English Only Burgers

It must be clear we don’t have much going on at the moment but I try to remind myself lots of people take a two week vacation to drive to a campground and relax with a book which is roughly what we’re doing…so this enforced boring pause is our vacation. There. Solved.

I have to also point out Rusty is acting bored, getting up, pacing around, napping, short walks, more napping. When we’re driving he acts much more involved in his surroundings though I may be anthropomorphizing.

We were sitting around doing what you do as you wait for your parts to arrive from the States when Robert showed up, last seen in Colonia Valdense Uruguay.

Robert lived and ran a collection business in Key West though we never met him and now he’s based in St. Petersburg. He travels alone in his Toyota Land Cruiser and he’s got a water leak in his home which he’s hoping Chris can fix.

We went out to dinner with Robert Friday night along with Mark the Englishman who lives in his cottage at the campground. Mark drove us into town in his Ford van, a job that usually falls to me but from which I am exempted with our failing motor mount, so I got to be a passenger in the back.

We put Rusty on his bed on our bed and left him to guard GANNET2 before dark. So I got to lie on the bed in Mark’s low roof van and look out the windows. Not normal for me not to be driving so I enjoyed the views from the back for a change. 

Mark had a new burger place for us to check out as we search for the best burger in Caacupé. It’s odd how a burger can become the object of desire when we are this far from home. It’s a food I enjoy but don’t normally pay much attention to, because in the States a decent burger can be found anywhere. But before the burger test we had some shopping to do at Layne’s current favorite supermarket.

It was night and slightly cool so I was glad I decided to wear my puffy jacket. It’s been warm but temperatures have been variable. Downtown Caacupé:

It turned out this place was a little more upscale and with drinks and food we spent about $18 each. I enjoyed the draft beer as did Mark before he joined Layne drinking mojito-like cane liquor caipirinhas: 

The burgers were great, as were the fries we shared: 

The conversation was travel focused mostly on the subject of food and roads and crazy experiences. Robert got his four wheel drive Landcruiser stuck on a Peruvian mountain for three days with a broken axle. The tow truck he managed to call got stuck too. It was high drama before he got down the mountain.  

Mark traveled for years on a motorcycle and sidecar with his dog Fran, the dog that attacked Rusty last time we were here and he hasn’t forgotten…Mark’s really nice and it wasn’t his fault Fran lost her mind and attacked Rusty. Not being able to take Rusty into his compound makes it awkward to spend time with him at his cottage. Rusty gets jealous to see me hanging out with Fran…

It was our night out for the week, a break from cooking and dishwashing at camp. The funny thing about the place at the moment is the split between the residents. At one end there are two Germans, a Dutch couple and an Austrian. They all wave cheerfully but none initiate conversation and scour end are the English speakers hanging together. It’s a bit odd but it’s how it goes. Not everyone speaks or likes to speak more than one language and English ends up being the default which can get wearying for non native speakers. Having Robert around is nice for us as we have the same cultural base, all too rare in South America.

We were talking about that and Robert thinks a lot of would be travelers to South America from the States get out off making the crossing of the Darien Gap.  And the funny thing is almost all travelers who do make the effort love South America a lot more than the small hot and humid nations in the isthmus. 

The Darien Gap costs money to cross for sure but it is also a psychological barrier for most people driving south. And it’s a shame because South America has proved to be an exceptional experience, vast open spaces, mountains, jungles and welcoming people. Central America in my memory is much tougher with a hot humid climate much of the year, small countries with fiddly paperwork required at borders and not nearly the variety of the continent to the south. 

And here we are vacationing  in a South American campground. Lucky us, I guess.

Seen online; pretty much sums it up: 

“ I hate when people ask what I did on the weekend like I'm out here sky diving or something.

I'm almost 62.

I went grocery shopping,

STOPPED TO PEE,

Loaded the wash machine,

STOPPED TO PEE,

walked in the bathroom and forgot why,

IT WAS TO PEE.

At one point l ate shredded cheese out of the bag like a damn raccoon,

STOPPED TO PEE,

then I sat down "for a minute" and accidentally took a 3 hour nap, only woke up because

HAD TO PEE.

So yeah... pretty big weekend

Still recovering.”

Camping Pequeña Baviera

 

Four years ago Chris and Astrid and their two youngest children emigrated to Paraguay and bought their house with twenty acres of land planning to create a mechanic’s workshop for him and a playground and coffee house for the many German immigrants around the town of Caacupé.

Instead they ended up with possibly the best overlander campground in Paraguay, one of the lest visited countries in South America, ahead only of the Guyanas for number of visitors.

Until last June Paraguay was giving away residence permits free with your morning cereal packet but these days they are apparently getting more serious and more persnickety because the word is out. 

Mexico has been increasing its financial requirements for migrants too and enforcing stricter guidelines for foreigners seeking to move to Mexico. For us none of this is an issue as we aren’t looking for a place to settle down outside the US but I am curious about these things. 

We enjoy traveling and not settling living as privileged visitors 90 days at a time with negligible bureaucratic restraints and no commitments. It’s my belief this is the golden age of travel by campervan South America even as vehicle living in the States becomes more controversial as RVs substitute for homes for the economically desperate. In these countries we are welcomed as rarities which makes life on the road much easier, perhaps some small compensation for the irritations.

Chris’ 19 year old son is visiting from Bavaria where he has one more year to go to complete a mechanical engineering apprenticeship, the ticket to a solid career in Germany. Yet Chris wants him to emigrate to Paraguay as his son is eligible for the draft instituted this year, voluntarily (!) so far. The government requires all draft age men to advise the government if they are leaving the country for more than three months as they are preparing for war with Russia.

Living around Europeans in South America one gets a small window on life across the Atlantic mostly from people disaffected by life in the European Union. For them South America is a low bureaucracy escape from the rules and regulations imposed at home but now also they live a healthy distance from what is seen to be impending  war, to my Cold War an unimaginable eventuality. It sounds overwrought and yet…

I can imagine South America must feel like a haven for people who grew up traveling to Russia and trading with  Russia and keeping warm in winter burning Russian gas and North border between Russia and the EU is mostly closed and governments talk of war.

Day to day life in Paraguay continues undisturbed by all this gloom with sunny days interspersed by some rain and gray clouds, gasoline is around four bucks a gallon cheaper than Paraguays wealthier neighbors and supermarkets are as well stocked as ever. The ostriches are getting used to us as we are to them as they stalk around driven  by curiosity and barely restrained by our aggressive use of the spray bottle. Walking Rusty in the morning sees me accompanied by these weird creatures. 

There is always the pest Loki who likes to make toys out of recycling bottles  or who jumps on you from a tree or out of the bathroom window when you least expect it. They say monkeys lack only two percent of our DNA but his agility makes up for it. 

The best part of Little Bavaria may be the bathrooms, lots of high pressure water from the well, abundant hot water even at the dish washing station and proper plumbing.

And pretty solid internet too. All for $17 a day. 

Talking with Chris an anti government libertarian emigrant is interesting but I don’t propose to set my hair on fire or lose sleep or change my plans for all the madness in the world and perhaps I shall regret not rushing home to prepare for conflagration.

All I can think is how lucky we are to be in this mild climate in winter and our spare parts packages are all assembled at Paraguaybox the freight forwarder in Miami and maybe in a week we might possibly be fit to travel.  More aimless privileged wandering around South America. If it turns out to be fiddling while Rome burned I shall take my punishment I hope like a gentleman. I might need to reread Herman Wouk’s WINDS OF WAR.

Chris’ workshop in action. A stored vehicle is getting work done while the owner is home in Germany. 

Rescued dogs cats chickens ostriches and a monkey. 

No see’um hell. Better living through chemistry. 

Solo German guy traveling friendly but not interested in speaking English even he is even able. 

How do you know ostriches have been in your fridge? Footsteps in the butter…

The menagerie must not mix. Dogs inside, birds outside, monkey and cats and people cross the fence. Vehicles enter under supervision to prevent escapes. 

On guard. 

Update Again

 It seems likely we have another ten days to go here so we are settling into life at the campground awaiting the parts ordered from the US. Three of four packages are at Paraguaybox in Miami where they will be forwarded to our campground owner Chris, we hope early next week. Until they arrive we are on vacation.

The weather threatens rain but so far it’s pretty perfect with warm sunny days, filled with biting insects and cool good sleeping weather nights. Our electrical problem will not go away so when we get our package from Miami there will be a Hail Mary to fix this randomly flashing light on our 3,000 watt Victron inverter:

While I took this photograph the rest of the system said the batteries are at 14.1 volts. Chris suspects the inverter isn’t set for lithium batteries but he needs a code reader for the inverter, one of the items we’ve ordered so we can check and change the settings of this $3,000 piece of gear that isn’t shipped with a Bluetooth connection.

You have to pay $100 ( plus shipping) and figure out how to wire this thing to the inverter to make sure it isn’t set to monitor non lithium batteries. If this doesn’t solve the blinking light we have to return to Uruguay. What a damned saga.

Until we get the packages we sit here, do our exercises, read our books and watch TV. We aren’t missing Starlink as the campground has a good signal but that mess for travelers is still causing irritation among overlanders. Quadrupling the monthly fee to $650 has reset most travelers’ desire for satellite connectivity.

The worst of it is we can’t drive with the failing motor mount so these pictures of our trip to Asunción last week are the last road trip we will take for a while.

I hope we don’t have to go back to Uruguay but if we do we will still fill up our last year in South America with driving even if we travel clockwise instead of counterclockwise as there’s plenty we want to see. 

One thing I have learned is patience. I have also learned not to take these setbacks personally so for me the life lessons are worth the involuntary pauses. Being retired is a wonderful thing. Being bold isn’t bad, with arthritis comes wisdom  I guess.

Dinner With Friends

 Monday night we went into Caacupé, ten minutes away to have dinner with Sonny and Mark.  Mark, who lives at the campground in a cottage he had built drove us into town in his van so I got to be a passenger and I enjoyed the experience.

Mark waiting for his caipirinha, a sugar cane liquor drink similar to a mojito which he was inspired to order by Layne. Sonny and I had beer but we all ordered burgers as this place is famous for that and pizza. We had several drinks each and shared two orders of fries and our dinner cost us $17 total. This is not expensive Uruguay.

I have learned to like egg on my food which Layne doesn’t, but under the egg  there was a very respectable burger. It was a convivial dinner and we felt we had earned it.

Sonny is a widower from Michigan and he has decided to travel alone in his retirement. We are the same age and share the same sense of humor possibly because we are both immigrants who came to the US as students and he has earned his retirement as a state employee.

Mark traveled by motorcycle and sidecar with his dog for four years, originally from London so we were all English speakers, not something that happens often on the road in a circuit filled with German and French speakers. 

Sonny has three adult children and six grandchildren in Michigan and he’s planning to go home in a few weeks to spend time with them. He’s been on the road four years and marvels how few Americans he meets. Before he arrived at the campground his Toyota 4Runner’s alternator stopped working  so he replaced it by the side of the road because he carries a spare. Thats the sort of manual dexterity I can only dream of and he is obviously well prepared to take in Africa his next planned continent.  He lives in the tent: 

Monday was the day we placed our order with Rock Auto which should be in Miami by Wednesday:

All across Latin America middle class residents use delivery services to order stuff online in the US and they get their orders delivered to a US address which simplifies everything. Stored RVs waiting for their owners:

Then the shipping companies in Miami fill a container and forward everyone’s packages to their countries where they are distributed to the recipients. Our parts are in their way to Paraguaybox, an office in Doral near the Miami airport and every Latin American country has a similar freight forwarder. It’s a clever system that doesn’t penalize people for living outside the US and wanting to place orders online.

So we are on track to repair the wear and tear of 130,000 very hard miles, and Chris may have a handle on what’s wrong with our new Victron electrical system. We fixed our lighting problem by discovering we had accidentally turned off the master switch.  Bernie you see the Porch light, the mood light (neon colors) and the Cabin light master switches. Only the cabin light is on in the photo:

It’s easy enough to make an error but the fact it took us 18 hours to figure out why we had no cabin lighting is a measure of how stressed our electrical issues have rendered us. Not Rusty:

Chris talked with a German friend who showed up in his RV who told Chris (not me, my German is very basic) he had the same identical problem three years ago, the inverter registering low voltage when the Victron shunt shows a full charge and the suspicion is the inverter is correct and the shunt is over reading the power stored in the batteries. So on Tuesday Chris plans to actually test the power in our three Victron batteries and synchronizing them manually with the shunt and maybe thus solving the low voltage signal. It makes sense to me but I am a mere spectator. Fingers crossed.