In San Antonio de Areco, we actually pierced the camper side by turning at a tree with a low branch. Not a great start to our venture…..you can imagine the atmosphere for the evening!!!!!
A variety of little problems occurred since the start of our journey, we noticed that the bracket (metal and an original bracket on the chassis itself) broke so the fuel line was resting on the steel cable of the winch. That is bearable for a short while, however the roads of course before we had a chance to fix it were unsealed, huge climbs and descents and a lot of curves. This we managed finally to sort out two days ago at this campsite. Jan had to improvise a fix as he prefers to have the permanent fix carried out in Europe at the end of the trip.
About a week ago, we decided to head to the ‘Salto de Moconas’ (north of El Sobberbio) we continued along the RN14 then headed east to the river area. About 30/40km before the actual falls, there were very long climbs and descents. Once or twice Jan mentioned about the ‘loss of power’ with the car. I wasn’t unduly worried at the time, we saw one sign along the road for trucks not to go on, we ignored it as we are a ‘camper’. We reached the parking place for the night and settled in. We had our dinner finished and knock knock on the door, yes we were told to move. We were to go to the ‘Refugio’ a campsite that we saw a little back down the road. We passed it out and I felt there was a lot of overgrowth at the entrance. Anwyay, when we arrive at about 19:30hrs it was dark and we discovered that some of the branches were way to low for the car. We eventually left the campsite and parked at a ‘view point’ one or two kilometres up the road, for the night.
The next morning, Jan informs me that he also thought that the brakes were fading at times. Not a very pleasant start to a day. Anyway, we took out and cleaned the ‘course fuel filter’ (a few stones and rubbish was in it), we re-fitted it and then decided to move on. In the middle of all this hard work, we had to use one of the rear lockers, as it turns out one of the doors fell off. Matters this morning were steadily getting worse. We re-distributed all the items in the locker to various places elsewhere on the camper. We finally took to the road again and yes it turns out that Jan noticed more power when climbing the steep hills. He also did not have to use the breaks as much, so things were beginning to look up again. Because of the ‘locker’ issue, we changed our minds about continuing on our route, but returned to El Soberbio and Mr. Dumke arranged to have that locker problem fixed up for us by a local guy. From here, then we continued onto San Vincente, up to San Pedro and then to Puerto Iguazu.
The next problem we encountered was on the route RP101, a guy told us not to use it (as we understood because of a landslide), we did risk it, but we did notice a lot of trees fallen, it was thick enough jungle with a track through it and in some areas it was very low and snagged on parts of the car. Real adventure as they say. We were delighted that we managed to get through, at the slowest we were travelling at only 9km per hour. When we got out the other end, we noticed two of the antenna were completely flattened (Jan had since fixed them) and just a few more scratches etc along the roof and sides of the car. All branches that we picked up along the route we removed them and left them for nature to deal with, in its own good time.
The last item that we cannot fix is Claire’s washing machine …. yes, with all the weather problems I was so disappointed. We I guess on this score, I will remain that way for the entirety of this trip. Enough said on this score!
We will keep you posted on these challenges as we keep going.
We cannot say enough about the generosity and helpfulness of the Argentinians in general. They have been extrordinarily helpful. There are however two people we would mention in particular, Julio from Moreno (suburb of Buenos Aires) who looked after us while we were parked in that area and to Mr Dumke from El Soberbio who helped us out with car problems after our negative experiences at the ‘Saltos de Moconas’. Both of these two gentlemen, we have put photographs of of them in the ‘Gallery’, to both of you please accept our sincere thanks for your assistance to us at the different stages on our journey.
Finally Good Weather … 10 days later, we now have experienced good weather for 2 days running. Unbelievable
