Cordoba

As we were committed to spending some time in this city waiting for the window parts, we decided this would be a good moment to get the Wallas sorted. It was getting cold now, some nights dropping below freezing, and I really did miss being warm. Not only that, but cooking on gas here was an expensive enterprise. We got in contact with the supplier here and asked for a quote. When it came back at about £400, we opted to get the parts sent out here and try to do it ourselves. We spoke directly with Juan, who seemed happy enough to offer some advice, send the parts and also kindly didn’t charge us for a glow plug. This just about made up for the fact that the Argentinian parts cost 70% more than the European ones due to the inflation on imports. Now we had a couple of things to wait for, so we decided to check out the city of Córdoba.

There wasn’t a lot of choice for camping here. It appeared there was one spot by the park that was free and seemed to be the popular choice, however quite a few people mentioned noise and it didn’t sound too appealing. Instead we headed for the municipal campground, having had pretty good experiences with those so far.

Before the campground, we stopped off on the outskirts of the city to visit the local crafts market and of course grab a drink in the local craft beer bar. This wasn’t the cheap street market of Mendoza, but definitely a more expensive vibe. I looked wistfully at the nice knives for £60, wishing I’d bought the rough-and-ready version for £6. Still, there’ll always be more markets.

Arriving at the campsite, we got ourselves all checked in and hooked up, deciding we’d stay a few nights until the weekend had passed. We cooked outside on the provided fire pits, as this was a lot cheaper than cooking on the camping stove and also kept us warm at the same time. We did all the laundry, charged ourselves back up, had hot showers and did all the things that you do when you’re paying for it.

We even went for a lovely stroll around the park which the campground sits inside.

Then, one morning, we noticed we weren’t charging anymore, even though we were still connected. It appeared the point we had hooked up to had stopped working, so we moved down and joined onto one where two other motorhomes were connected. It was rather a long way away, so they lent us some leads and eventually we had some kind of power. It seemed that they had tripped the one we were connected to somehow and now we were both connected to the same supply. I heard the varying hum of the transformer as the voltage changed. It wasn’t the most reassuring, but it was working. I wrongly assumed that if anything happened, we would be fine as the transformer was fused. Unfortunately for us, this was not the case. Once again the charger wasn’t working, and this time it was not the outlet’s fault. It appeared that the dodgy electrics had blown our charger.

This was pretty crappy. We debated whether we should wait and bring one back with us from the UK. The weather here was getting a little unpredictable though, with more and more cloudy days. Running Starlink all the time is a huge battery drain for us too. I started to do some research into charging options.

We had wanted to go and do a free walking tour in the city, but it was a bit too far to get there from the campsite. We decided we’d drive in and camp at the free spot, which would hopefully be quieter mid-week, and then do the tour from there. As we were driving out of the campsite, we met Bruna. We’d got in contact previously through a mutual WhatsApp group and she said she would also be here, but we’d never met and weren’t sure if they were here or not. She caught us as we left. Lee was about to bring the car around to try and persuade Lexi to come out from under a car in the car park that she absolutely wouldn’t leave. The floor here was covered in these tiny spiky things too, meaning it was hard to reach under and grab her. I had eventually captured her and now both of us were covered in sticky spikes. I wrestled her back to the camper, said hi to Bruna and told her what we were planning on doing. They said they’d probably join us later.

We arrived at the park, just a bit of street parking off the side of the main road. We let the cats have a supervised run around, due to the busy street being closer than I would have liked. It was now a grey miserable day, which continued throughout the next day too. We headed to a café to charge up our things and hoped it would improve for the walking tour. In the meantime, our Wallas parts had arrived, so at least we could go and collect them. We went on a lengthy walk, first to the car parts area to buy a new handle for the window regulator so that could be installed, and then alongside the river to the courier office for the parts. Then we hopped in a taxi back to Ruby, having now acquired blisters. Now we were ready to fix things and Bruna and her partner Arslan had arrived too. The next day, the four of us headed into town to do the tour.

We hadn’t done a walking tour since way back in Cartagena, so we were looking forward to going again. Our rather overly enthusiastic guide showed us around the city, stopping at various points of interest. We got some free samples of alfajores before walking along to see what is supposedly the thinnest building in the world. We stepped inside a few interesting places, including a 300-year-old Jesuit crypt and the main cathedral.

Afterwards our guide took us to a local café and left us there for lunch with a few other people from the tour who decided to join. All in all, it was a pretty good day. We had decided that from there we’d head back to the campsite. We had found out that the new president of Argentina, Milei, would be visiting the city and we thought it’d be interesting to stick around and see how that went down. We could also get the Wallas apart and fix the window while we had space to spread out.

Our friends had already driven off to go to a supermarket and we hopped into Ruby, turned the key and nothing happened. At first I thought it was the batteries, then it seemed to be a problem with the starter motor. In the end, we knocked on the door of a nearby camper from Uruguay and asked for a push. Another random guy off the street joined in and somehow I managed to find reverse and not hit the parked cars on either side as we bump-started it backwards up the road. Now we finally headed back to the campsite where not only Bruna and Arslan would be, but also Marcia and Killian would be joining us once again. As we were rather late, they had beaten us to it. We parked up, turned the engine off and decided we’d worry about starting it again another time.

Over the next couple of days, I replaced the starter solenoid and then both of us spent an entire day messing around with battery cables. Ruby started. Then wouldn’t start. In the end it seemed to be the new kill switch I had fitted that might have been the problem, so I bypassed it for now and it seemed to be behaving itself. This wasn’t the only thing we needed to fix. With the van seemingly ok and the window regulator installed, it was time for the big one next: the Wallas.

As we already knew, the insides were filthy. Having run with the burner components blocking the exhaust, the entire chamber was caked in carbon. This in itself wasn’t so bad as it could be removed and cleaned. The main problem was trying to clean under the ceramic hob itself. We did the best we could, even using the kayak air pump to try and blow out some of the soot, but I wasn’t sure it’d be good enough. I installed the remaining components and we both waited with bated breath for it to turn on. When that little red light that signals stable combustion finally flickered into life, we were beside ourselves. We spent the rest of the night inside wearing T-shirts instead of three jumpers and it was the first thing we did in the morning to finally make ourselves a proper cup of tea.

The day had now arrived that the president would be speaking in the city. The six of us got into two taxis to head into the city and see what it was like. He came in with some pretty radical policies as well as being a pretty odd guy, so he definitely got a mixed reception. Unfortunately for us, the time we had read online was not the right one and so as we arrived, the event was over and the crowds were dispersing. We did catch a glimpse of him through the lines of military personnel as they swept out of the city centre in a black convoy of vehicles and that was it. We had thought there’d be more of an event — food vendors, markets and so on — but really that was it and everyone was leaving. We were a bit disappointed having only just arrived and so our group decided to head over to the craft market, the same one we’d already been to.

There were quite a lot of us now. We’d met up with the couple from the tour who we’d had lunch with, and Bruna had met a friend too. First we headed for the bar, as we’d already recommended it for a pretty cheap drink. This time we got the big table outside as there were now nine of us. We drank 2-for-1 Fernet and I shared a disappointingly small Venezuelan arepa with the girl from the walking tour whose name escapes me.

Afterwards, we headed to the market for another wander around. Then, again on our recommendation, we went to get some beers at the brewery. Marcia and Killian headed back earlier to check on Finley, while the rest of us stayed out pretty late. We drank a bit too much and learned how to play the card game that Russians play in prison. Considering our night was nearly a carbon copy of the one Lee and I had previously had, it just goes to show how different things are when you’re in a group sometimes. We had a great time.

Before too long, it was time to say goodbye again. Firstly to Bruna and Arslan. It had been nice to enjoy their company and I had got a lot of recommendations of places to visit in Brazil from Bruna, it being her home country. As they headed out, so did we — this time back to the noisy free park-up. We decided we’d spend a night here so that we could also say goodbye to Marcia and Killian. We would be leaving to go hiking in the nearby hills, while they would be spending another week in Córdoba in an Airbnb while their car got welded.

We went again to the same café, this time for some food in the evening. When we saw this revolting “American” pizza on the menu, we just had to try it. Never before in my life had I seen pizza with chips and fried eggs on it. It was indeed a huge carb fest, but still quite nice in a kind of “this is very bad for you” way. It was also enormous, meaning for dessert we could only manage to share a very cute little mojito cake.

And so that was it, we were once again back to just the two of us. We headed out to the car district once again, this time to buy some new battery cable for Ruby as it now seemed that the starting issue was the wire itself. Armed with that, we decided we were ready to leave. As it was getting on in the day, we retraced our steps back to Embalse Los Molinos for a guaranteed quiet night. Tomorrow, we’d go somewhere new.