South America Trip

Mike and Pat; SeventeenBySix.Wordpress.com has numerous links - inlcuding LifeRemotely. Also, why not a service body for the pickup versus a flatbed? Then you'll have the extra storage bins built in. Randall

Just for your amusement

Welcome to wild-camping Argentinian-style
The softies back home go on about all the trials and tribulations suffered at the hands of Australian officialdom and Caravan park owners, but here is a whole different ballgame.

Second night out from Buenos Aires - wild camping in a nice stand of Australian Eucalyptus trees well off the main road - had just settled into bed when there was a blinding light outside and a blip on the siren and shouting - in Spanish of course. Obviously a police car so cracked the side door and poked my head out to see a rambo wannabe, but obviously suffering a nervous breakdown, dancing and prancing from one side of a tree to the other, shouting his head off and waving a riot gun - stockless shotgun - all around the place while his offsider manned the 8" searchlight back at the car - while clutching a revolver and at least pointing it at the ground.

If it hadn't been to stupidly hilarious it would have been quite serious.


Anyway, I swung straight in to my usual cranky old grumpy barstard routine - "what do you think you are doing, We were asleep, why do you wake us up for nothing Put the gun down, turn off the light etc etc etc"
The idiot with the shotgun stepped back a couple of paces and the bloke at the car switched to limited English "out, out, show hands etc etc" so I shouted even louder "no chance - not coming out until you get rid of the guns and put the light out - and anybloody way, I've only got socks on and my pyjamas and you can see I have nothing in my hands" and slid the door closed a bit for emphasis.

Anyway, after a couple of minutes of total stalemate and lots of mutually incomprehensible shouting, the keystone kops finally realised they weren't going to get anywhere until they acted a bit more normally and DID put their guns in the car - or at least out of sight - and did swing the spotlight away.

On a roll, I said "not proper policemen - no uniforms!!" Boss man said "I boss, no need uniform" and rambo grabbed the cuffs of his pants and yanked upwards so hard I thought he was going to lift his feet off the ground "This IS uniform!!!!

Then "passaport, passaport" so I countered "show ID first or no passport" so rambo nearly ripped his pocket off in his eagerness to get his ID card out and handed it over so I carefully inspected it before saying OK, one moment" while I shut the door fully to dig out my passports and handed them over.

Then the usual Ahhhh, Australian ----- kangaroooo.
Sigh!!! Si, si, kangarooooo, si

Then came the attempts to justify their antics -" locals rang up, locals are bad people who will rob you.."
What the!!! Why then would they call the police BEFORE robbing and murdering us???
Then - "we were worried about your safety and wanted to tell you to go into town and stay at the service centre."
What the!!! The only danger were were facing was from rambo and his shotgun. Pull the other leg why don't you. I should add that 10' in front of their blazing high beams and driving lights was a battered Iveco van with foreign plates with the GB and EuroZone symbol clearly visible

Round and round in circles - broken finally by handshakes all-round and they drove off into the night. Betty all the time in bed wondering what troubles I would get her into this time..

Anyway, we did decide that they might send some locals around to hassle us if we stayed so we did go into the next town and stayed at the back of the service station.

Welcome to Argentina

At least they weren't touting for the local caravan park like in Morocco - although the Moroccans didn't wave guns in our face in the middle of the night in a deserted forest

And then there are the campgrounds. Hah!!!
We also ignore Argentinian campsites now - because they are usually a combination camp site, picnic area and party venue and Argentinians operate on a different internal clock to me.

This means just as we are settling down in bed, the Argentinians arrive in force for their BBQ and party. Kick-off is 10pm at the earliest and they don't bring little boom boxes, they bring full-size rock band speakers - and turn them up to the max.

We were somewhat bemused - not - when a party got going at midnight 5 metres from our van and continued until 4am. Don't mind music but this was the local garage band and their talents were appallingly deficient. That night there were 6 different parties playing 6 different types of music all at full volume plus riders practising for hours on the adjacent go-cart/motorbike track PLUS a huge rock concert a block away with very serious sound system that went all night and finally stopped at 10am. The sound (noise, cacophony) was palpable.

Nearly as bad as the Icelanders who make up for 24/7 night in winter by staying up 24/7 in summer.

This is a link to a free book download which is on travel in Mexico and Central America. http://www.liferemotely.com/download-the-ebook
so you may find some information on preparations that would be helpful. RYV

I posted a fairly long blurb on the truck camper side of what I found and Pat and I discussed as the best way to go. With help from the hackney site, trekamerica and and a lot of advice from Rick of the travelintortugas we came to the following conclusions.

Vehicle a pickup with a flat bed so that we have some extra storage space. Older diesel or gas, lots of power not very important due to generally poor roads. Addition of air ride seats due to roads and our physical condition.

Camper a good comfortable popup. In Colorado used Outfitters are available and quite well made. An aluminum frame is much preferable to wood frame due to road conditions. Loved our old Hallmark, but they just changed to aluminum and composite construction in the last couple of years so a used one would be quite expensive.

Blackwater- a portable macerator system carried in the flatbed storage boxes

Power- Primarily solar, best charge controller available(thanks Keelhauler for advice on the Morningstar Prostar) with extra batteries, 2kw inverter and backup Honda generator. Those storage boxes get used again.

Propane- portable tanks with every know type of adapter known to mankind.

On the downside I got word last week that I need to have two more vertebra fused as the back has gotten worse. Our planned departure for Mexico of mid October is out the window. We intended to spend most the winter exploring the land of the Huasteca and visiting with our wonderful friends in Valles and near Xalapa. Hopefully it will all work out

This link could help with your electrical questions.

Electrical Power around the World

Lots of info and links to folks doing it:

http://www.drivetheamericas.com/

This might be useful: US vs SA vehicle design. Yes, no reason not to have solar system in those places.

The entire website is a good read.

Doug Hackney (a long-time contributor to RVnet & Expedition Portal) maintains a website with links to South American waypoints for expeditioners traveling with their own vehicles (the nice thng about this waypoint set is that whey were compiled by big-rig world expeditioners FOR big rig World expedtioners; in light of this, you may want to contribute your own data to this set, on your return):

-"a collection from multiple sources. These waypoints include camp sites; proposed camp sites; vehicle service; vehicle supply, e.g. tires; LP/Propane supply; etc"

-point files of Doug's expedition camp sites throughout South America only

-South America tracks

These comprehensive and diverse waypoint sets come from several sources: Don Green, Doug Hackney, Simone & Frank and Stephen Stewart. Some of these expeditioners have fairly large (and tall) rigs (their tracks obviously addressing issues of large rig travel/vehicle road clearance in South America). Some of the service points pertain to specific truck brands (like the Fuso), however, a commercial truck repair facility is a great starting point IF your rig (regardless of make) experiences issues "way out there".

Since there are perhaps 70+ GPS proprietary file types on the market, all Doug's data sets are available in GPX (GPS exchange) file format, that can EASILY be converted into at least the World's most popular GPS file/brand formats (using the myriad free conversion software on the Net, today).

....anyhow, here--> is the link to Doug's web page, with download links...(copy and save the code into an already empty text document, and save this with a .gpx extension; or, in Windoze, right-click the GPX links, and save the file to your computer, then open this/these GPX files in Google Earth)

It would be interesting to *create* a bus barn waypoint set of South America; this would be of great interest to all the World's big (and medium sized) rig expeditioners traveling across Latin America (hint, hint)...

S-

Thanks for all the advice, sounds like solar is the way to go with an inverter and probably carry out little Honda 2000 when we really need the power. We do this a lot in Mexico as our favorite spot at El Banito has a very poor power system(a winter project for me-rebuild it). The bus barn idea sounds good and we'll either switch to a portapotty or portatote. As with all things truck camper, carrying it is the problem, probably a rack on the back.

The 230/110V problem is compounded because the 230V is at 50Hz as well in most places.

I'd say the most you can count on would be 10 amps, maybe occasionally 15A at 230V and because of the frequency difference you probably have to forget airconditioning and any other appliance that uses compressors or AC motors. Not hard to set up even a class a with enough solar and batteries to maintain a pretty comfortable lifestyle, particularly since you can follow the seasons.