ESCAPING EUROPE: We need to leave! // S05E01

After months of lockdown in Morocco during the pandemic, we are partway through an action-packed rescue mission to get all of us out of Morocco and safely back to my home country. We've just boarded a government rescue ferry from Africa to Europe with one instruction. We must get out of Europe. To be honest we were concerned about traveling across Europe right now during this pandemic. We did not know what to expect but we certainly weren't anticipating this. I need to get this out now. It needs to come out. One thing's for sure, traveling has changed. It is not going to be the same and we're about to find out what travel looks like now during the pandemic. We are attempting to drive around the world. You guys are invited too so subscribe and buckle up. It's one heck of a ride. It was a surreal feeling to be on the boat heading somewhere after such a long time being stuck in one spot in Morocco. It was also surreal to be on a pandemic rescue ferry and surrounded by other mask wearing travelers. Although everyone on this boat has a story to share from their time in lockdown in Africa, there wasn't a great deal of socializing on the five-hour ferry crossing. They told us that we could take the dog upstairs so we were going to leave her downstairs in the car with all the fans going. She would be fine. So we brought her upstairs and they told us we could and then they took her off us and told us we had to put her in here. It's not really bad. It's like five hours and there's no panic. It smells like other dogs doesn't it? It's Spania! It's really eerily quiet coming into Spain here into the port it's it's like we're coming into like a ghost town or something it's actually really peaceful and beautifully quiet but eerie it just goes to show like how noisy we are like life is how chaotic and hectic it is it's just dead here like it's a really strange feeling gotta say you couldn't ask for better weather to be arriving in Spain I mean it's literally perfect right now perfectly perfect temperature beautiful golden hour it's like we're arriving in paradise hopefully it turns out to be like that but I think that we might be in for a bit of a rough ride through Spain from what they told us through emails the advice we've been told is travel is not going to be it's not going to be leisurely let's put it that way step-by-step we moved through the multi-step process of getting through the official checkpoints obviously this isn't a normal time to travel these are extremely long delays which is understandable not complaining about it need to be thorough at this point in the moment we've just had to sign a sworn statement saying the reasons that we want to travel obviously we just ticked filming combi life not true we don't know what to expect whether people are going to be restricting our movements whether we're going to be hassled and moved on it's a massive uncertainty between us and everybody that was on the rescue ship we're just all gonna have to see what the lay of the land is as we enter Europe another Australian couple so what is it about Australian girls and British guys I mean I know I know we were finally inching closer to a new form of freedom but the last step was the one that we were most concerned about our dog it was absolutely vital that we had all of Alaska's paperwork in order to be able to bring her back into Europe from a high-risk rabies country that process was riddled with confusion with every bet offering conflicting instructions it's very complicated and once again the all the rules have changed we were crossing our fingers that our Peruvian dog with US UK and Portuguese documents had all of the correct paperwork to get into Spain from Africa we were pretty happy to be on Spanish soil and eternally grateful to all the people who had helped make this rescue mission come together we would love to now be able to take off and explore Europe but as Spain was just themselves emerging from a long lockdown we unfortunately cannot stay and we must make our way north and out of Spain so that's the plan this is actually the first time we've used our jerrycan we just have it in case of emergencies or in case we're going for a really cheap country like Morocco somewhere much more expensive like Europe I was a little bit curious about leaving the the wavy and jerrycan on the side this whole time but it's been full of petrol in this baking hot Sun and it hasn't leaked a bit so I'm very very very happy with this product I'm also very happy saving about 50% on my gasoline cost today what's the cost of petrol in Morocco at the moment 70 cent euro a litre and here in Spain it's 1.25 why not you might as well take the cheap gas this is an absolutely amazing trail that's off-road pretty much through a it's gonna end up at the Mediterranean Sea and there's flowers on either side this is just honestly you couldn't make this trail any better we're never going to be able to make it out of Spain in one go so when we have to stop we plan to keep our distance from people fortunately we are experts at finding isolated camp spots this is a slice of paradise it's Friday night there would normally be people imagine and that noise is the only noise that we have the Mediterranean Sea lapping on our own private beach we've got to stop for the night somewhere so we might as well stop in paradise good work place to wake up see to that sound it's actually a alarm clock lapping waves Mediterranean Sea let them take that waking up in places like this is why I love the better life the sea is calm and I know we've been through a lot but just wait days to come and carry us like wind in our sails this really is a paradise location and such a huge difference from being stuck inside over the past few months but we didn't come here to relax at the beach we came because this spot is far away from people which gives us the perfect opportunity to take care of some essential maintenance a couple of days earlier during the rush to drive through Morocco to make the rescue ferry we experienced a couple of breakdowns there is still a long way to go and I need to make sure that we're not left stranded on the side of the road again in the meantime this was a great opportunity for us to all enjoy the fresh salty air of the Mediterranean she's a hunting dog she was in and out of the bushes and still now she wants to it reminds me of when we did this up in Alaska when we were driving the whole road up to Prudhoe Bay the very very top of Alaska in the Arctic Circle and we just let her out of the van and we let her run she sure does love running alongside the Kombi I'm not sure what it is it's a good way for her to get exercise when we've been in the car for days and days just driving like in Alaska and like here the last few days we've just been driving she doesn't really get any exercise so this is the best way to kind of get it in one good go we've run out of water being in this spot for a few days now and one of the locals told us there is a well at the top of the hill here so we're going to try and find that I think we found it what a cute little well I see this is so Mediterranean isn't it? Yeah. Let's go check it out. Guess we're having a shower today baby. So cute. I would call this place batman's paradise. It's a really cute little town here. It's nice to be back in Europe where we can recycle. Recycling options were limited in North Africa. I'm not sure how smart it is to to be in this this canyon here in this well basically it's a dry riverbed I never like parking in dry riverbeds I've had that nightmare situation happen to two friends of ours so we won't be staying here for long but flash floods are no joke so you definitely have to think about that as My mother always reminds me. Thanks Mum. Dry riverbeds always seem tempting especially during the summer but at the beach we noticed something in the rocks it was a memorial plaque in five languages with the chilling statements if it rains don't camp here you can die The Kombi is now ready to go and Spain has opened up its beaches but as much as we'd like to stick to this beautiful coast we have to get moving north but we didn't get too far before unfortunately we had to stop again Good morning. Good morning. I have a cyst and my head is infected. I'm walking. I don't live here. Getting a police escort. Tried to drive into town to look for a medical centre and they pulled us over straight away. Nice of the police to stop us and help like us find some medical attention unfortunately I wasn't able to go into that hospital clinic because I don't have a certificate proving I don't have COVID-19 and they didn't have the ability to to test me there so today I think I'm gonna go and try and find a bigger hospital that's what they recommended and it's my head I've got this big lump on my head it's getting infected and it's been getting worse and worse over the last few weeks and now it's really hurting and all the infections going in here and the infections not going away so that's obviously bad the last thing I want to do is go to a medical facility right now when they've got their hands full with other stuff but I think that this is this needs to be taken care of so I'm gonna have to go bite the bullet and get that done. It turns out that finding a medical centre at this moment in time that will agree to see a passing nomad is understandably easier said than done. Finally I found a health centre who agreed I could pay for treatment. I don't like going to the doctor at the best of times never mind during a pandemic. I wish I didn't have to take up the resources but this problem had started during lockdown in Morocco. I'd hoped that it would clear up on its own but it was getting worse by the day. Unfortunately I could not afford to put this off any longer. I think he just like cut it a bit and then jumped up on a chair and then jumped on it. He was just like trying to like squeeze stuff out of it I feel like my brain has been squeezed through my head through my scalp. They said I couldn't pay for it but they sent a bill to me in England. It's nice service but quick service that's for sure. There's no one in there. I think nobody wants to go to hospital right now. It's still bleeding she said it's still gonna bleed. I've got a bald spot but I guess that's at least my worries. She stuck this needle in. I swear she stuck it in until it hit my skull. It hurts so much. So you're gonna go back tomorrow? They said I've got to come back tomorrow. Just to do what? To do it again. So they're just taking out the? Squeezing out the infection. Looks like we're gonna be around this area for a while because the hospital said they need to see me every day because my head is a little bit complicated. Yeah no kidding. But that means that we're gonna be camping out around here maybe here tonight would you reckon Leah? Looks like quite an interesting beach let's go see what we can find. This spot is so fascinating like I've been walking around like looking at the rocks on the ground as you do when you're at the beach and it is surrounded like covered in lava rocks. So look at this one you can see how it's like actually like melted and like cooled down here it's so cool I wish I knew more about rocks like I wish we had a traveling geologist with us in the in the combi and this one is really cool because it's got like lava on top of lava so it must have been one layer of lava and then this one came down on top of it. Very fascinating I don't know if it's just because I'm getting older but I'm very fascinated by rocks and nature I guess more so than I was when I was younger. Leah wants to bring all these with us to Australia and as cool as they are and as cool as much as I would like to have them. They're bloody heavy. This spot was the closest and the most secluded location nearest to the hospital. Again we wanted to make sure that we were away from people whilst Ben was getting medical treatment. We might not be able to go out and explore Spain at this time but we were blessed to be able to call this Mediterranean beach home for a week. We drove into hospital every day to get Ben's head treated and even though lockdown was over the streets were still quite empty. So Spain has started to open up their shops just like their main shops like some restaurants. There's still a lot of shops that are closed. The streets are really empty and quiet but the necessities are open which is good and people are walking around and we have to wear masks when we're around people, a group of people and also when we got here about a day after we got here they opened up the beaches as well so people are enjoying the beaches again too. So even though it's still really quiet here there's still some shops that are starting to open back up and some normality is coming back to Spain. Every day I've been coming to the hospitals for my head it's been opposite this travel agents and there's been nothing in the window at all because obviously they've been closed and there's no chance of any holidays and today is actually the first day that I've seen signs in there so that's a sign that we're returning to normality however all of these holidays are the kind of local like they're around Spain Portugal and definitely in Europe none of the kind of tropical stuff that we would have seen here previously so but at least there's hope for the travel industry. I feel good that the Kombi is now ready to go and we'll make the drive north. I feel much more confident that I've been able to spend a bit of time checking over everything and putting right what was going wrong. I also feel great that my head is now good and the doctors have given me the the all clear. I kind of wish that they were able to just sew it up and I was able to just get on the road but they made me come back every single day but now it's closing up they've told me I don't have to come back anymore I'm free to travel. I also feel good that we've been able to spend these past two weeks in self-quarantine without having to speak to anybody and staying so far off-grid and remote. As much as I love the Spanish people and as much as I would love to be chatting with them now unfortunately is not the time for making friends so you know but at least we've been able to stay away from everybody. But now it's time for us to hit the road. Northbound we go. Now that we have the green light to continue our journey home it is time for us to push north. We don't need anything else happening that can stop us from leaving Spain. I've got something stuck in my eyeball. Back to A&E again. Oh dear I guess my bad luck isn't over just yet. We are still a long way off and our challenge is to travel through Europe whilst avoiding people. Is that even possible? That will be a story for next time.