Just before we left the Finca last Saturday, we recorded a podcast with Piotrek, the other workawayer. The recording lasted no less than 1.45 hours and soon this podcast will be available to listen to on Spotify (here). It was mainly about all our travels before this and how we came to vanlife. Furthermore, the start of our week after we had left the Finca mainly consisted of a lot of relaxation. In the end, we found a good camp spot at the leprosy quarantine village of Abades, which we thought was appropriate in the current situation. It was a super nice place close to the coast, we put up our awnings and settled down for a few days relaxing in this place. We wanted to reduce the chance of the virus possibly spreading further, if we have it, and therefore did not go to crowded places. Our days consisted of reading, video editing, writing updates, relaxing on the beach, lots of chatting, playing games, and of course delicious food. We took turns cooking and then also took turns doing the dishes, whoever cooked didn’t have to do the dishes and vice versa. The only exciting incident there was, was that Rianne was washed away by a big wave. Rianne and Enzio wanted to go swimming in the rock pool next to our camp. The water seemed very calm but just as they were walking, there came a set of 3 big waves. The first and second waves already drenched them, but the third wave was so big that it swept over Rianne and pulled her into the raging sea. Fortunately, the wave didn’t pull her into the sea, but she did fall badly on the hard rocks. She was of course very shocked and so were we. But afterward, we had a good laugh about the image of two drowned puppies still clothed who come back from their swimming adventure completely soaked from head to toe. We have a great time with Rianne and Enzio and it all feels so natural how we spend our time with them.
If you paid attention to the pictures of last weeks update you might have observed that Rianne was painting. This week we discovered what she was painting, a beautiful souvenir for us to bring home. Look how beautiful ?, a great present to remember our time together with.
After 4 days we became restless and we left our camp, it was time for a change of scenery. On the way to our next place, we had our gas topped up. Now that we have already run out of gas twice, we want to prevent this for the third time. So we drove past a place that was indicated on park4night. This turned out to be a mega large gas filling station, actually a kind of gas wholesaler where all empty gas bottles that you exchange in a store are filled. Fortunately, there was someone here who came to collect our gas bottles and return them 15 minutes later at the gate. Our bottle was certainly not empty yet, but they could still refill 2 kg of gas for a shocking price of 2.50 euros, haha. That next place was, by the way, Playas de las Americas, because a surf session was highly needed and while Jap was surfing, Lon baked an apple pie in the van for Amanda’s birthday the next day. The waves weren’t great and the highlight of the surf session was the moment that Jap was bitten in the foot by a fish. And no, it wasn’t one of those nibbling fish trying to score some dead skin, it was a really good bite to eat a piece of the toe. Fortunately, the fish was also shocked when it turned out that it was human meat and let it go. Jap and fish were scared but that was the end of the adventure. Then we went to El Medano to have a nice bbq with Rianne and Enzio. If you’ve been following our stories for a while, you know that Jap is no hero in making and using a BBQ at all. He didn’t grow up using a charcoal BBQ, which is probably also one of the reasons why we don’t use it very much. But luckily, Enzio, on the other hand, is a bbq master. He took over the bbq completely from us and so Jap was also able to learn from him. Hopefully, he can do it very smoothly next time. By the way, the biggest lesson of that evening was patience, something Jap could use some more of. The day after, and fortunately after a negative corona test, we happily continued our BBQ during our last visit to the Finca. It was Amanda’s birthday and so we said goodbye to her, the Finca, and secretly especially to the dogs from a great distance. We will miss the Finca and certainly Panda. We slept in a place close to the Finca, where unfortunately it was very windy for Rianne and Enzio. They moved in the middle of the night to a less windy place, but they came back in the morning because this was the last morning together with Rianne and Enzio, at least for the time being. We had a nice breakfast with the leftover apple pie and said goodbye to these two with tears in our eyes. We have spent almost every day together for the past 6 weeks and it is super special to have spent this time with these two wonderful people. At first, all four of us were not quite sure if it would click, we had only seen each other for 3 days on the road, and then it was super fun. But would that also work for longer?… But it was perfect. After one last hug and goodbye to the yeti, we headed north to Santa Cruz de Tenerife. From here we left for Fuerteventura. The last day in Tenerife we spent on a beach, enjoying the sun and continuing the preparations for Canda. Fun fact, in Tenerife there are no natural white sand beaches at all, there are only black sand beaches. The white sandy beaches that are here on the island have all been sprayed on and so is this beach. All sprayed with sand from the Sahara. We had a great time in Tenerife, this island exceeded all our expectations. We didn’t expect this island to be so diverse, so we explored it from left to right and top to bottom. We were done playing on this island.
Taking the boat to Fuerteventura was therefore very nice, we are looking forward to a new island and new adventures. And the fact that this island is known for surfing is of course a great bonus for Jap. The boat trip took us almost 5 hours and luckily there were hardly any waves, which gave us the time to fully dive into the preparations for Canada. Through the gram we came into contact with Lars, Dasja, and Nina the dog a.k.a. We.Travel.In. They gave us a very nice tip for a first camping spot on Fuerteventura. After some shopping and a jaspertje (we were at the wrong camping spot at first) we chatted with Wij.Reizen.In and then mostly relaxed in the van. There was a really strong wind and the Calima we experienced here paled to what we had experienced in Tenerife. There was so much dust in the air that you could only see a hundred meters away and everything was soon completely covered in dust. Hopefully, this will pass soon because then we can at least see something of the island.
As you can read, we’re looking forward to Canada. But there is also another reason that we are in full-on preparation mode. We have slight money stress. The past 8 months traveling through Europe has put a dent in our budget. Instead of the almost 27,000 euros per person that we had in mind for this trip, we are now almost under 20,000 euros per person. And the start of the year always means big bills on the doorstep. In addition, the dishwasher broke down in the house and suddenly we feel money rolling out of our pockets. Especially now with the booking of airplane tickets and the boat you are also talking about such large amounts that we feel cramped and it is as if we have no control over it. Money is also so abstract, although 20,000 per person is still a lot of money. But the big problem is: we don’t know how much we’re going to need to get to Argentina, it’s such a great distance and such a long time. Our budget was always a gamble, but that makes it difficult to get a grip on how much money we will need for such a trip. Especially because we don’t want to have our minds with money all the time during the trip, we want to be able to do the things we want to do without having to think about it too much. We’re trying to look into that crystal ball in hopes of finding answers, but for now, we’re just thinking of scenarios for when we run out of money or ways to stretch our budget as far as possible. At the moment, we are looking for a workaway address for our first camper-free two weeks in Canada to at least save a little money. It especially keeps Lon awake sometimes, which of course is stupid because lying awake doesn’t solve anything. But it certainly shows how much we want this. And in the end, it always works out.
Much love from Fuerteventura.
Jap and Lon
Menu of the week
| Sunday | Vietnamese Springrolls |
| Monday | Home-made Pasta with cream sauce |
| Tuesday | Ravioli with Truffle a la Follow.The.Yeti |
| Wednesday | Bbq |
| Thursday | Bbq and Home-made Apple Pie |
| Friday | Ravioli with Truffle a la Lon |
| Saturday | Pizza |
Spendings of the Week
Budget per day €54 and per week €378 and per month €1700
| What/Where | Cost (€) |
| Camping | – |
| Eating out | 24 |
| Parking | – |
| Activities | – |
| Groceries | 100,98 |
| Diesel | – |
| Other | 2,54 |
| Total | 127,52 |
Route
Driven kilometers: 181 (4444 since last time we did this section)
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