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 forever because it's insane. 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 bright it's too bright guys turn it down. Whose idea was this? Certainly just put the petrol heater 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. I'm 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 heads. Really? Yeah. But I'm so glad I wore a hat. I didn't wear a hat until about half an hour ago. Look at your hat. Literally 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? No? Cold night wasn'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 combine quite so frozen. Quite concerned that the water tanks might have frozen last night. 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. 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 knock 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 Combie 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. It's warm. You need a hot water bottle chica. It's like slush slush in the Kombi. What are we going to do with that? I don't want this going down to our electric cupboard. We can see the amazing view now though. Yeah oh wow beautiful so beautiful. Oh that was a bit scary. Is the lock 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 the 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. So 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. That extracting the 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. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. It's worrying. It's coming off so easily but look at the tool I'm using. At least you're 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. Gun? 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 you can keep me in line with those guns. 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 piss out. I didn't flinch you flinched. I was expecting 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. You're gonna 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. Pretty cool. It might seem like a small thing but it makes a huge difference from like 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 cinema quality. I think 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 light 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 favorite 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 Combi 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 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. Oh thanks. Basically I'm just hungry. I was bored of waiting for you to cook. I thought I'd have to do it myself. Dinner's ready. How hungry are you? Pretty hungry. I snacked only about two hours. Two hours 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 Combi, 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 the frost and ice that's on 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 the sun is kind of melting it quite incredible wow we tried to put up a um a an extra sheet here this morning last night sorry uh to see if we can 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 uh the last few hours where it was dropping down to like minus eight minus nine 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 this 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 so you know 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 been 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 this camera 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 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 um yeah but uh our frozen food is kind of not staying frozen so i thought we 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 that seems like a smart idea if you ask me you would wouldn't you you pre-dig you definitely would you fist bump and then walk the other way we dig holes next week so we can talk without too much that's too much we already spend a lot of time together we've got fishing rods we finally found a place with enough water to go fishing and you were very happy aren't you i'm so happy we found the perfect approach as well this is a beautiful place hey 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 to 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 combi oh 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 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 than about six hours time i know you know that scene of 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 then it goes to night time and then 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 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 position literally i am like i want i want to stretch my legs out because my my i'm so uncomfortable and since 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 got two arms around her like that like you couldn't be closer no it's a good bonding experience isn't it this is it this is how we sleep from now on glued together covered in blanket i recommend it for bonding and we don't let go i mean because there's the love obviously 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 for your pants mostly socks hey it's not a lot of water you want to give it another rinse 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 combi 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 just got a message from roberto oh really yeah about asking for his car 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 uh we asked him if we could borrow his uh cars to go and sort out the tools we need get some water get some food as we run out both and also wash some clothes because we'd be stinky in the desert in 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're 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 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 do you not have a vault that we can borrow i think we found it this is our steed you told me you had the keys ah i see not in my pocket no these are our keys are you playing with me i'm just kidding give me them she vibratey but she's working that guy's looking at me look i've just stolen this car he must be a friend of roberto's he's like let me grab all of our stuff we need to take with us have you ever had this much laundry before band no water bags first diesel diesel diesel we need a 36 millimeter 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 we're getting off to the city hotel hopefully we can find the sockets for the job 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 videos rolling so for 14.50 we get a start-up apparently this is the start-up we get a mains get to come and a dessert and a beer honestly that's pretty good sitting here in the sun feeling like king this is polenta we'll just give it a go what is it we didn't know this was a gamble right this was a gamble 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're gonna 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 big one no i did the big one okay okay medium medium i'm having 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 two letters i think that's pork chops you went for what was that meatballs and potatoes yeah i think you're right we still got space you wouldn't think that we currently live in a desert broken down in a bus would you where's this what do you do with it that one bowl full of chicken compliments of the house gone in seconds sorry didn't record that clip absolutely inhaled it lunch done washing done check next stop 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 millimeter socket this is slightly large let's see unfortunately they didn't have the tool that we needed they might be able to get one for us um 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 realized that i'm still wearing the laundry that i walked out of the laundromat with quite embarrassing couldn't find the um the part that we need anywhere in any of the other hardware stores or or auto parts places in or around this town so we are getting them to send uh 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 correct so that should be here hopefully today if you've understood them correctly and we can go pick it up later on which will be next up round two at the supermarket but new car oh yeah another car we have it the part feel it 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 combi 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 it's beautiful right now that sun enough water to see us through to the end of this mini disaster she looks like a rabbit with a hairy bottom look at how she knows she there's the combi 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 i'm really 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 combi 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 combi crew for supporting our work until next time happy travels thanks for giving this video a thumbs up the combi live 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 combi crew community on patreon and youtube channel members it's the best way to keep the combi life videos rolling