber back to Rusty who was sleeping hard on the bed and didn’t even get up.

Naturally the electronic expert had not shown up at 3pm as promised so I had a chat with Renzo who called him back. Tuesday morning for sure. I said to Renzo if he doesn’t show up we’re putting the engine back together and we’re done. Fat load of good that will do but we settled down to a dusty night in the shop. 

It’s Tuesday morning and they are working on installing the flex ethanol sensor. Fingers crossed we will have a flex fuel van good to drive in Brazil where gasoline is at least a quarter ethanol. This might work. 

You never thought overlanding would be so fiddly, did you? And now Argentina has imposed health insurance requirements for visitors. Sigh. 

We have to go to Chile to do some front end maintenance, crazy I know but there it is, and we both are looking forward to making some time to camp on the beach where we have find memories.  It’s not all bad being in the road. 

San Camilo Market Arequipa

Layne took herself off to the covered market in Arequipa Sunday afternoon and brought back fruits and cooked foods. I stayed at the campground sunbathing with Rusty hence just pictures and no words. Today we are at the mechanic getting our ethanol flex fuel system installed in GANNET2 and at the vet getting Rusty’s exit papers for a run to Chile to get done front end parts for GANNET2. But for now, the market. 

Sunday In Arequipa

The miner’s strike in Peru, the best way to use Starlink, and touring southern Chile were the main subjects of conversation last night at the overlander campground in Las Mercedes.

Andres from Viña Del Mar in Chile was annoyed his Starlink gets shut down two months after he leaves Chile. It happened last year when they were touring Brazil in their motorhome and it’s going to happen this year he figured as they escape winter by driving to Colombia and the far north. Some other travelers from Spain and Argentina (names and WhatsApp numbers are recorded by Layne) were making the case for the Starlink mini which is the most popular tool for travelers. We have a big clunky Starlink 2 which we bought in Mexico and it requires setting up each time we want to use it, costs us $80 a month and which we use uninterrupted across the Americas (this post comes to you courtesy of Elon Musk’s engineers). It uses a ton of electricity but our service has been uninterrupted and we are loath to change it with all the new restrictions being talk about on new accounts. 

We brought rum and the conversation flowed in the cool night air, in Spanish which required concentration to defeat the Bacardi. Then the conversation turned to the blockades as the Spanish overlander wants to park her van in Lima while she goes home to the Canary Islands for summer. The road to Lima is blocked but ever hopeful she repeated a rumor the roads will open in two days. I said nothing but I read the papers online and at the news stands around Arequipa. 

A 13 year old girl is among 14 people injured by police in violent confrontations trying to open the PanAmerican Highway in the south. Two people have been shot to death by police. 

They don’t hold back from showing blood covered bodies on the front page.  Traffic in Arequipa is very light as the city is running out of liquid propane gas which cars use. 

The miners want the government to legalize their status, 50,000 of them working illegal mines but mining corporations don’t want the competition. At the moment the road from Arequipa to Cusco and the road to the Chilean border are open but it’s impossible to drive to Lima the capital. Some road blocks are reporting 30 miles of stalled traffic. My gauge of the status of the roads is bananas and we haven’t seen them in the supermarket for more than a week. But the Spaniards who want to reach Lima are sure the roads will open next week. The government is insisting there will be no talks until order is restored. Impasse. 

Life goes on in Arequipa though slower, as we live quite comfortably for now but aside from shortages of bananas and long wait times for Ubers we are doing fine. Layne discovered some credit card fraud because she is always online checking our banking (thank you Starlink). Someone in the Netherlands was using our card for minor purchases over the past days. One phone call sorted that out. 

Normally this street leading into downtown from the campground is packed and crossing it means taking your life into your hands. Not now. 

We went downtown to pick up our repaired clothes but we got Peru’ed. They are not ready but will be on Monday. They had better be as we are getting Rusty’s exit papers on Monday to drive to Chile, not expected and not planned but we need to do some front end work on the van and we can’t get the parts in isolated Arequipa. We hope to be in Iquique late next week. Layne remembered to buy online car insurance for GANNET2; she’s brilliant at that stuff. 

We have another month on our permit to stay in Peru but we want to get our front end checked and brought up to snuff to take on the roads in Brazil and if we leave now we can get the work done at a mechanic we know in Chile and then still have a month we can use later to cross Peru to get to Porto Velho in Brazil. 

Rice and potato soup for lunch as we stumbled around town getting stuff done.  

Layne has long wanted stickers to exchange with other overlanders so for $8 this guy designed and printed 90 of them for us. We used a watercolor a friend had made of GANNET2 for our template. 

It’s a very modern thing to have stickers instead of visiting cards which we used to exchange on our travels when we sailed to Key West from California in distant 1998. 

I noticed the paper is Chinese. Peru is developing strong trade ties with China and their new port at Chancay which we saw last year, is to be the Pacific hub of a new railroad being built across Brazil to the Atlantic Ocean. What Panama Canal? 

Would you give this man a visa to visit Brazil? Nor will they yet. I’m on my third attempt to get a photo of me accepted. They couldn’t see my shoulders, then my ears, then my head was tilted and on and on. 

There are still lots of pedestrians in Arequipa and they keep getting into my pictures of this peculiarly ugly town. 

Contrast and compare architecture: 

Here’s another attempt at a visa photo for Brazil. It was good enough for my US passport but not for them. Theoretically you get an $80 dollar electronic visa to enter Brazil for as long as your passport is valid and this caper is required for US, Canadian and Australian passport holders. The visa is processed in Miami (!) but the photo requirements are hellish. 

This is my third attempt. I surely look empty headed enough to qualify? Head straight, showing shoulders and ears, and a gormless expression…NO SMILING. 

And here is another piece of crap. Guyana a former British colony north of Brazil is the only country in South America that requires an International Driving Permit. I got one from Triple A in Miami but that has long since expired and I can’t fudge the date anymore so I found an online scam that sells you a three year permit which you can keep on your phone if anybody ever asks for it, but just to be safe I printed out the sixteen pages and stapled them together into a crude book  in case of need. 

You need some weird crap to drive around the world. I think maybe Webb Chiles is right when he says it’s easier by boat. 

Here we are all lined up at the campground. Our clunky old very functional Starlink is sitting  on the roof in the photo below. Before we leave I put it away, a job of five minutes. 

People come from Chile and drive to Cusco. What they do after  that I don’t know but probably they are waiting at 12,000 feet for the strike to end just like us at 7500 feet in a campground much closer to everything you need in a city campground. 

One bored European traveler took their four wheel drive Toyota Land Cruiser camper up the volcano on a cinder track and fell over onto their side and had to be rescued like a stuck turtle  according to a WhatsApp group which published this photo. No injuries to people or vehicle apparently. You can see Arequipa in the background. 

Back down here on Earth things continue as normal. 

Still Here

We are still parked in the Las Mercedes campground in Arequipa.  However there is good news filtering through. The trash collection strike is over with a city offer to pay the workers a one time bonus of $550, and also to purchase protective equipment for them. The newspaper was at pains to point out 728 employees are in the union but all 750 will get the bonus. Already the streets are clean which is lovely. 

But the streets are also empty, even Layne noticed how little traffic there is as supplies of fuel run low. It’s easy to cross streets that are usually bumper car traffic jams and there is very little horn honking for slowpokes. And yes, we still have no bananas at the supermarket. Arequipa is running on minimal tourism and shrinking propane gas supplies for cars as the miners keep the highway to Lima tightly closed. 

Police turned up in force in the town of Ica which is the center closest to the Nasca lines, a huge tourist attraction. 300 cops cleared the blockade which I suspect followed a complaint that tourism was drying up and people with empty planes had no one to fly over the lines in the desert. Money talks. However you still can’t drive to Lima and I heard a rumor blockades are in place in the mountains now which closes a very long slow winding Highway 3 between Cusco and Lima. You can still get decent coffee in Arequipa, happily even if you can’t get a bus out of town. 

A Chilean couple came through the campsite yesterday. They came north from their country through Bolivia and they showed me a dent caused by a protestor in Bolivia throwing a stone at them.  They are young and I suspect they tried to run a blockade to get that kind of attention, but I remain glad we could not get a visa for Bolivia. They left the campground for the Chilean border last night and have not returned so the highway to the south must be open I guess. It’s all rumor and innuendo around here. 

Renzo our mechanic has studied our eflex fuel system from the States that Layne brought in her luggage, he’s watched the video and says first thing Monday he’ll install it. That means GANNET2 will able to digest Brazil’s heavily ethanol tainted gasoline. We have dental appointments Tuesday and Wednesday so I’m hoping we can start thinking about leaving Arequipa next week.

Now we have to hope the road to Lake Titicaca is open so we can get to Puno, see the famous reed islands at last and get Rusty his exit papers for Brazil. The road out of here may be in sight though nothing in Peru is certain at the moment.