Welding work in Hohenau

After watching another win for the England football team the previous day, Monday arrived, and it was time to leave. We were in no great hurry; the border was a three-hour drive, and as long as we got out of the country today, we didn’t need to do anything else.

After several days of packing, cleaning, and organising, Ruby was finally ready to bounce down Stefan’s dirt road one last time. At least this time, accompanied by a horrific clattering noise from the rear of the van, all the back suspension was ready to go. We’d still be back in a garage in the near future to finish off the welding that didn’t get done previously, but that could wait until we had renewed our visas. That was now top of the priority list as they ran out tomorrow. While we could have paid to extend them, it was $100 each—and stupidly, the fine for overstaying was also about the same amount. The only way to do it for free was to go to an actual border.

After so long without really driving, three hours seemed to pass in no time. Before we knew it, we were once again sitting in the ridiculous traffic at the border. Once again, in an attempt to keep things moving, we went to immigration separately while the other person stayed in the van in the queue. Even so, we crawled along in near-standstill traffic.

I had a look at our engine data while in the queue and noticed that the engine fuel trims were utterly out of range. Maybe that had something to do with our odd revving problem, which was on my list of things to sort out.

Eventually, we reached the start of the bridge, where all the previous lanes of traffic finally merged into two. With the bottleneck behind us, we reached a steady crawl as we entered Brazil. When we were alongside immigration, I hopped out to get my passport stamped. Luckily, there was no queue at all, and in a matter of minutes, it was done. I then walked back out to where Lee was waiting around the corner so he could go and do his. With ourselves officially in Brazil, we drove a few minutes away to what was supposed to be a quiet street spot for the night. We hadn’t bothered doing the paperwork for Ruby as she had an extra month remaining, and as we wasn’t leaving the city, no one was going to check.

Over the next two nights, we stayed in Foz do Iguaçu. Firstly, to make sure we’d have no problems being given more time when we re-entered Paraguay, and secondly, because there were a few things we wanted to do. The next day, we drove back to the border, paying for a rather expensive parking spot where someone was guaranteed to keep an eye on the van for us. From there, we walked back into Paraguay.

I had been wanting to visit the enormous shopping malls here for a while, but we never seemed to have the time, and we didn’t want to leave the van in hot weather with the cats inside. Now that it was winter, temperatures were more reasonable, making it much easier to go. We planned to buy ourselves a new hard drive, as one of ours had been dropped and corrupted. This had led to many, many hours of slowly recovering data, and while we had saved nearly everything, we needed to back it up again. The other item on our list was a new car radio. We’d been driving for a long time with no music, and it was time to fix that. We managed to pick up both items in the enormous Shopping China Importados—an electrical goods heaven!

We walked back over the bridge with our new purchases, thinking wistfully about the nice new coffee machine still sitting on the shelf back there. Our parking time ran out at half past four, so we didn’t have much time to spare. We grabbed a snack from a nearby stall; I was ecstatic to be able to get some pão de queijo again before returning to the van.

After another quiet night at the church car park, we set off once again to do some shopping, this time on the Brazilian side. We headed to a big supermarket and stocked up on all those things that are impossible to find in Argentina—principally good coffee and halloumi cheese!

Now that we were fully stocked up, it was time to re-enter Paraguay. We joined the queue once again. It seemed we always managed to time it so that traffic was worse in the direction we were heading. The jam started way back at the main road junction, where I had to get out and try to stop traffic so Lee could get up a steep hill onto the main road. Rather than letting us in, a taxi driver physically pushed me out of the way with his car. We just about made it up the slope, the smell of burning clutch following us as we joined the main queue.

I went to sign out of Brazil, but when I came back, Ruby was nowhere to be seen. I walked back down the road to check she hadn’t broken down. With the fuelling being so wrong, we were nearly out of petrol, and I didn't want to fill up with Brazilian fuel on this side. She wasn’t back down the road, though, and traffic was moving a lot quicker than when we re-entered. I walked all the way over the bridge to find Lee parked up on the other side. This meant he had to walk all the way back across to get stamped out, but at least no one could question us about the car being illegally in Brazil! Getting stamped back into Paraguay was an easy affair, and soon we left the border traffic behind. Stopping at the first petrol station, we set the satnav to take us to Puerto Obligado. We thought we would stop here for a few days while we got back into the swing of living in the van. It was a nice free spot—which is somewhat hard to come by in this part of the country—and close to Hohenau, meaning we could go to the good welder.

By the time we reached the spot, it was late in the day. It had been a long drive down, but now, with a new visa in hand, we could relax. I messaged Elvio the welder and got Ruby booked in for Monday. We spent the next few days enjoying the mostly quiet spot. Even though it was the middle of the week, there was still some late-night music on occasion, but it wasn’t too bad, even over the weekend.

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We continued watching the World Cup and made ourselves some nice sushi. I even managed to keep my sourdough bread-baking dreams going.

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I fitted the new radio, only to realise that out of our six speakers, only two were working. This led to another day's project trying to fix the wiring to the front amp, which had completely rotted away. This wasn't the only wiring issue. I had got to the bottom of our crazy fuel trims, finding that one of the wires to our lambda sensor had all but broken. Happily, this is a free repair rather than a £145 new sensor, so i set about fixing that with a view as well.

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Meanwhile, Lee flew our new drone, Johnny for the first time.

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Suddenly, as if five days were nothing, it was Monday morning and time to leave. We had actually seen Elvio when he came down to fish over the weekend, so we knew he was definitely expecting us. I couldn’t wait to get the door fixed. After camping for two days in the city where we had to climb in from the front every time we wanted to shut the sliding door, we had given up. Now we just left it slightly ajar at night. This meant we could open it again from the inside in the morning, but as the weather was cold and damp, it wasn’t ideal.

When we arrived at the garage, we parked up in the corner out of the way. The work would take a couple of days, so we’d be staying here overnight. Elvio kindly offered us showers, electric hook-up, and toilets, so the only unhappy campers were the cats! It wasn’t long before the welder made a start on the door.

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While he did that, I changed the CV boot. One of our brand-new investments all the way from Canada had only lasted 500 km, it seemed. We started to wonder if the cats on their leads were damaging them. Either way, I wasn’t going to leave my brand-new CV joints unprotected, so I swapped it out straight away. While I was down there rolling around on the floor, I also swapped out the cable for the rear amp. I had got the front speakers working, but the rear ones were still dead. It turned out that even though the wire looked completely fine on the outside, it was damaged internally and wasn't sending voltage to the amp.

The final job on my list was to adjust the handbrake cable. The welder had finished for the day; the sliding door runner was repaired, and the new metal just needed painting. With him gone, I jacked up Ruby and quickly adjusted the cables. That was all the 'under the van' jobs done, so I rewarded myself with a nice hot shower. It wasn’t just me who had been busy, though: the welder had not only done the sliding door, but also made a good start on the front passenger seat. This had been a problem I’d only discovered recently when I went to move the chair and the bracket attaching it to the floor fell off in my hand.

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The next day, that was finished off. Then they worked on fixing one final large hole in the driver's side wheel arch. We walked into town to find some new bushings for the shock absorbers in the meantime. By the time we got back, it was done and a coat of primer was going on. We headed to a nearby pub to watch Spain v France, wondering if this would be a good place to watch England v Argentina in a few days. The place was nearly empty, though.

After two fairly quiet nights at the garage, Ruby was nearly done. I needed to change out the front suspension bushings and the brake pads. While I had the wheel off, Elvio sprayed underseal on all the newly welded metal. Finally, I was happy with the suspension and deemed us 'off-road ready'. We paid Elvio a very reasonable 800,000 guaraní (£98) and headed back to the river to watch a sad moment as England dropped out of the World Cup against Argentina.