The HIGHS AND LOWS of PANDEMIC TRAVEL S05E02.

We're part way through relocating from North Africa to Great Britain and so we were driving across Europe as countries emerged from lockdown. So given the recent state of emergency in Spain we're hoping to travel and stay socially distant from others but as you know when you live off-grid and on the move things don't always go to plan. I've got something stuck in my eyeball like an actual splinter in my eye. We are driving around the world. You guys are invited too so subscribe and buckle up. It's one heck of a ride. Got to go back to hospital again. What is this? How many hospitals have we been to now? This is like the fourth one or something. They discharged me last week and said that my eye is okay but it's been itching and irritating me and I just went to an optometrist with the proper tools to actually have a look at my eye and she said yeah it looks like there's something in there going rusty. So today marks one week that something rusty has been in my eye and irritating me and no wonder I'm starting to lose my vision. Time to get that taken care of. I did not want to go to a big hospital in a big city but I think that's the only way I'm going to get proper care so let's do this. Every now and again though you do see a coronavirus patient coming in the door like on the ventilator and everything. Did I get it out? All done. Just stuck a needle in my eye like stuck a needle in my eye and dug it out. Dug it out? So there's no damage to the eye? That's what I said to him. I said like I'm really worried I'm gonna go blind. I was genuinely worried. My vision was getting worse and worse. The last lady told me it was getting rusty like nine days of a piece of metal in your eye. Worst nightmare but I was a legend. So he said that he didn't it's not going to get damaged? No he said it would be fine. We've decided to come and find a campsite today in town or just outside the city because there wasn't really anywhere to stay in the city and we didn't really want a big van lifing in the city anyways during this time. So this camp spot was the only place that was open around this area. Everyone everywhere else was closed and we pretty much have the place all to ourselves. We're the only ones here. So we've got the pool all to ourselves, the gym, the space, it's really quiet, nothing really around, nothing really going on. But you know there are some plus sides to the pandemic. The lower number of tourists is definitely one of them. It's been a bit difficult for us because our camper van, we don't have a toilet in our camper van and usually we rely on public toilets or going into like cafes and shops when we need to go if we're not out in the wild. So the shops have all closed their toilets, even cafes and restaurants, some of them have their toilets closed. So it's been very very difficult for us to not have a bathroom. So it's nice being here and having a shower and a toilet when we need to too. So that just takes a bit of stress off us for a little while. We're making the most of being here with the washing machine. So we're getting some washing done and while Ben's eyes healing we're going to be staying here for a couple of days until he's ready to see again because you can only see out of one eye. There we go, happy days. She's giving me some drops for my eye. Look at this one, look at this one. I can't see nothing out of that thing now. Look at the state of it. Oh my days. I think she might have given me the wrong drops. So since being here and having internet too we've been reading some comments on the videos, one of the latest videos about us leaving Morocco. There were a lot of people saying why don't you just get married. Yeah why would you marry me? To get rid of all those visa issues because we keep coming across all these issues all the time with you know us having different visas and passports. Australian, British, Peruvian dog, American car. Yes, unfortunately getting married doesn't just solve those visa issues automatically. You don't automatically get UK residency or UK passport just because you're married. You still need to apply for that and to be able to do that you need to be a resident there. You need to have a house and a job and show that you're staying there. You can't just get a passport and get a residency when you're traveling around, you're not really based anywhere. Nomad life is complicated. But you're here to marry me right? Eventually we'll get married. She's totally pushing that question like yeah sure sometime in the future. When do we have time to get married? We should make time. How can you ever have time if you do not make time? Tell me which film that's from. No idea. Come on. During this recovery period we did some planning for our route to drive across the world. With the global pandemic, plans are more than likely to change. So we needed a plan B and a plan C and a plan D just in case a second wave comes. Are you looking for a free ride? Should we go through? We've driven all day and night to get to the Pyrenees and to the French border and now we're waiting because the French border is about to relax the quarantine measures with Spain in the next day. So we just need to find somewhere to stay. What about there? Yeah. Stay here. We need to find somewhere secluded and these mountains are beautiful. There's so many spots here. Wow. Oh Alaska you are gonna like this one. So nice. You're gonna love it here. Are you ready to see your new home for the day? How clear is that water? Oh it's cold. This water is ridiculously clear. So nice. I think we can claim this spot for ourselves today. Yeah. This spot reminds me of the time that we were in California. Remember when we hiked for those two days to get to that river spot? Oh where was that? That was like Big Sur area. Yeah it was beautiful. We found this like river that was like similar to this. Yeah it does actually. That was where we were friends all those years ago. We're not friends anymore. Oh we were just friends. Now we're friends with benefits. Remember we hiked for two days and I had all those blisters on my nose. Yeah we ran out of food and we had to survive on cookies and peanut butter. Yeah that's right. Still doing the same thing now five years later. Crazy. Alaska hasn't stopped fishing since we got here. The river here is so clear that you can see all the little fish swimming around. So she's having an absolute ball. She hasn't stopped wagging her tail. She's frantically wagging her little tail trying to catch the fish. She's having a ball. Such a beautiful spot here. It's perfect. I'm so glad we found this spot. I think we're pretty fortunate that during the pandemic at a time like this that we're able to live away from people and like have the opportunity to stay for a week or two weeks with the amount of water and food that we can carry that we can just self-isolate and like social distance. I think even if Europe does open back up and tourism starts we're going to keep away from people still and be in places like this and just to keep safe and stay in quiet isolated places like this I think is the best thing to do this summer. Look at this sexy man coming down the river. He's got candies. At this moment we're supposed to be social distancing and there are still people coming to this river to enjoy it and obviously it's beautiful but I think in this time if we really want to enjoy travel responsibly it pays to just go that little bit further like walk a little bit further down the river and you'll find places like this you know this is there's nobody here there's been nobody here all day we've got it all to ourselves and like we're parked just down there so like we just have to change travel just a little bit and we can still enjoy it responsibly. Summer is just the best time isn't it? I don't know if it's more kind of significant this year I really am feeling just so much joy in being outside and the smells of summer and just the flowers and just it's such a joy it really is I think it's you know all the more so because I'm appreciating every single moment I can spend outdoors at the moment and also because I'm not sure how much of this European summer we're going to be able to experience because it looks like we may have to get out of Europe and in this moment in time it's not clear at all if we're going to be allowed back in so it's just a case of trying to enjoy little micro moments like this as much as possible and I'm sure we're not the only people that are appreciating being out of lockdown and trying to make the most of summer whilst we've got it because you guys are in the same boat as we are who knows what's coming for us right? It's absolute serenity right now what a beautiful place to wake up we are totally on our own here but last night in the middle of the night this whole scene was completely different like literally bang on midnight all these cars started turning up and we counted them there was about 50 people came down onto the the riverbank here and started standing around in the water with their shoes off we have no idea what they're doing if you'd have told me three months ago we'd be parked by a river and at midnight 50 people would turn up in masks I'd have been petrified the mystery remains what was happening we still have no idea what they were doing I kind of wanted to get out and ask him hey what's going on just out of curiosity but we just figured we'd just let them go like within 15 minutes they were gone we had some theories like it was like it was a new moon it was midnight we're like is it some kind of ritual is it like a baptism thing they were kind of singing these beautiful songs as well and I think they were trying to be a bit quiet because we were here they didn't want to wake us but yeah I'm so I don't know how to find out what that was like if it was just maybe it was like a memorial or something like a gathering for somebody or so very strange I've never seen anything like it it's a testing time for travel it's really difficult to make any plans at all with things changing all the time we are intending to go to France and cross to Jersey where we're supposed to get to let's back up a quick minute to explain we have to get from the bottom of Spain to my home island of Jersey during the government rescue mission to repatriate us out of North Africa we were given special permission to travel through Europe but the condition was that we had to head home but the problem is that the ferry company that is going from France to Jersey and even from the UK to Jersey is closed it's not taking any passengers and it keeps extending it so at the moment it's still we still can't get to Jersey which means we'd have to hang around the port and wait in France and wait around for that to happen so instead of doing that we're like we might as well stay in places like this until we can actually get on the ferry and get to Jersey the only downside is that we're kind of running out of supplies but you know that's what happens when you're like what we're an hour away from the nearest town lemon and onion is that ginger yeah and garlic we do have we've got mushrooms in the fridge as well so I think we've got like enough food and supplies for three days of breakfast lunch and dinner so I've made a big batch of like a crepe batter um and it's really good for when you're low on supplies we've got a lot of flour sometimes you can just use water and flour it won't taste the best but if you're low in supplies it does well and it makes you a meal so we've been having these for breakfast and it's been lasting a while someone didn't clean the pan properly because it's got curry and turmeric on it still then nice curry pancake curry crepe lovely yummy what makes it easier is having like fresh water that we um can bathe him so we don't have to use a shower because we feel a lot cleaner swimming in fresh water than we do salt water I like to see yeah we've been able to make our supplies last really well actually like our water tank's still pretty much full we've got loads of drinking water like Leah says the river helps loads so yeah I've made a couple of mods to the combi nothing major just a couple of little tweaks here and there which is kind of part of the ongoing van life evolution um so we've taken off the sticker off the back of the bus after living with it for a few months um Leah and I have reflected and decided that we are going to remove the combi life sticker because it's more of a security concern than anything and uh we think it's better off if we're going to stealth mode from here on out another thing we've done to the back here is we've added our own kind of garbage bag it is good to get the the rubbish out of the van especially when you're at places for more than a couple of days you do tend to accumulate a bit of rubbish so it sits in this bag securely on the back here much nicer to live in and we can just have like a small little rubbish bag inside the combi for our daily waste so another thing I did was add this retractable washing line it's a small modification but obviously we're in and out of the water it's summertime we're drying a lot of our clothes outside so this just makes it the process much quicker I had it already so I was just waiting to find a good use for it we have one of these inside for when we're leaving the combi and we want to leave our stuff drying inside the combi that's it yeah we can just bring up a few items our towels and stuff and it's much quicker to do that so I like this do you like this Leah I like this I do very handy yeah despite a few hiccups on the journey so far it is great to be back on the road and socially distant travel is definitely our kind of travel from here we are entering the long tunnel through the Pyrenees mountains when we emerge we will have made it to France where we have no idea if the border is still restricted or if we're going to be quarantined on our journey home but that is a story for next time