Month 1 — Adapting

“Don’t set your heart on so many things” — Do I really need it? How bad the life would be without that?

Before moving to “Marmita”, which is the kindly name we gave to our RV, we had already sold “everything”, still our belongings were not fitting in the place available. How can it be possible if we were sure to take only the things really needed?

🇪🇸 Heading to Spain

With all the uncertainties around COVID and its restrictions, when we left home on January 11th, 2022, our goal was to reach Spain as soon as possible. First destination Barcelona.

It was a place that I’d love to visit, also, as we have a couple of friends there it would be a convenient place. We thought 🤔

🧘‍♀️ Breaking the Rules

In order to reach Spain as soon as possible, on the third day of the trip we broke one of the rules of the guideline

We are not in a hurry so we don’t need to spend too much time driving — 3 hs top.

In that day we basically crossed France in 7 hrs from Latte 🇮🇹 to Béziers 🇫🇷

🚗 The Route

In 30 days this was what we managed to travel.

First Month

🌻 Not everything are flowers

Barcelona was the first busy city that we stopped in. As most of the big cities in Europe, there are traffic restrictions based on gas emissions and since Marmita is a bit old, we were not allowed to enter in the city.

We found a place to park outside the city and it would have been convenient enough if our dog could go with us on the Bus 🚌, but, unfortunately, dogs are not allowed on the buses in Barcelona 😒. So our trip was endless walking + train. Long story short, we made it.

When we finally got to our friend’s house, Saturday was almost over. We had time to do the groceries, have dinner out and hit the bed.

On the next day we quickly visited the main tourists spots – we couldn’t miss “Sagrada Familia”, we also tasted Tapas, and went to the beach in the evening. On Monday and Tuesday we worked and then it was time to be back home, Marmita was waiting for us!

That was a nightmare! Tais and Lasagna went to the city where we would spend the following days, meanwhile, Felipe went to the bus stop to go straight to where Marmita eas parked. There was no ticket machine, and they didn’t take card, only cash. There was no ATM nearby, so he walked, walked, walked, when he finally got the money, the bus didn’t come…then he headed go the train station and tried another route.

Poor Tais couldn’t wait for Felipe at any warm place, dogs are not allowed in, so they waited out in the windy and freezing station.

Home sweet warm home! We finally got back! However, we also got Covid.

Well, nothing much to do other than avoid contact with people, drink a lot of water and rest. We had a plan, almost everything was under control, but …. we were running out of Gas, and this by itself was a chapter described here.

The bad part is that life in a motor home requires maintenance, it does not matter how you feel. It must be done otherwise you will find yourself blocked for your main basic needs.

Main maintanance activities:

• Unload grey water
• Load water — 80L
• Unload the toilet – black water
• Make sure we have batteries to carry the next 24 hours

Average autonomy

• 3 days for water and toilet
• 5 days for a gas cylinder (in the winter, the heater was always on during the night)
• 2 days with no sun, for the “Office setup” (More about the office setup to come)

🥰 But flowers are all around

We are living a big change period in our lifestyle and so this was the month of adaptation and discoveries.

All the drawbacks listed above seems like a burden in the first glance, but on the other hand they bring opportunities. We are not traveling around, we are living on the road and this completely changes the relation with the place you are, in any particular time.

The fact that we have everything needed with us, gives a lot of flexibility to act based on the context. If it is raining we can just decide to move for a sunny place (sometimes we must do it to charge our batteries 🤷🏻‍♂️). The agenda is always open and there is no pressure to visit places anymore, miss something. Discovery mode is always on.

We see what we manage to see, we visit what time allow us to do, we stay in the places we feel we like staying, and we move on, not with the feeling that we have missed something, but that we have saved opportunity to come back some day and continue the discoveries

The Good

• After one month, we are now in a more stable environment, we know more about our setup and how much we spend, how long we can stay in autonomy, and this helps a lot in planning the next step to avoid stressful situations

The Bad

• Arriving in Spain and only then realize that the Gas system is different and realize that when running out of gas was not a nice experience

What did we learn?

• Big cities are, in general, a mess: traffic restriction, sometimes hard to reach, expensive. From now on we are trying to avoid big centers or planning a same day round trip.
• Life in a motor home requires maintenance, it does not matter how you feel. It must be done.
• It doesn’t matter how much you plan, things will go wrong and anger won’t solve the problem. So when things go wrong, ask yourself: “Ok and now what needs to be done?” get on your feet and get the shit done.
• Move to a motorhome is a change in lifestyle. Things that have always been taken for granted are now resources that you need to watch carefully and somehow plan in advance, otherwise, you will put yourself in a stressful situation.

What is next?

Now we are moving to Andalusia, not super sure about the route but the place seems beautiful and we should spend at least a month there.

Ciao 👋