Our stories have been a bit boring lately, we don’t have the greatest adventures. At least that is how it feels for us. But that’s only because we are now fully focused on what is probably one of the greatest adventures of our lives. It would be funny and nice if you could sometimes let others feel what you feel. Those jitters, the urge, the deep deep enthusiasm and I would almost call it a longing for what hopefully is about to happen is huge. And besides all this, of course, we also feel many other things, restraint, fear, lack, and sometimes doubt, but that other feeling is a lot bigger. And of course, it has to because why else would you leave so much behind, what you are going to do must be very big and important to you. We don’t just do this because we can, we do it because we want to and it makes us very, very happy. And I don’t think many people understand that. But sometimes you meet people who do, of which you immediately know they understand because you see it in them. That’s how we met Inge van gettin^lost. She has been traveling for 5 years, first in her Toyota through Africa and now her car is in Argentina. She traveled there for a while but came back because of the corona. She now has a corona bus, as she calls it herself, a beautiful old Mercedes ambulance. The enthusiasm that splashes off, the understanding, just the feeling that you really understand each other is special. She immediately knows and feels how important this is to us and how happy you can feel if you can do it. We started chatting with her and suddenly we were almost 3 hours further.
We met her at our first beach spot in Fuerteventura, the one that Lars and Dasja tipped us about. We immediately stayed there for 5 days. The weather kept on being “bad” there was a sandstorm which caused a lot of dust in the air, the wind was blowing hard and it was relatively cold. In the evening there was a big thunderstorm and so on and so forth. We were on a beautiful beach, but it wasn’t beach weather. So we went for a walk in the area, with the dog of Dasja and Lars, played some games with them, and especially checked a lot off our checklist. We arranged new insurance policies, went to great lengths to find out where we had the least extra fees when paying with foreign currency, arranged a workaway spot for the moment we arrive in Canada but are still without Bob, and tried to put together a schedule with appointments for when we are back in the Netherlands. And because the weather was not so good, these things got done. So that was nice.
After 5 days we wanted to continue because we needed to “do/discover something”. So we drove to the town of Betancuria. On the way, we made a stop at a viewpoint and were almost literally blown away. Not because of the view, which was not super spectacular, but because of the strong wind, my goodness it was blowing hard. We did the test to hang against it and we almost succeeded. In any case, walking was impossible. But we dragged ourselves up and looked around a bit. Then on to Betancuria, it was really ini inimini but we found a nice restaurant and had a nice lunch there. Because we want and can to take it easy, because there is not much to see and do on the island, we decided to stay in the town. Also the next morning Jap had a business meeting with other Jasper about their fermentation project and the internet was good here.
The next day we were woken up noisily because they were breaking open the concrete of the parking lot next to us. We are staying here for free so you won’t hear us complaining about that. And by the time Jap started his meeting, the noise was over, so that was nice. The next stop was some rockpools. The weather was still not great but you have to do something.. We found beautiful pools a fair walk from the parking lot and thought that a dip in the butt naked should be fine here. Lon went to chill with her bare buttocks in her floaty and Jap wanted to capture the environment with the drone. But can you remember when the wind was blowing hard? We forgot for a moment that we were standing between the rocks and therefore we didn’t feel any wind, but when you come outside and even higher than the cliff wall there is quite a strong wind. In other words, bad luck, drone gone. As soon as Jap started flying the drone, the drone was immediately pulled by the wind and only went further and further away from us. Jap wanted to get him back by putting him in sports mode but instead, he put him in the scenic mode because of his stress. In other words, extra slow so that he moved further away from us even faster. Fortunately, he found that out fairly quickly and eventually got the drone back with the sport mode, it wasn’t easy, but he slowly came closer again. Due to the stress, Jap didn’t watch when grabbing the drone from the sky and got the propellers against his finger, so he was scarred by this adventure with a lot of small cuts. That suited this adventure. Lon, meanwhile, was still bare-bottomed in her floaty. Lon was so distracted by the spectacle that she forgot to be afraid of the water. All’s well that ends well.
We drove on to our sleeping place a little further on the coast. However, it was blowing so hard all night that we slept badly. Jap eventually put his earphones in with some music because he was listening to it all the time, the same idea as you keep on listening to someone snoring loudly next to you.
The next day, while running, we discovered another beach that had perfect waves for Jap to surf, so moved there and didn’t do much other than that for the rest of the last few days.
However, there is one more story I have yet to write. This story is also a bit embarrassing but typical for the “struggles” in the van. We try to limit peeing in our portapotty because the more we use it, the more we have to empty it. We had a yogurt bucket for a while but closing it properly didn’t work the way we wanted so we tried to upgrade to a drinking bottle with a screw cap and a large opening. Perfect for Jap, for Lon, until now impossible and after several attempts that resulted in a pee ballet on the floor, she no longer has permission for the time being, not even from herself to try again… You would think, buy a small funnel. But where do you leave something like that, it’s dirty and you don’t want to have it lying around in the van. We will probably buy some kind of shewee with a storage box or something to solve this problem.
Love from us.
Jap and Lon
Menu of the week
| Sunday | Couscous with vegetarian balls |
| Monday | Dahl soup |
| Tuesday | Left-over dahl soup |
| Wednesday | Truffle Ravioli with pumpkin cream sauce |
| Thursday | Tiroler Grostle |
| Friday | Gado Gado |
| Saturday | Left-over Gado Gado |
Spendings of the Week
Budget per day €54 and per week €378 and per month €1700
| What/Where | Cost (€) |
| Camping | – |
| Eating out | 33 |
| Parking | – |
| Activities | – |
| Groceries | 22,67 |
| Diesel | – |
| Other | 100,-* |
| Total | 155,67 |
Route
Driven kilometers: 115
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NL