Craft Market

When Layne first heard about the market scheduled  to held at a nearby farm, La Vigna, she shrugged and figured we would be long gone by then. As it happened we were still right here on that crisp sunny Saturday morning that was June 20th the last day of Fall.

We had no idea what to expect as the farm (“Granja” or gran-HA in Spanish), is a cheese factory with a tasting room on normal days. It’s a pretty spot and I imagine it’s quite the summer destination just 15 minutes from the River Plate beach as well:

This was not a normal day. 

Set up around the dining table were a bunch of stalls selling local products. 

Chivito (little goat) sandwiches are the national dish in Uruguay, similar to a Key West Cuban sandwich only they normally don’t feature actual goat. 

These did, with bacon ham provolone cheese tomato lettuce and egg, sometimes fried in this case boiled.  

We took these to go with pastries for dessert from the lady next door:

Layne had the caramel swirl on the left while I like cooked fruit and had the apple (“manzana”) pie on the right. The tiramisu in the middle didn’t appeal for  some reason. For $2:50 each we should have splurged.  

Then it was a case of wandering and checking stuff out.

Cheese, and yes we got some. The red one was a mild goat cheese which I usually don’t like, covered in paprika. We also got a cheddar- like cheese streaked with red wine, the full bodied Tannat popular in Uruguay.  

Mushrooms, one of my favorite foods.

Layne made a risotto with these and it was perfect. 

And so forth. 

Uruguayans are shy and act a bit standoffish unlike Argentinians across the river who engage with foreigners without problem. One vendor sidled up and excused herself to ask how us Americans came to hear of this event and did we live in Uruguay. That’s a question we get asked a lot and this area only 45 minutes by car from a big expatriate center in Colonia del Sacramento. 

Oh snd don’t forget the beer. It was too early to start pulling draft counts but we took a four pack home.

A couple of Belgian lagers, a porter and a weird but interesting barley wine. Uruguay is very civilized.

Still Not Going

Updates: Rusty is fine, weak in the hind legs but perky, alert, eating and enjoying life.

GANNET2 still has a tiny leak and is scheduled to spend the day at Emiliano’s shop getting a proctological exam. I’m glad to see an in-depth inspection of our 130,000 mile cooling system as I’d rather do it here than on the road rather than somewhere desolate and desolation which sort of place is in our plans when we leave serene little Uruguay. 

We went into town yesterday, Rusty refused to join us voluntarily, and filled up with gas, and boy howdy, prices have gone up again. This pump shows 17.3 gallons for $152.

Let me spare you the math…divide 6100 pesos by 40 ( the exchange rate) and divide  65.3 liters by 3.78 (liters to the gallon) and you will get $8:83 per gallon. As Layne put it “worse than Europe.”  No wonder there’s so little traffic on the roads. Luckily Uruguay is so small.

These prices make electric cars a good alternative and the Chinese JAC, Chery and BYD brands are everywhere  and they aren’t expensive at least by our standards. Housing is surprisingly affordable from the perspective of a US visitor. You can rent a nice apartment with full appliances and two bedrooms for a thousand bucks a month in a nice neighborhood, often with views for some upper middle class living. Liquor is cheap weirdly enough though grocery shopping is not but food quality is high. Meats are tender and delicious, from grass fed animals with no industrialization. Egg yolks are a deep rich orange…How Uruguayans cope I’m not sure but for us it’s quite bearable.

We haven’t eaten out but three times in seven weeks as restaurants are not cheap. Many don’t even open for lunch to allow staff to have a day job and the costs are prohibitive even for relatively inexpensive eateries. In Peru we can have a cheap lunch for less than five bucks each and it’s delicious though not fancy. Here lunch will likely be a forty dollar affair and the cooking may well be mediocre  so Layne prefers to cook.

We haven’t put our new van electrical system to the test but the removal of the second alternator has been excellent. The engine runs quietly as there are no more squealing belts and we still get 50 amps charging. The fridge is on all the time with the new Argentine 12 volt motor and the short rides and limited sunshine we get on our solar panels parked under  the trees seems to be enough to keep up with the electrical demand. The new gasoline cabin heater is strong enough to warm the van in ten minutes on the coldest nights (we’ve tested that as crossing the Andes in winter is in our plans). Because our air fryer is 110 volts we have to use it aboard GANNET2 and when Layne goes out to cook on the coldest nights even she is happy with the heat output.

It’s plumbed to the main gas tank but fuel consumption is minimal and it doesn’t use much electricity either.  Long may it last. Photo below crossing a river in Brazil’s Amazon jungle last September, a period of heat and excessive humidity unlike Uruguay in winter.

A French couple showed up in a huge expedition  truck, hoping Adrián could fix their propane gas regulator problem that had defied mechanics everywhere as they tried to solve the issue. Adrián fixed it in ten minutes.

Adrián said whoever installed a new  South American regulator in the gas line forgot to remove the European regulator and between the two of them they blocked the flow of gas. I shocked the French by greeting them in their own language when they arrived but by the time we got back from shopping they had left. Oh well, life in the road. And if you think a giant expedition truck is desirable look at what they had to do to get in:

I used to drive semis for a living in California  but I’d hate to do it for recreation in places like this. A lot of times people looking to buy travel vehicles for overlanding never consider height restrictions. At 8’9” (2.75 meters) I feel like we’re too tall but a full sized truck would be a huge pain in the ass. 

Pork chops and eggplant for dinner on a freezing cold night by the fire listening to Rusty snore. We can get through this stationary life. 

Leaks And Fixes

I have regained my zen after a difficult weekend casting around for a sensible way forward. Rusty is doing fine so let’s get that out of the way but I was twisting and turning wondering what to do. The dilemma is not easy to explain but I’ll try.

Above you see GANNET2 parked for the night on West Summerland Key just twenty minutes from home in 2021 as we practiced camping in our retirement vehicle. Last time I was in the Keys the people in power had blocked off access for vehicles on the waterfront so I am quite fond of that wild camp memory.

I have to go a long way back in my archive to find photos of GANNET2 at home in the Keys  and I will confess I’ve been feeling a bit homesick. It’s an odd feeling for me as I rarely suffer from the malady on the road not least because home has often been a nebulous concept for me, raised by a family that didn’t want me and struggling to figure out where I’d like to live. Key West solved that one for me and this weekend Layne spoke with four friends from Florida and it hit me how much I wanted to be home and see people. Thanksgiving 2020 practicing wild camping in Osceola National Forest Florida:

For a while here in Uruguay we had the company of a solo American overlander Robert who left to go to Buenos Aires. He came round for dinner, we talked as his electrical system got an upgrade from Adrián and we noticed his absence after he left.

As Layne put we had a good time just being around someone who yes, shared our values, but who also had the same background and cultural markers. After he left we shared the workshop/campground with some very unpleasant European travelers who were bossy and inconsiderate. They drove Adrián mad but he had to bottle it as they were clients. We bonded a bit more as he vented to me about them. Adrián and Maria- Jose and their rescue cats:

We also met a nice guy Juan, an English speaking retired businessman from Panama struggling with family obligations and a desire to drive the continent. Like me he wanted to replicate the motorcycle adventures of his youth but unlike me he has a wife who is not enthusiastic about RV life. He was off to meet his wife at the airport. 

Exchanging phone numbers on the universal WhatsApp communication method in Latin America. It’s web based and you use your phone number to make free calls so everyone uses it. 

Juan’s van below, which he bought in Europe and took home to Panama, a Fiat Ducato the diesel powered van on which the Promaster is based.   

Then there has been Adrián’s rather odd behavior. For some time we had a couple of jobs we wanted to get done, after he had installed the massive electrical overhaul but he would never get round to doing them. So we waited. And waited. And then Rusty got sick and I was in despair. And then Rusty miraculously recovered and I wanted the jobs done. It was always tomorrow, “mañana” the Mexican joke when tomorrow never comes.

Rusty loves living in a house but we do have to travel. However one of the jobs was fixing a small, tiny, fluid leak from the engine cooling system. I’d noticed a tendency for the fluid level to drop below minimum which it never normally does. We could drive GANNET2 but every so often I had to add coolant, which I carry because it’s particular (OAT - organic acid technology- if that matters to you, available from Jeep dealers everywhere). I knew there was a problem and I wanted Adrián to take a look because I trust his mechanical instincts.

For some reason he kept putting it off. In these situations I have a terrible tendency to personalize things. So I went into a funk with the “why me?” routine.  Finally Layne and I decided we’d pack up drive to Montevideo and look for a mechanic. I felt like Adrián was holding us hostage and I was losing my mind. I was bottling up some anger inside. Finally yesterday I said to Layne I was going to have it out with Adrián. However before I lost my head I realized what was going on.  Adrián is lonely. It’s not me as usual in these situations, it’s him. These two met on a dating app and have been together eleven years after he retired from the Argentine Air Force.  

Maria-Jose’s mother has her birthday next weekend and she has left for a couple of weeks with her family 400 miles away in Argentina. I got the crazy idea he wanted to keep us here by not finishing up GANNET2 and before you accuse me of being a paranoid nincompoop wait and see what happened next. I called over to Adrián yesterday and told him I needed his help. He was directing the builders constructing his new rental unit and new campground bathroom block for campers:

I explained to him that I needed my van to be running right and I’m stressed by the mysterious coolant leak. I also came out and said out loud the thing that had been bothering me and I added that we wanted to stay two more weeks until Maria- Jose got back because we didn’t want to see him alone all that time. We’d be there if he needed help or anything. Suddenly GANNET2 got fixed.

Adrián couldn’t find the leak but he called in his buddy Emiliano a full time auto mechanic and sure enough a tiny purge valve, used to bleed air out of the pressurized coolant system when needed was leaking tiny amounts of fluid and breaking the pressure.

He drove back to his shop where miraculously he found a replacement. All seems to be well but he wants us to drive around a bit to make sure that is the problem. Then we’ll go to his shop and pay his bill. I was elated. Plus the electrical installation seems to be working well but we haven’t really put it to the test yet. The removal of the second alternator has been excellent with a quiet stress free, noise free engine as one result. 

Up next Adrián is going to build some improved drains to clear rainwater that accumulates under the windshield and can drip on the engine. And we aren’t going anywhere to two weeks.

Layne is frustrated by the delay but in speaking to a friend on the phone and lamenting my strategy to keep Adrián happy Kathy told her to ponder the value of two weeks delay against the lack of deadlines in our life. And I actually like Adrián and I am glad to help him out in some small way. He’s a good man, a first rate mechanic especially on electrical stuff and a terrible communicator. 

I have regained my equilibrium and mental tranquility, GANNET2 is apparently fixed and Rusty is enjoying life. We are inseparable. 

And that is the story of how  you get tangled up in situations that don’t usually occur in the US when you go to Jiffy Lube for a quick oil change and continue on your merry way. I miss that simplicity of life but I’m in South America for good or ill and things work a little differently here.