Another month in Melgarejo
With the start of June came the start of the World Cup. Lee, being an avid football fan, wanted to go and watch some of the matches. Our friends were interested in coming too. Paraguay had made it through to this stage for the first time in 16 years, so there was a lot of local excitement about the match. We found out that the place to watch it was at the campsite in town. They have a restaurant there and two huge screens to watch the game on. Alessandra booked a table and was given strict instructions that if we were more than ten minutes late, it would be given away!
The two of us walked—which took around an hour—and met them there. We got our table and saw that it was indeed pretty packed. The bar staff handed out air horns and Paraguayan flags. We ordered a beer tower to share. Now that we had completed an entire month without any booze, we permitted ourselves a drink. We were determined, though, not to slide back into old habits and drink every day. As it was a special occasion, we had no problem getting stuck into a nice cold pint. We ordered some picky food to share and sat back to watch the game. Unfortunately, Paraguay lost. Although this was still the group stage—meaning they weren’t out of the competition yet—we’d have to wait until next week to see their next match. It was a late kick-off, and our friends kindly dropped us home, saving us the hour-long walk back at midnight.
In the meantime, we had bought our new CV joints from the US, as well as some fancy new boots which I really hoped would last a bit longer. Stefan was letting us use his freight-forwarding account, which made things really easy and much cheaper than ordering directly with a courier. Even so, the CV joints were heavy things, costing us $125 in shipping alone. Stefan had kindly picked them up for us, saving us the 4 km walk carrying them home. While we still walked to town often, I didn’t fancy carting them around. We had developed somewhat of a routine: every 3–4 days we would walk in and pick up a few groceries. Going regularly was a good bit of exercise and also meant we could easily carry what we needed. We had befriended the dog that lived at the end of the road, too; he was a sweet boy and was always very excited to see us.
Not all of the dogs were nice, though. After leaving Stefan's cul-de-sac, which was separated from the main road by a gate, you immediately came upon two houses. One of them had just had puppies and understandably had a bit of an overprotective mama. The other was the real problem. They had two dogs: one all bark and one all bite. As we had walked back the other week, it had run out of the gate and sunk its teeth into my leg. The bruises took nearly a month to go away, and now every time I walked past, I was armed with a big stick in case ‘Lola’ tried it on again.
Things ticked along. We walked to the bar to watch the England games, often being the only people in there and walking back in the dark by moonlight.
We blogged and edited videos. And then it was time to watch Paraguay again. In an interesting turn of events—considering that we were in a German colony—they were playing Germany. We had booked another table, expecting it to be packed as before, but when we arrived there were hardly any people there. In fact, it was so quiet that we decided to leave and go to El Mangal instead, as that was most likely where all the Germans would be watching it. As we went to pay the bill, though, the bar staff persuaded us to stay. Everyone would be coming, they assured us—they were just finishing work! So we stayed. A few more people trickled in, but it was still relatively quiet. What it lacked in numbers, though, it made up for in enthusiasm. Especially as, in an unexpected twist, Paraguay won on penalties! The bar erupted and we all got a free drink. One of the locals was so happy he was nearly in tears, and it was great fun to celebrate such a special moment with the local people. We didn’t know it then, but there was a whole lot more celebrating to come.
The bar emptied out and our friends offered to drop us off again, so we hopped in the back of the camper and headed out. The side streets were pretty quiet, but as we reached the main road, it was gridlocked. Every single local seemed to have got in their car and was driving in an impromptu parade down the street. Music blared all around, engines roared, and motorbikes weaved in and out of the traffic. Throughout it all, the repeated shout of “¡Vamos Paraguay!” echoed everywhere. We crawled a little way down before leaving the van at the side of the road and getting out to walk around in the bedlam. The roundabout was the central focal point. People set off fireworks, waved giant flags, and offered us a beer after checking we weren’t German. It was the last thing I expected, but really it shouldn’t have surprised me—it was the perfect Latino response.
After a late night, the last thing I wanted to do was get up for the market in the morning, but we still had lots of jars to sell, so I unwillingly dragged myself out of bed. Turns out I really shouldn’t have bothered. This time we only sold 3 jars, and clearly this was something that was going to end up costing us money rather than making it. I don’t know if we just chose an unpopular product, but it seemed that most people came to eat out rather than to buy goods. A lot of the stalls were selling cooked food, so we wondered if for our final attempt we could maybe add something to be eaten on the spot. We had two weeks to think about that, anyway. in the meantime, we ate our stock.
With the end of our stay getting closer, we started thinking about getting Ruby to a garage. We needed to weld the runner for our sliding door before we started living in her again, as it wasn’t currently possible to shut it from the inside. If they seemed like a competent garage, I was also thinking about getting them to re-weld the rear torsion tube to try and finally fix our wonky suspension. The other day I had taken off the rear shock absorbers to change the bushings, only to discover that they were both on their last legs. Although it was another big financial hit, this was by far the best time to order parts in, so we decided to buy a new pair, again from America. If we were going to replace these, then I definitely didn’t want the tyre rubbing on them.
This wasn’t our only order either. Lee’s mum had very kindly sent us the money to buy a new drone, and we planned to get that sent down as well. Good 'ol Steve (our current drone) had been through a lot; while he still mostly worked, he mainly just seemed to make Lee angry. We decided we’d gift him to Will and Stacey and get ourselves a new DJI Mini 3. We’d have just enough time for it all to arrive before we left at the start of July.
We took our van down to the garage on a Friday afternoon. Bjorn was there, having just finished up some welding work on his own car, and he introduced us to the owner, Volker. He had a look before calling over one of his workers, Chachi (pronunced Shaw-shee). I have absolutely no idea how his name is spelled, so I shall just write the phonetic pronunciation! They agreed they could do it and told us to come back on Monday to start.
Monday came and we took Ruby in. I dismantled the rear suspension so that they could see the problem clearly. The torsion bar was so far out of line that it nearly touched the side of the tube. The bushings were utterly destroyed. There wasn’t much else I could do, so we took our bikes down and left them to get on with it.
The next day, we went back to the garage to check on progress. They had cut off the end plate, and now it was clear to see that its position wasn’t the only problem. The only solution seemed to be to re-weld it off-centre and at the correct angle. It wasn’t pretty, but it would work. Again, not much else happened. I messed around with our new handbrake cables, and then once again we headed back. It was a bit of a trek to get to the garage: we had to cycle a couple of kilometres to the start of the dirt road out to Stefan's, chain the bikes to a tree, and walk the remaining 3 kilometres home. While I didn’t want to be doing it every day, I felt obliged to be there and check up on what was going on.
When we went back again, nothing was really happening. Apparently, they were going to bring in another welder who could weld metal of that thickness properly. While I was glad they were taking it seriously, it was a slow process. In fact, it wasn’t until Friday that it was finally welded back on. As soon as I checked it, I saw it wasn’t right. It had taken so long to get to this point, though, that I didn’t want to say anything. Perhaps it would be okay. Of course, in hindsight, I should have spoken up there and then.
With the van still not back together, we cancelled our market stall for the next day. We doubted it would be worth it anyway, and when we awoke to torrential rain the next morning, we were happy with our choice. We needed that day to sort out the new bushings anyway. We had been to a local shop to order some new ones, and the guy told me it would take 2–3 days. Then Chachi told me he didn’t have them and couldn’t find them anywhere. That was Friday afternoon. So we had planned to spend Saturday travelling to Villarrica by bus to try the shops there. Thankfully, that rainy morning I got a message from the local parts shop—they had arrived!
On Monday, we were all set to go. I tried to reassemble the suspension, only to find that the spring plate was now rubbing against its mount. I showed Volker and told him it wasn’t going to work. He agreed, and once more they set about cutting it off again. I warned him about our upcoming deadline: in less than two weeks our visas would expire and we needed to be able to reach a border. So far it had taken us a whole week just to weld it on wrong!
This time, things moved quicker. The plate was cut off again, the welder returned, and he re-welded it. This time we all checked the positioning thoroughly. It was much better, and I was (despite my face) happy that it would be okay. Now I just had to reassemble it all.
While they had been taking measurements, they had taken the cover plate off the other side. Now I could see that the bushings on that side were all ruined as well. Luckily, we had four new ones, but it did mean I needed to take the other side apart too. Previously I had the suspension perfectly level, but now that I’d swapped out the other bushings, it was all out of alignment. After wrestling the first side back together, I spent the best part of a day assembling, testing, and disassembling the other side until it was finally level. In the end, though, I was very happy with it.
Even better, on our last afternoon in the garage, the shock absorbers finally arrived. They had been much slower than our other parcels, but they made it in the nick of time. Stefan kindly dropped them off to us at the garage, and we reassembled the back for good. It was just in time—it was Friday now and we needed to leave on Monday.
We had received not only the shock absorbers, but also our new drone and some B12 supplements for me. All of the packages had arrived just in time for our imminent departure. We could now hand over our old drone to Will and Stacey, who arrived in town the next day.
They kindly brought us a nice bottle of gin and some very fancy tonic as a thank you, before we all piled into their van, Solero, and headed into town to watch Paraguay play France. Unsurprisingly, this was the end of Paraguay's tournament, and no crazy street parades met us as we drove back to Stefan's. Bjorn and Alessandra were now staying there as well for a couple of weeks while they got ready for a big drive across Brazil, which luckily meant another free lift for us!
The following day, England would play, and we’d be back in the bar again. In the midst of all the football, we began to steadily pack Ruby, making the most of using Stefan’s washing machine and that lovely hot shower before returning to life on the road.
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