Struggling with Brutal Van Life // S01E06

Welcome back to Combi Life, we are picking up the story where our 1973 VW Combi has broken down leaving us stranded in a freezing Spanish desert. The good news is we've identified what we need to fix the Combi, ordered the part and sourced the tools for a self-rescue. Hopefully this is the one we need. The bad news is that Spanish customs have rejected our package leaving us stranded in the desert with limited supplies praying that a second attempt at delivery will be successful. It would be nice to get our parts so please Spanish customs let that steering box through this time. Thank you. As you're about to see things are pretty bad and getting out of here is proving to be impossible. High five to the Combi crew. If you like what we do please join the Combi crew on Patreon and YouTube channel members. It's the best way to keep the Combi Life videos rolling. It is eight degrees in here. It started off at 0.8 when I got up this morning. Everything is frozen in here if I show you. It's cold, it's really cold. It's day 14, we are out of water but our tank is frozen anyway. We're out of solar, our batteries are dead. We haven't had any sun for three, four days now. It's minus nine last night and we're out of petrol for our petrol heater. We've had to switch off the heater. We're out of food and Tamara's starting to get sick. We still can't leave the desert. So you can see that we had a few issues that we were juggling at this moment. The off-grid power situation was one of them. Our batteries don't particularly perform well at these temperatures and the weather has been changeable. By day 14 in the desert we were desperate to harvest every amp available. There is no question that these are harsh conditions for camping and far from what I had promised Tamara for her first experience of van life. Nobody's denying it's not beautiful though. My gosh how beautiful is the desert when it's frozen and the sun comes up. It's stunning isn't it? It's a gorgeous wake-up scene for sure. We have to get literally frozen ice on the window. Like look at this. It's not water, it's actually ice. And Alaska's water inside actually started freezing as well. Inside? Inside yeah. I thought you were taking me away from this. I was to plan. Just depressingly it's much warmer at home than it is here. But during the day it gets better. I was just looking at the thermometer it drops like over 30 degrees Celsius at night time from the daytime temperatures. Yeah you have to do this really early in the morning otherwise the ice just melts and just makes a ripple inside inside our bed and everything. What temperature were we woke up this morning? Minus 8.9 I think. Minus 8.9 last night. It's not the coldest night we've had but definitely too cold for van life. Flipping heck. Worst of all the jobs in the morning in the desert is de-icing the back window. Currently minus five out there. I did it the last three days. It's not a nice job because he's armed with a surfboard fin. Oh yes see this is the ice scraper we've been missing at the top. Didn't we go away to get away from this ----? You convinced me we were going somewhere warm. I really thought we were. If I wanted to do this I'd go to Serbia. Yeah baby. How can you be smiling? It's just satisfying and I'm with you and I'm happy. This was pretty much our daily routine on repeat. Waiting for our package, trying to ration our supplies and endure the next freeze and thaw and freeze and thaw and freeze and you get the idea. The worst of this situation was at night time where we struggled to find a good system to deal with the cold. Sheet, duvet, sheet. Yeah. And then all the clothes on top of us as well. But we were doing our absolute best to adapt quickly. So far we haven't found exactly a perfect solution for the Alaska sleeping situation. When it's really really cold we definitely can't keep her in the front on her own just sleeping on the front chairs like she's normally used to. We've got to have her covered up. We've tried that. We've put the covers on her. We tuck her in but she's a dog. She shakes off the covers in the middle of the night and then she gets cold and can't tuck herself back in. So we've had her in the bed the last few nights when it's been like minus nine or lower. But we just can't sleep when she's in the bed with us. It's just there's not enough room. Tonight we're gonna try something different. You think this is gonna work? Very different. Here we go. It's pyjamas Alaska. This is for your own benefit mate. You can't shake this off. Right so we take the towel that we normally put over her. Well we put this. She's not gonna overheat is she? No not when it's minus 1.4. At the start of the night it's gonna get much colder than that. This is survival mode mate. Look at that face. He's looking at me like she hates me. Please don't hate me. It's just for your own good. That's much better. There you go. Are we actually going to be able to sleep tonight? I think we might be able to sleep tonight. Night guys. Whoa hang on what? You're still not subscribed? Hit that red button. Have you ever been traveling to another country and tried to use even just a few words of their language? What a difference it makes. Being able to communicate and connect with another culture has the power to transform your travel experience. But it is easier said than done. Until now. The iFlytec smart translator can instantly translate over 60 languages upgrading your travel experience in over 200 countries. Hi I'm having a little trouble finding my way north to Alaska. Whilst we were in the desert our local friend Roberto has been sending us voice notes to check in on us and they're in Spanish which we have mostly understood. More or less. But let's give it a go now and test it with the translator. It says hello Tamara, hello Benjamin, good evening. We're already here in Chodes. I hope everything went well and nothing I just wanted to let you know that if you need anything we're here. What a legend. Honestly. Using the iFlytec smart translator is more accurate than using an app on your phone because it uses a full microphone array and iFlytec's noise cancelling algorithm listens more clearly and translates more accurately. Probably one of the most useful features is that you can have two-way conversations in another language. You can use this to have a conversation with a new friend and you can also practice a second language by practicing speaking for this it's amazing. I would like to be your friend handsome boy. Okay so it works with wi-fi but it also comes with a free two-year global mobile data plan so you can chat anywhere and get this you can actually download 18 languages for completely offline translation. Now that is a game changer. It can even record the history of your conversation. Super useful. Of course it has a camera also with OCR technology so you can also translate documents with a simple click. If you're interested in upgrading your travel experiences and connecting more with people as you move about the world I definitely recommend you check out the iFlytec smart translator. I will link it in the video description below. Thanks to iFlytec and thanks to you guys. Now let's get back to the adventure where Tamara is about to have the world's smallest bath. Lack of water was another concern we had hence shower time in the Kombi was limited to once every few days. Now that was fine by me as often the wind was bitingly cold and by this point I was starting to feel a little bit sick. Don't worry Tamara I've got you how about I pour you a nice hot bath. Pretty much fit, kind of. It is raining outside and it's disgusting shower weather and it's day three I think and essentially I need to have a shower and we are running low on water as you can see. So I'm going to attempt my first in-house Kombi bath. What are you doing? I'm reusing it. That's what you do at home? I don't think it works. I didn't think it would. Such a child. You having a good time? I'm having a great time oh my goodness. I would love to say that was my first time washing out of a bucket but it's not. It probably looks like Kombi life is pretty miserable about now but our replacement steering box was about to arrive any day. Spirits were pretty good and the longer we spent in the desert the better we got to know the land. There's herbs all over the desert here. This is thyme and all down there rosemary everywhere. It smells gorgeous especially as we just had today you can see it's really cloudy and it's actually quite cold. That's the gloves. We've had a bit of rain. It smells beautiful with all the dew on the plants and the herbs. I wish you could smell this. There's loads of it look. This is all thyme here. All of this is thyme. I think this is rosemary here. Also found juniper berries. Lots of juniper berries and lots of juniper berry scat all over the desert here. Pretty cool actually. We could season our food if we had any food. Yeah a bit of bolognese. Bolognese would be nice. I wonder if we can get a cow around here somewhere. Whilst we've been broken down, what's broken? We've had our fan break. We've had our gas detector go on the blink. Shower was leaking. Shower was leaking. Fixed. We're having a bit of a problem with our sink. It's not draining properly so in the middle of like a leak and having all the drawers out to get to the... it's difficult to get to the water system in the middle of having all of this like ---- show. Pun intended. Pun not intended but pun very accurate. Tamela's like just stepping out for a second to go dig a hole. I mean why are you even pooping at night time? Who poops at night? Wait you get the privacy of the dark. Thank you very much. You do pick your time. And then also I took my head torch back which Bever was using. Yeah I was literally like relying on that light to find the leak. She's like I'm just gonna take that. I'm like uh sure. Do you want me to come wipe your bum for you too? We've had the fridge freezer fixed. It's a Christmas tree. Oh this is juniper. Look this is juniper. Make us feel better after everything being broken. Well how do you do it? I decided given the situation that we need a bit of a morale boost so we're going to take the afternoon off work and just try to spend it outdoors and keep moving and keep warm and maybe let the batteries recover from the limited solar there is. It's a bit of blue sky here and there you can see. We occasionally get a little patch of solar which desperately needed by now. So we're going to see if we can catch some fish which would be great. But first we're going to need some bait. Look at that. Yes that's exactly what we're looking for. Is there a dry snail in it though for bait? No. But what have you got so far? Dried black olives and some really pretty shells. So nothing. You think they'll eat the olives? I don't know. There isn't a lot around here. It's worth trying. We've looked under a lot of rocks but there is not a snail to be found anywhere in the desert this far too dry I think. Fishing rods check. All the clothes we own check. There's a beautiful little spot we found when we were out walking the other day. Best access to the to the river. This is the spot. Fingers crossed. Beautiful isn't it? I wouldn't exactly say that we're masterful fisher persons but we've done some fishing haven't we between us? You'll find yourself. I'll race to the first fish then. It's been a long time since I've done that. I'm going with this thing. It's a little spoony weighted triple hook feathery thing. What are you going with? One of these. That's a little hook. I'm going bait. I've got my pretty floats. What's your strategy then? Are you going to cast down the river? Yeah I'm going to cast up river and let the current carry my float down. We haven't seen a lot of signs of fish but we have seen one fish in the water. F***ing fishing. Why are you smiling at me? Shut up you. You started before me but I've still got a chance. I'm going to get whooped. Ben is being an absolute hero. I managed to get my hook snagged from something right by the river and he is now traversing across this very steep bank in 100% not climbing shoes to retrieve my snagged hook which is all the way down there. I think I thought this was easier than I thought it was and I'm wearing all my warm clothes. I'll literally be wearing a duvet back No dice. No one's cooking tonight. We're certainly not cooking fish that's for sure. Maybe just rice. I don't know why we chose fishing as a morale booster. I don't know. Let's try one more spot before we go. Got a bit more bait left. We might as well just eat that. I've done that. I've gone fishing before and just eaten the bait because that was all I had to eat. On the way home we were able to forage something to eat so we didn't have to rely on our fishing skills. Luckily. So that's zero for two. Twice we've been fishing and twice we haven't had one single bite. Not one. Which is discouraging at least. We have seen a fish. One fish. One fish. But it was lovely to go out anyway wasn't it? It was good. Now that we are suitably freezing and my hands are completely purple. This is actually garlic clove after we did a bit more digging before just shoving it in our mouths. Digging? That's not even what you did there. But we are kind of using it like spring onion where we're going to use this bit. The green leaves we're not sure if they're edible. We're going to go with what's safe. It's been a long time since I made it so we just have to hope for the best. This looks like it's going to be good. It's the tortilla de España. Things are not going so well for us here. This is what day... Do you even know? No I've lost count. Passenger train. Hi guys. Those guys are still there. What are they doing? Why are they parked there? Honestly the locals must think we've moved in now. Yeah so our package has been sent back to the UK for the second time. Failing to pass through Spanish customs through like minor details. Although everyone's trying to help us. There's couriers on both sides and just campers themselves. Everybody's trying to help but we can't get our steering box to us. In other dire notes. Running out of food, running out of water, running out of battery power, running out of petrol for our petrol heater. There's a severe government temperature warning for tonight so we're expecting like minus 10 degrees. It's freezing. I'm currently wearing quite a few layers. I don't know about you but let's look at this. One, two, three, a shirt and a t-shirt. Five. Four. I've got five. We're sleeping underneath all of our clothes as well. Yeah they will get piled onto the bed. Yeah it's very very very very cold. Alaska threw up last night all over our bed so we're washing that and hoping it I've slightly lost faith in humanity and it's a little bit disappointing just how much desperation we have to show on the phone in order to have anyone listen to us and get anywhere and as a matter of fact it's still not helped us because our package is on the way to the UK. Sonia is there any way that you can put it on hold to not be sent back because we we're not near a village. We don't have water. We're running out of food so I really need this parcel to not go back to the UK. So it's it's an emergency that we we are literally in a broken down car. Yeah things are difficult in the desert but we have each other. The sun's coming out. Come to me sun. Go that way. Oh okay so we're gonna have to cut this update short because we're gonna go sunbathing now. I might take a layer off. This is actually gorgeous I mean it does look very cinematic. Look how beautiful it looks with the clouds. At least we have the sunshine now. It's a good way to start that life. I wouldn't be surprised if Tamara moves out next week. We've been using a local's car to try and get from A to B but at this point you start feeling a little bit rude. Can we borrow your car for the third time? Moments later. We managed to borrow Roberto's car again. He has located a latte de gasolina, a jerry can, so we can get some petrol and stop freezing our butts off because it's another severe weather warning for tonight for extreme low temperatures. And it's too cold when you wake up and it's 0.8 degrees in the van. When your hair's literally frozen to the window. That hasn't happened yet but close to be honest. If I wasn't wearing a hat it probably would be frozen. Hopefully today's the supply run. This should reset us and we can try for a third time to get our parcel. Fingers crossed. Or tune in to see how we made our move and stay in Spain. Leave that cliffhanger. You've been watching CombiLife videos haven't you? You know how it works. Don't forget to like share and subscribe. It's so hard to think about the Spanish. It's so nice to listen to his Spanish though. He's from Argentina so it's slightly easier for me with the accent. What a hero Roberto has been though. Lending us his car for the second time. Bringing us a petrol can so we can fill up our heater. Legend. And now he's like no don't go that way follow me. It's much more beautiful this way. He's driving fast. It's like a little wrap around here. Jesus it's narrow too. I think he's late that's why. Remember this way back? I reckon we can. I know where we are. We're now in Morata. This is where we came. This is where we tried to come back. Remember? And that road was blocked and it was blocked because it was closed temporarily. They were working on it. From Morata it was back on highway to the closest town of Almolnia for food supplies and the all-important gasolina. I can feel warmer already. And finally we spent the rest of the afternoon shuttling water bags back and forth to the combi. There's a hole in that. Look at your mouth. Nice. Well it's very clear. This must be like the town washing place. All the old ladies would have done their washing there back in the day. You almost fell in Chica. It's cold. There's a lady up there looking at us on the balcony. They're having fun. Crazy kids. So finally we got some petrol for our petrol heater. 10 litres. Looked up the stats for our heater. It actually burns a quarter of a litre an hour of heat. But every litre counts when you're touching the reserve gauge. We've got a little funnel I think we might be able to use. We're dripping a lot. No smoking. You'd like to think that this will be enough petrol to now allow us to put the heater on and get out of here when the time comes that we can actually drive this combi again. The only thing left for us to run out of now is propane which would be an absolute disaster because there's no easy way for us to refill that. Time for a shower Smelly. I can't wait. How many days has it been since I've washed my hair? Well you've been putting talcum powder in it for about two weeks. Keep waking up coughing. Clouds of white smoke. You pat my hair like a dusty dog. It all comes out. Feels good to be restocked with everything. More food, more water, more energy for the next challenge. Just walking back. Beautiful sunset. It's been nice to get some sun. Today's been a good day. We've had solar. We've replenished our batteries to 80 percent. We've got petrol for our heater. We've got food. We've got water. We've just returned the car. Thanks Roberto. We are clean. We've had a shower. My hair's floating. Now we can have a feast. What are we going to have? Catch you guys on the flip side. Coming up on the next episode of Combi Life we will be, yep you guessed it, still in the desert. Day 31. Our spare part is shipped for the third and final time only to get lost in the post. Our package seems to have disappeared and is untraceable at the moment. The weather somehow gets even colder and we start to go just a little bit crazy. Before we get creative and attempt a self-rescue. But that is a story for next time. Thanks for giving this video a thumbs up. The Combi Life channel is only possible with your support. If you'd like to get access to behind the scene vids, real-time updates and hundreds of exclusive unlisted posts, please join the Combi Crew community on Patreon or YouTube channel members. It's the best way to keep the Combi Life videos rolling.