ODO: 341,850
Its pouring rain. Our ride is very punctual. The truck battery is dead when we arrive. Damnit. This is why we have the little jump box. We settle up. They don’t change us for electricity. We have nowhere to go, so we stay and take a nap in the truck, in the barn. We fall asleep immediately. And wake up around 1pm. And go straight into meetings, yikes. After work is done, we do a very poor job of getting some groceries, on our way to a lake where we will wait for our bags. Possibly for the next 72 hours. Everything is still very muddy and very windy.
Morning brings several text messages from Copa, our bags have arrived!! It doesn’t matter that we are an hour and a half away, we are just excited to have our bags back so soon. We hustle back and collect our things. Now we need to make a plan. There is a waterfall we want to see in the north, so we start casually driving that direction. We’ll make a real map in the morning. A camper van rental place that doubles as a campground hosts us for the night.
And again the next day. We are still very much recovering from our delayed journey back, we need some rest. It’s unpack day, and shower day, and cook our own food day. One of us accidentally goes to bed at 8:00pm, and then we’re both up into the wee hours of the morning. Nuts.
We sleep way too late. But there are puppies frolicking in the field next to us. Cute! We pack up and go. The landscape changes from grasslands to wetlands as we head away from Buenos Aeries. And there are so many birds! None that we immediately can identify from the truck. As we roll though Victoria we decide this is far enough for today. Spot # 1 turns out to be a busy pier, it’s a no. Spot #2 is a church parking lot, bad idea on a Saturday night. Spot #3 is a campground, but we cant get ahold of anyone, so we set up and hope for the best. Eventually we get the go ahead, so we cozy in and skip dinner. It’s only 7pm, but we’re feeling lazy.
The sounds of a small race track is our alarm clock. A very loud dance party started at 1:30am the night before, so we are tired. Again. We’re in transit, so everyday is pack and go time. We want to get into Brazil quickly, but not painfully quick. After another ATM stop (the ATM situation here is wild. They mostly give out $1’s, you cant get more than $50 at a time, and it costs $14 in fees for each transaction. Thank GOODNESS we got a debit card that refunds those fees), we get out of town. There are giant power lines along the road, and the parrots have made giant parrot nests in them. The plan is to stop early tonight, but every spot in the town of Ubajay is closed except for a campground that is $70 a night or a playground behind the museum. Even the truck stop turned us away. Behind the museum looks great. We do better tonight and manage a quick instapot rice and veggies before bed.
Up and out! We made a last minute decision to visit Uruguay along the way to Brazil, in case we don’t get back this way. The border is less than an hour and we think we can do this before meetings start. Which means something will hamper us, we NEVER make it across a border before meetings start. And then it happens…the bad truck noise. We pull over to look underneath, nothing obvious. Drive some more, more bad sound. This happened once, right after we got back to the truck, but we wrote it off as the car next to us. Apparently it was us all along. A little more driving, a lot more bad sound. Berne decides its the rear end, a worsening of what happened when we were in Ushuaia.
A bus stop gives us a wide enough spot to do a little roadside mechanic-ing. The drive shaft comes out easily, the drive slugs, not so much. The driver side one is really, really stuck. We are officially back in front wheel drive mode, and the drive shaft is back strapped to the awning. At least we can still make it down the road. Meetings do not happen across the border. And we have a small adventure once we get to the border…The truck is too dirty, so they send us away for a car wash. Which we make it to just before the car wash closes (our travel luck is back!). Once we’re clean, crossing into Uruguay is a breeze. A cluster of Capybaras meet us on the other side (more travel luck!). Our first wild sighting! We pull over to take a million touristy pictures. They’re so cute! Berne finds a hot springs resort for us to explore, about an hour from the border. They have a stay two nights, get the third free, and we are in! It’s dark when we arrive, so we don’t know what we’ve gotten into yet.
We’re in need of another rest day after the stress of the truck breaking. The campground here is quiet, and clean, and the weather outside is quite pleasant. This is a good time for us to catch up on some things, mostly work things. It gets really chilly once the sun goes down, so we make a nice dinner and cozy in for the night.
