Playing the Waiting Game...

The Wallas technician, Juan, had kindly passed on the details of the shipment coming from Finland, so we knew we still had quite some time to kill. We awoke to yet another grey day after a night of heavy rain. In the distance over the city, it was almost as if you could see the cloud lifting towards the horizon. We had no desire to kill time in a grey, noisy city and so we headed out. It turned out that the outskirts of the city were where the Zapp family lived. Somewhat famous, in overlanding circles at least, the Zapp family spent a crazy 22 years touring the world in their vintage 1928 car, raising four children who were all born on the road. Now they had returned to their home country of Argentina and run a campsite on the outskirts of the city. Not only were we in need of a cheap campsite, but it would also be pretty cool to meet them.

With the batteries low and a grey mist hanging in the air, we set off. We had messaged in advance and so when we pulled up at the closed orange gates, we waited optimistically to be let in. Sure enough, someone soon came and opened them. They welcomed us in, asking if we’d need hook-up power before deciding where we could park. We navigated the boggy field and pulled up next to a couple of other campers. It turned out that even with all three of our extension leads, we couldn’t quite reach the plug socket. Our broken lead was whisked away to be fixed, while our kind new neighbour let us connect our van directly to his so that we could charge up.

It was perhaps a little more than we would usually have chosen to pay, but with the grey drizzly weather we were happy to be somewhere with electricity and we certainly wouldn’t be generating much ourselves. It was also a useful bonus to have access to the kitchen. Normally we don’t bother much with hostel kitchens; we find they’re more hassle than they’re worth. We end up bringing in half our cooking equipment from the van and then have to repack it all again afterwards. However, with the Wallas out of action, we were more than happy to make use of the cooker and the cost of the campsite was infinitely cheaper than trying to cook on our back-up gas stove.

We spent the remainder of our waiting time here, letting the noise of the weekend pass us by. With the start of a new week and the parts now with Juan, we headed back into the city. He told us he needed a couple of days to fit them and test everything, and we decided we’d stay nearby as our time in Argentina was quickly running out. Instead of camping at the noisy park, we headed just around the corner to the tennis club. It was closer to the trains and the airport, but there’d be no exercise classes at 6am under the window and we felt this was the lesser of two evils.

It was a relatively quiet night and we made plans to pick up the Wallas the following day, which meant we had one day to kill. We decided to try and do some of the touristy things we had somewhat missed so far. First up, we walked down to the statue Floralis Genérica. This giant steel flower is supposed to be illuminated at night. It’s also meant to open and close its petals in the transition between light and dark, just like a real flower. We were a bit disappointed when we got there though, as the statue was dark. It seemed it had been switched off and, as we later found out, it had been damaged several months previously in a storm.

The next day, we tried to do better with our tourist activities. We decided to visit Recoleta Cemetery. This is especially famous as it houses the grave of Eva Perón, nicknamed ‘Evita’. You might know Madonna’s “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”, which was used in the musical about the life of this influential First Lady. However, when we got there, it turned out to be a bit pricier than we had anticipated. It wasn’t really that much, but perhaps because we knew we had a huge repair bill for the cooker looming, we didn’t feel like paying. Instead, we visited the free library, El Ateneo. This former theatre has been converted into a postcard-perfect bookshop.

After purchasing a couple of nice-looking maps, we wandered around and somehow, through no fault of our own, ended up in an Irish bar. We enjoyed a drink there before jumping back into a taxi, as it was getting a bit late and we were over an hour’s walk away from the van at this point. We hadn’t done especially well with our tourist day, but at least the time had finally come to pick up our cooker. We couldn’t wait to have it back. We went to the Chinese supermarket to stock up for Uruguay and then headed off to Juan’s.

It took us a while to get the cooker reinstalled. Juan brought his air compressor outside and blasted a load of soot out of the exhaust pipes still installed in the van. While I set about reconnecting everything, he topped up our tank with kerosene. He gave us a bottle of free fuel-line cleaner as well as nearly ten litres of fuel. The cooker fired up after several failed attempts, which were completely my fault as I hadn’t realised we were out of fuel. He was a really lovely guy and even though it had been a rather expensive venture, we were both so happy to have it back and working properly again.

With the afternoon drawing to a close and not many camping options available, we decided to break our golden rule and drive in the dark. We headed north and camped on the riverside in the border town of Gualeguaychú. With time running out rapidly, tomorrow we would cross the border into Uruguay.