Expedition Conservation

NUEVA BERLIN 🧡 After crossing the border from Argentina, we spent lovely days by Uruguay River in a municipal camping of Nueva Berlin savoring each sunrise and sunset.

The local dogs completely stole our hearts, they slept by the car the whole night and cuddled the chilly days with us. Oh, and we threw sticks, sometimes for hours. It was too hard, and heartbreaking, to leave!

If anyone in Uruguay or Argentina is looking for a loyal companion, please adopt one of the adorable strays at the municipal campsite of Nueva Berlin, unfortunately our Defender life doesn’t allow that 💔

QUESTION: can we drive like this?

We have to find an easy way to bypass Defender’s leaking heater valve in the bush. Can we just connect these two hoses coming out from the valve?

As we arrived to Ibera National Park in Argentina, we had suddenly lost almost all coolant within 100 km drive. Luckily we have a Black Box monitoring system that alarmed us about low water level, and we topped up immediately driving just a few kilometers to the nearest camp.

Now we’re trying to find a bush fix to safely bypass the leaking heater valve. While most leaks are actually not Defender’s fault (only poor workmanship), this leak definitely is ”designed by Land Rover” 😅 After properly bypassing the heater unit in Africa for the very same reason, we finally installed a new, original heater valve in Finland and it showed first symptoms of weakness within only a few months 🙈

The plan is to replace the poorly designed (sorry Land Rover) plastic valve, which starts to leak from glued seams, whenever we can source a metal aftermarket spare from Europe. Now we just have to drive around 1000-2000 km safely to Uruguay. Can we do it like this?

SIGNS - ant eaters, pumas, foxes 🦊🐆

While overlanding El Chaco region in northern Paraguay we’ve seen more signs and footprints than actual wildlife.
Chaco is known for night safaris, because most animals are shy and not used to humans. But with luck, you can see even pumas and jaguars.

We’ve spotted some deers, foxes, peccaries, and even flamingos during daylight hours - and it’s beautifully green at this time of the year 💚 Less than we hoped but there’s a big reason for it.

To our great surprise - and disappointment - Parque Nacional Chaco is closed until August. Thus, you can only visit some smaller reserves and projects (we’ll do another post about them soon).

TIPS FOR OVERLANDERS:
Roads are very good until Filadelfia, the main hub and mennonite settlement. From there, bumby and dusty (now also muddy) Trans-Chaco Highway ventures further north towards the remote ranger posts of Chaco National Park. There are no campsites but you can stay at the ranger stations - for free. Stock up everything in Filadelfia (fuel, food, drinks).

Chaco NP was our main reason to visit Paraguay. We probably wouldn’t have made the detour had we known about the closure. But then we would have missed a lot of cool experiences!

Full-time overlanding makes you flexible to change plans and make the best of your time on the road 🙌