INSANE VAN LIFE - Trapped, Freezing & Out of Supplies // S01E05

Welcome back to Combi Life where we've managed to find ourselves in a little bit of a pickle. Our attempt to cross Europe in search of sunshine on our first van life adventure together has come to a grinding halt in a remote Spanish desert where we now find ourselves trapped in severe freezing weather facing the coldest nights of our lives. I just want to capture this moment Here myself Ben and new adventurer Tamara are attempting a self-rescue of our 50-year-old van before our supplies run out or we die from hypothermia, whichever comes first. 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's too bright guys, turn it down. Whose idea was this? Just put the caterpillar on a bit so we can actually get out of bed. I just want to capture this moment forever because it's insane. I'm definitely feeling a bit sick this morning. You know what, we've got to cuddle all night long like the little penguins in the Antarctic. Windows are frozen. It's scheduled to go above freezing in a couple of hours though. Just two more hours of snuggles. Sounds perfect. All right, see you. Totally geeking out on this temperature thing. It's minus eight currently. It dropped to minus 9.4. In here the lowest it got to was, it got to minus five at our head. Really? Yeah. I'm so glad I wore a hat. I didn't wear a hat until about half an hour ago. Look at me, all ice. It's so cold. That is mental. We actually had a hot water bottle in between us and Alaska at our feet. He seemed very happy and not moving at all this morning. Considering that there's ice right by our heads, it also goes to show how effective these are. Yeah, thanks mum. Time to get up Alaska. Come on. Yeah, you okay? A cold night, isn't it? Also put this up in between this blanket. Try to see if we can keep some of the body heat inside the main compartment. No open plan living last night. I've never seen a condo quite so frozen. Quite concerned that the water tanks might have frozen last night. Does it, I don't really have a lot of experience of it being really that cold and having water tanks, but does it need to be like at minus nine for a sustained amount of time for water to freeze? Come on, it is frozen. Oh ----, please don't have cracks. Yeah, water tank's frozen. Made of plastic. If that cracks, that's going to make life really, really uncomfortable. It's the shower route, the sink. Yeah, we'd manage. It'd be inconvenient. Should lock before you walk in. Just a second. Yeah, yeah. Have you got trousers on? Water tank's frozen. Is it really? Yeah. Don't know if we're going to be able to use the sink this morning. The drain's frozen. Should go down in a couple of hours. We should still be able to get drinking water from the inside one, so that shouldn't be frozen. Okay, that's all right, that's not too problematic. Despite having enjoyed thousands of nights of wild camping in Kombi Life, these freeze-thaw desert conditions presented an entirely new challenge for us. Hot water bottle, coffee, moon carts. And if there's leftover, breakfast. Warm. A little hot water bottle, chica. It's like slush, slush in the Kombi. What are we going to do with that? Don't want this going down to our electrical cupboard. We can see the amazing view now though. Yeah, oh wow, beautiful, so beautiful. That was a bit scary. The lock's frozen. The lock was frozen. All right, let's be really quick. Is this the van life you were hoping for? Still wouldn't trade it for anything else. Still loving your life? Absolutely. Come on, we've still got the scenery. It's still sunny, it's dry, still love it. It's a bit too cold. Honestly, my hands are frozen just holding this camera inside the Kombi. With our new desert morning routine over, it was time to turn our attention back to resolving the problem which is keeping us stranded here. A couple of days earlier, we'd noticed our steering was suddenly very loose. A side of the road inspection had revealed our steering box was beyond repair. By the way, Ben replaced this part with a brand new one only four years earlier. That's what we have to get off. I know from personal experience that this isn't an easy job to do, but if we can find the right tools and importantly, a complete replacement part, we might just be able to do this ourselves here in the desert. This is the other side of the steering box and this is the pitman arm and this is on really really tight so we have to find a tool to get that off, that nut which should be pretty easy and then extract this arm so we can pull the whole steering box out and replace it. Extracting that arm is going to be really difficult because sometimes even when you have the right tool, it's not possible. You have to cut it off and we don't have the right tool anyway so first job, find the right tools. Go, go, go. Oh my god. It's actually coming off. I haven't got the right tool but I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. It's worrying. It's coming off so easily. I wouldn't say easily but look at the tool I'm using. At least I'm getting a nut. I mean this is not the hardest part but it's moving and that's a good sign. The handier I'm getting is not. That's definitely a step in the right direction but that's the easy part. The hardest part is finding the replacement steering box and this time having learned the hard way, I know it's better to find a refurbished VW part even if it is 50 years old rather than a brand new aftermarket replica that is obviously of lower quality. The trouble is it's not always easy to find quality parts for these vintage vehicles but we knew our friends at Just Campers would be our best bet at finding high quality parts and they should be able to get it to us before our supplies run out. At least that was the hope. In the meantime, whilst we wait for delivery, I guess life continues as... normal? Oh, that was way harder than I thought. Does that hurt? I'm so sorry. Okay, you get a free one. Done. What the hell? I've never had a girlfriend with bigger muscles than me before. Come and look at these guns. This is something you need to know about Tamara. It's underneath her clothes. She's hiding these. Don't get on the wrong side of me. No, keep me in line with those guns. No, you and me. You warm enough now for us to have a shower? You smell like you're ready anyway. I think I'm sweaty enough. Can I do it? Yeah, it doesn't hurt. If I pull down, I'll just piss out. I didn't flinch, you flinched. I didn't expect him to catch you off guard and make you go like that but I was the one that did that. That's really good. Hey, future Tamara here. Remember how Ben promised me the van life dream? Well, believe it or not, it is coming. Things have been looking pretty good recently. JM Go has kindly sent us this, the N1S Ultra 4K Laser Gimbal Projector. Upgrade our van life. Wait until you see this piece of kit. Are you going to open it? Yeah, I do. It's the first 4K portable projector with ultra high brightness, triple lasers and built-in Google TV. Do you know what any of that is? No. It means excellent cinema experience. Yes, that's what we want. It's got two times the color gamut and three times the contrast of an LED projector. That means the brighter areas are brighter without being overexposed and the darker regions have higher quality and clarity. The triple lasers give 3000 ANSI lumens in 4K resolution with ultra bright images on screens of up to 150 inches with accurate and vivid colors because the N1S Ultra boasts 10-bit color depth. That's over 1 billion colors. This is how we used to watch movies and this is how we watch movies now. It's a totally different experience. The standout feature is obviously the awesome picture quality. The one thing that I really like is the built-in gimbal design. It might seem like a small thing but it makes a huge difference from the user experience. The N1S Ultra has 135 degree vertical and 360 degree horizontal adjustments designed into the unit so setting up is much easier. It then uses an instant gimbal-like display correction so that the built-in gyro can adjust the angle and focus in real time, making setup a breeze. That's cinema quality. You can see the sweat on his forehead. So in theory you could actually project this onto the ceiling if you had a ceiling, that is. I'm just testing the projector quality in the daytime and it's definitely bright enough to watch in the daytime, no problem. This is that auto keystoning feature I was talking about. You see how the gimbal-like display correction keeps the image auto keystoned and auto-focused instantaneously? Other projectors we use require an interruption to recalibrate if they're moved, which to be honest can be a bit of a pain. Not here. This is awesome. It's even got built-in Netflix on Google TV so you can cast and wake up the projector with one click of the remote. That's the easy part. Trying to figure out what to watch is the hard part. Hey Google, play Combi Life on YouTube. You can easily find all your favourite content to enjoy with your friends and family. It really is such an awesome piece of kit. If you'd like to check out details of the N1S Ultra 4K triple laser projector, the price and everything, I will link it below. Thank you so much to JM Go for upgrading our cinema experience and thanks to you guys. Now, let's get back to the desert where we're about to face the coldest night of our lives. I still can't believe this happened. I just wanted to quickly point out to you how much I appreciate Ben. This is the second night in a row he's cooking dinner. I feel very lucky. Ben knows that I have a lot of work to do today and he's been an absolute champ. Best boyfriend ever. He's also washing the dishes at the same time and did all so that I could get some work in. So, thank you Ben. Aww, thanks. Basically, I'm just hungry. I was bored of waiting for you to cook so I thought I'll have to do it myself. Dinner's ready. How hungry are you? Pretty hungry. I snacked only about two hours. Two hours since your last snack, Tamara. Bloody hell, you must be starving. Ben's put me on a bit of a limit. Given Tamara's snacking habits and that we can't drive anywhere right now and that the closest supermarket is a solid hike of seven hours round trip, we could sense the supplies were probably going to become an issue pretty soon. For all the good vibes in the Kombi, night time was long and tough and by morning we were both praying for the sun to appear over the hills and bring some relief from the biting desert freeze. I don't know if you can see that the sun has just risen over the mountains here and there is a little bit of warmth in the sun. It's nice like especially after such a cold night but man, like it's actually melted all of the frost and ice that's on our box here and you can see the line where the sun, like you can actually see steam. You can see the line where the sun is kind of melting. It's quite incredible. Wow. We tried to put up an extra sheet here this morning, last night sorry, to see if we could protect our heads because it dropped to minus five right by our heads. Got a little temperature sensor right by our heads so sleeping in hats, sleeping under the duvet, sleeping in a little ball in the fetal position and still freezing cold, absolutely freezing. Didn't get much sleep last night to be perfectly honest with you. The last few hours where it was dropping down to like minus eight, minus nine, nine point something, it was really cold. Happy to see the sun this morning. I don't think inability to sleep in a van in freezing temperatures was exactly the reason the Spanish embraced the siesta but we are certainly going to follow the tradition and make the most of this isolated olive grove for a brief family nap. 40 weeks later and we awoke to a surprise visitor at the combi. This is Marisa who lives in the nearest town. She's a friend of Frank. You remember Frank right? He's the guy that took us to get water when we first broke down. Well Marisa kindly allowed us to have rescue parcels delivered to her house and incredibly she's brought it all the way out here to the desert for us now. I can't believe it's arrived in a day honestly. All the breakdowns I've had where I've had to like jump on a bus for a full day to go and get apart from a city across the cross-country. Times have changed. This seems like a little bit of an overkill but hopefully it's always upside down whenever I do this. Hopefully this is the one we need. This one. Fingers crossed. We don't need a mechanic at all. Maybe. We have Ben. We have us. And that all just happened just as we were making this yummy lunch. You know what I sound like? Can I say this? So good. Are you doing an impression of me? Is that an impression of me? I've just heard myself. It's like when you hear yourself on a recording. That's what that was. That just gave me the heebie-jeebies. You know life wasn't all that bad here in the desert. We certainly had the right company and the views, well the views were spectacular. Sure we couldn't leave but in the middle of the day when the sun was shining we had all of this to ourselves. Why would we want to? We were going to be just fine as long as our supplies lasted. So it's about perfect timing for our fridge to stop working then. Look at this. Tamara has cooked an amazing meal whilst I've been researching the parts we need. Couscous, pine nuts, salmon and some veg on the side. Using up the stuff that's started to go a little bit in our fridge because our fridge has been kind of off and on hasn't it with the frozen stuff. I intended. Yeah. Sorry. Off and on yeah literally. But our frozen food is kind of not staying frozen so we thought we'd better get into this salmon quickly which raised the question of what would you do if the salmon isn't bad and you um you needed to dig a hole would you would you pre-dig holes just in case five holes in a row so you can go to the toilet in the night if you had to without digging a hole. That seems like a smart idea if you ask me. You would wouldn't you? You'd pre-dig holes. You definitely would. You'd fist bump and then walk the other way. We dig holes next week so we can talk. Is that too much? That's too much. We already spend a lot of time together. We should have that. We should keep that separate. We've got fishing rods. We finally found a place with enough water to go fishing and you're very happy aren't you? I'm so happy. We found the perfect approach as well. This is a beautiful place hey? Do you reckon we'll catch anything? Yeah even if it's a little baby. You think so? I think so. I have high hopes. I'm just excited to be here. Let's give it a go. We've got good tactics too. I'll race you for the first five fish. That's five fish and loser has to cook. Prepare them. I can talk you through it it's okay. Sounds like you're doing it. All right fishing time let's do it. All right. We were hoping to make our supplies last until our new steering box arrived but with the dodgy fridge and nothing biting we were on rations particularly with the water in the Kombi. Whoa hang on what? You're still not subscribed? Hit that red button. How much is the washing machine? I might put a load in. These don't look like warm socks. They're a bit warm now. These are my cool socks though look at that. They're not warm they're not big woolly socks. Well I was told that we're going to 20 degrees. 20 degrees right now? Yeah it is right now. It's going to be 30 degrees less in about six hours time. I know. You know that scene from the movie I Am Legend with Will Smith? Oh yeah. You know where he's like loving New York City and he's got the whole thing to himself and he's hunting in the city and like he's just like living his best life. Yeah. And then it goes to night time and he's like literally cowering in his bath because of the night. That's what it feels like for me. I've got that night anxiety of it coming. Oh gosh. How cold it's going to be. I'm going to be like shivering in the bed in the fetal position. It is pretty brutal though you know. It's colder in this bed than it is in our fridge. Fact. In the fetal position. Literally I am like I want to stretch my legs out because I'm so uncomfortable and as soon as I do I'm like it's too cold. Oh my god. And you're holding on to me. Yeah. For warmth. Literally like arm under you're here like this and like I've got two arms around her like that. Like we couldn't be closer. No. It's a good bonding experience isn't it? This is it man. This is how we sleep from now on. Glued together. Covered in blankets. I recommend it for bonding. And we don't let go I mean because there's the love. Obviously it's so much love. A little bit because of the cold. A little this much because of the cold. I would like to point out have you actually noticed how little water I've washed this in? That is a little amount of water isn't it? We have to be using the water sparingly. Look at that. That's so dirty. Rations. Rations. Is that your pants? Mostly socks. Hey. It's not a lot of water. Eight days into desert life there was still no sign of our new steering box and despite our best rationing efforts our supplies were seriously diminished. The problem is well as you can see there isn't exactly any shops around here. The closest town is only a three kilometer hike from the Kombi but there are no supplies there. From base camp we were looking at a seven to eight hour round trip hike across the desert to our nearest supermarket. Oh buenos dias. Hey, guess what? What? Just got a message from Roberto. Oh really? Yeah. About asking for his car. What does he say? Shall we have a listen? Okay. You get that? Okay. I think I got most of it. He's going in the afternoon with Marisa? No. Oh. My Spanish isn't as good as I thought. We asked him if we could borrow his car to go and sort out the tools we need, get some water, get some food because we run out both and also wash some clothes because we'd be stinky in the desert. It's been two weeks as well. So he said yeah let him know what time in the afternoon we want to borrow it and we can. I'd say ASAP in Spanish. No, no. You got me there. You were so serious. Absolute legend. I can't believe it man. He just comes and delivers us the keys. He's like right off you go. There's my car. We've met him once. What a cool dude. Super sound about it. He said here's the keys to my car uh and uh yeah just when you come back if you want to have a coffee or like a hot shower or something you know I'm sure that'll feel nice. Just pop in. No problem. Thanks mate. All right so we can get on with the day now. Go find our parts, get some water, get some food. Washing. And get some clean clothes. I think we've probably got about three loads of washing to do. It's laundry day. We're going to be wearing some weird stuff. Yeah. Let's do it. Next step is to find the car. Do you know where it is? He's just having a photo. Okay right. What are you looking for? Does he not have a Volkswagen we can borrow? I think we've found it. This is our steed. You told me you had the keys. Actually not in my pocket. No. These are our keys. But you're playing with me. I was kidding. Give me them. Beautiful. Perfecto mundo. She vibratey but she's working. That's that way. That way down. That guy's looking at me like I've just stolen this car. He must be a friend of Roberto. He's like. What are you doing with my friend's car? Let me grab all of our stuff we need to take with us. Washing clothes. That's not laundry before Ben. No. Water bags. My backpack. First. Diesel, diesel, diesel. We need a 36 millimetre socket to be able to put the steering box back on. Thank you. This is weird isn't it? Two new cars in what? Less than a week? Do you want to do some navigating? Oh yeah. We're heading off to the city or town of Albuquerque. Hopefully we can find the socket for the job in this town. Can you say come on? No it's mi coche. Next. Lunch. Yeah let's go for lunch. We deserve a proper lunch. Let's go. High five to the Kombi crew. If you like what we do please join the Kombi crew on Patreon and YouTube channel members. It's the best way to keep the Kombi life videos rolling. Apparently this is the start up. We get a mains, you get to come, and a dessert and a beer. Honestly that's pretty good. Sitting here in the sun, feeling like kings. This is the lentil. Let's give it a go. What is it? We didn't know this was a Gamble right? This was a Gamble. Is it good? I still have no idea what it is but it's so good. Look at these. Go on. Would you? On a dare? Yes. I'll do it. I reckon it's pretty spicy. What? That's it? No you've got to do a whole thing. If it's a dare it's the whole thing. No you didn't. Regret it instantly. Your turn. I'll take the un pequeño. No no no the big one. No. I did the big one. Okay okay. Medium. I'm in a little. Ready? I don't know what the big course is about then. Between the first and second course we had to run across town to move our laundry into the dryers. Still got space. Job done. Just in time for mains. So I've gone for the pork chops, chuletas. I think that's pork chops. You went for, what was that? It looks like meatballs and patatas fritas. Yeah I think you're right. We're on the rail trail, we've still got space. Si, claro que si. You wouldn't think that we're currently living in a desert, broken down in a bus, would you? Where's this? What do you do with it? Bowl full of chicken. Compliments at the house. Gone in seconds. Sorry. Didn't record that clip. Absolutely inhaled it. Lunch done. Washing done. Check. Next stop the cambios. Hopefully they've finished having lunch now. I like how they call it a lunch hour and clearly it's like three or four hours. The cambios is a place where we can get car stuff so hopefully we can get a 36 millimetre socket which is slightly large. Let's see. Vamos. Unfortunately they didn't have the tool that we needed. They might be able to get one for us. It's not cheap. It's not cheap at all but I would be willing to buy it if there's no other option in town. Just realised that I'm still wearing the laundry that I walked out of the laundromat with. Quite embarrassing. Couldn't find the part that we need anywhere in any of the other hardware stores or auto parts places in or around this town so we are getting them to send the socket we need. I think it's going to be about 27 euros for one socket but we need it to make sure that we put the steering wheel steering box back on correctly so that should be here hopefully today if we've understood them correctly and we can go pick it up later on which will be nice. Next stop supermercado. Round two. At the supermarket got a new car. Oh yeah another car. We have it. The part. Feel that. I know right it's so heavy. It's made for impact guns which like I told him I didn't need that. I just wanted the hand turning one. It's quite expensive for one socket. You buy a whole flipping set for that. However that's not the important thing right now. The important thing is that we can start moving towards getting this job done. We now had all of the tools we needed to fix our Kombi. Our replacement steering box had arrived in Spain and was due for delivery the next day. We have replenished our supplies, washed our clothes and even filled our bellies. Beautiful right now. Enough water to see us through to the end of this. She looks like a rabbit with her hairy bottom. Look at how she knows. She knows where she's going. There's the Kombi. Come on girl. To be honest at this moment we were pretty happy with life. Almost happy enough to forget about the long sub-zero night fast approaching. But just then we got word that Spanish customs had rejected our steering box and it had already returned to Just Campers in the UK. We had thought that we had enough supplies to see us through until we could leave but what we didn't know at the time was that we would be here for another four weeks. We were starting to get sick. We still can't leave the desert. But that is a story for next time. Hi guys thanks for watching the video. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Next week we're uploading a bonus video answering your questions and comments because we've already had a bunch of questions from the Kombi crew so if you'd like your question or comment to be featured in next week's bonus video leave a comment below and don't forget to give this video a thumbs up. It really does make a difference, lets us know we're doing the right thing. Thanks for watching and high five to the Kombi crew for supporting our work. Until next time happy travels. Thanks for giving this video a thumbs up. The Kombi Life channel is only possible with your support. If you'd like to get access to behind the scenes vids, real-time updates and hundreds of exclusive unlisted posts please join the Kombi Crew community on Patreon and YouTube channel members. It's the best way to keep the Kombi Life videos rolling.