SPAIN Winter VANLIFE | Cabo de Gata to Villaricos
Buonas dias! [Speaking Spanish] Welcome to Spain, where even though I'm close to the camera, that guy over there is louder than me. And he's only one person. Welcome back to our channel! Welcome to Spain and welcome to El Cabo de Gata. Cool name hey? It is awesome. This is actually a really cool place because I remember dreaming about van life and reading about this place.
And now three years later, we are here. Maybe tomorrow we'll go to the lighthouse a little bit further up. There's some salt plains. And we don't have.. FLiamingo's! Those things too. And Lisa says she's going to take her first swim for the summer in this beach.
I don't know about that. If you haven't seen our last video, we talked about a lot of what has been changing in Spain. And the other thing that's changing is the weather. Summer is on its way. If you haven't seen our last video, we returned from a two month trip to Morocco. And we spent about a week in the Malaga area, sort of recuperating and getting a few things done. So make sure to check that out.
And if you haven't done so yet, be sure to subscribe and join us on our leg of Spain. We're heading up the coast towards Valencia. And we are so, so happy to be back in Spain. Although it's nice there's a fog pulling in from the ocean. And Lisa says she feels like paella. Yes. We are back in Spain.
We have to have a paella. As you can see, all the restaurants are a little bit closed. It's a little bit quiet here. So we might have to make our own paella. Your paella is the best paella anyway. That's what she said.
Only if you make it in Spain though. I'll show you what it looks like here. It's paella o'clock. Paella o'clock. This is my paella dance. This is my paella dance.
You're not supposed to zoom out! Welcome to our channel. We're Andre and Lisa, a married South African Italian couple who have been traveling together for 20 years exploring more than 50 countries. Since 2018, we've been full-time nomads with our goal being to make travel a sustainable, long-term way of life. For the past three years, we've been winding our way around Europe with our 22-year-old motorhome, Millie. We started 2024 with a two-month Moroccan adventure. Right now, we're back in Spain and we're slowly making our way north.
The current plan is to get back to Denmark for summer, then make our way via Eastern Europe to Greece before winter. So hit that subscribe button and join our adventure. There you have it.
As we call it. Rice with things. We'll see you guys tomorrow. Welcome to our exotic location.
Hey babe. It is exotic. We have fancy Morellos and Concordes. We have the sea right there. Yeah.
After our, let's call it, more than lazy time in Morocco, I guess we'll have to get back into some form of fitness regime. We'll keep Lisa out of the cookie shops. Oh gosh, I'm not sure which one of those is going to be more difficult.
It's overcast this morning, but... At least we're not running next to a road. There's no dogs chasing us. Apparently there's a wetland area here at the salt flats. We'll stop by there and have a look quickly.
Quick stop here at the... There's actually a wetland, a protected wetland area. That borders the salte works. I think it still exists actually. Salinas de Cabo de Gata, falls inside the Cabo de Gata Nijar natural park.
Well, do you know where the name Cabo de Gata comes from? Yeah, Cape. So it directly translates to Cape of the female cat, but that's not where the name supposedly comes from. Historians have written that they discovered a type of crystal, and up until about 50 years ago.
You could still find this stuff here. Obviously it's not legal to collect it. The speculation is that's where the name comes from. Let's go see if we can find the flamingo's. Let's check out the old...
Old tower here. It doesn't say we can't go in. I think this used to be the drawbridge.
This is the stairwell over here. And they had to open the drawbridge, to connect the two. It looks like it. I think Lisa's having second thoughts. There's more.
Quick shower. Breakfast. Who's on first? It's a different joke, isn't it? Lisa loves me filming her while se eats. Well The fact that I'm always eating.
That poses a small problem. Let's look at what's going on. This is Coviran. Coviran you only see in Andalusia, I think. I'm not sure what you look for to be honest.
The beer. The beer. What do you look for? And eggs.
What do we look for? Eggs. That's not bad because that's less than 20 cents an egg. Yeah but that's not free range. No. But that's not badly priced. Cream de brie.
That sounds interesting. Coviran What else is here? Tuna. The Spanish do like their tuna. Oh, Kit kat.
Don't look Lisa! There's a leche almendra.. h that's just milk. Milk chocolate almond. What else we got? Coca-Cola. We don't buy any of this stuff.
They also really like their chocolate milk. Oh here we go. We bought some of these beers, not the alcohol free one. We haven't tasted them yet. We're going to try some of these beers.
Yhis afternoon we're going to have a beer. Oh that looks nice. Sin filtrar Aguila We should try this guy.
Oh we didn't get that one. I don't really like the bottles for the van. Alright, finish eating, we're leaving We're going to Coviran! Alright, this is us leaving.
This very busy. Look it was a convenient stop but to be honest, A little bit too busy, too noisy, too chaotic. So we're going to keep moving. And itìs actually quite hot. Look over your shoulder for me? It is very hot.
We're leaving our parking space but we're not quite leaving Cabo de Gata yet. We are first heading to the lighthouse. Initially the idea was to take a long walk here but it's 10 kilometers and after I run this morning, I think it's going to be easier if we just drive to the parking lot and take a walk from there. Look how cool this little town is. Wow, oh look how beautiful this is. Spain is so beautiful.
Oh, there's a little private beach. I am super surprised at the quality of the water here. It's just so, so clear. Amazing. I think it's
because it's so bloody cold. But just down the coast, south of Malaga, the water does not look like this. Faro de Cabo de Gata. This lighthouse dates back to 1862 and it was actually built right in the center of an old castle that was built in the early 18th century.
Actually what still remains of the castle is the walls that we can sort of see part of. Cabo de Gata does receive a number, quite a bit of tourism. I think more than half a million tourists a year. Wow. The thing is, there's actually towns within this area like Agua Amarga.
From Cabo de Gata where we are, this park stretches all the way to Carbonera. These are quite popular holiday villages. We actually stayed over in Agua Amarga two years ago.
Very hilly there, beautiful caves as well. Check out that video. The attraction here is not the lighthouse itself, it's the cape and the fact that it's in this very unique landscape.
So what Cabo de Gata is known for is these jagged rock formations and the highest one is 100 meters. There's a portion of the Camino de Santiago that actually goes past here as well. That's why you see a lot of people with big backpacks. Okay, now it makes sense. Look, we have pink salt mines! I cannot tell you how many times we've gone in search of these pink salt mines . Then you get there and they're not anywhere near pink.
So I'm very excited that these ones are actually pink. Houston, we have a problem. We want to be there! Yeah, I think there's a reason why they don't allow people like us closer to the salt factories. Okay, but in fairness you can really see how pink it is from here. I'm not sure if you can see it on the camera, but trust me it's pink. Sorry baby.
Now you have to make up for it. With ice cream. Let's walk across the beach.. One of the major benefits of living in a motorhome and traveling by motorhome is you got your own fridge and freezer and there's a conveniently located little ice cream.
Maybe. Is there still ice-cream? Hidden away somewhere. I don't know, is there? Givin' up. Cheers.
Welcome to Los Gallardos. This is a bit of a blast of the past. A trip down memory lane. We actually spent more than a month in Los Gallardos two years ago, just over two years ago. Just down here,was..
a house we looked after. A pet-sit that we did. And Bike Mike was born here. This was our route to our local biggest shop, which is actually in Garrucha. And in Garrucha...
I think we got more memories because a year before that we actually slept one night outside the castle in Garrucha. We actually explored this area extensively. It's a beautiful area. Yeah, I will link here.
If you haven't seen that video, we did a day trip in the winter to Mojacar. Just look at the playa and the and the pueblo - the old village. Don't forget our exit! It's really quite a beautiful area. This was a nice house sit because from here we could do quite a few day trips to the coast when the weather was good.
And the weather was pretty good as well. Let's go to Garrucha! And this is our Garrucha Lidl. Still exactly the same. And we're back at our, what used to be our local Lidl in Garrucha! We haven't been in a Lidl since we've been back in Spain. First Lidl in months, two months. Let's get a few basics and then we're going to Vera or maybe Villaricos.
So we'll try and stay over there. It's only about 10 kilometers from here. So it's going to be our first stop, hopeful stop. Hopefully because we were here two years ago.
We explored this whole region. We actually did a video where we stopped in all these what was then sort of popular overnight parking stops for motorhomes. And I'll link to that video somewhere here and down below. But we're going to actually go to one of them, which was the biggest. I remember driving in there and was like, holy cow, look at all these motorhomes.
We're going to go there. I'm surprised that you want to go there, to be honest. It's the easiest right now. So let's go check it out. Okay. First shopping. See, this is the part we love.
Giant bag, giant bag, giant bag, giant bag. Where's it going to go? You're going to do that YouTube trick. Look at what we found, my favorite. Lisa's favorite. I was so excited. We found Trufa Pizza.
It's been a while. We thought you would only get it in the north. In Catalonia. This is the best. Okay. Shall we see? If anything falls out.
Not bad. Okay. Shall we hit the road. Thanks, Lidl! For some reason, I expected this place to be a lot busier.
I'm very surprised. It's super peaceful and there's so few motorhomes. Maybe the police cleared it out last night. So that's why it's so empty. And these are all new. That means they're going to be lazy and only come by in a week's time.
You can come to a place like this. This is marginal shoulder season. And it's just paradise because there's nobody really here. Over weekends now, I think the locals do enjoy these spaces. Where we are now is actually not that built up.
The biggest towns are south of here. And there's actually a lot of beaches. So I don't think you get massive congestion. Beautiful, hey? All right. Well, the sun's going to set in a bit.
And I think we're staying here tonight. Safe to say we're staying here tonight. I think we might stay here a while, actually. Got a lot of work to catch up. There's no services here.
So we're limited to water, really. But we can always swim to keep ourselves clean. And what do you call it? Scavenge. Scavenge.
Oh, yeah. We know how good I am at scavenging. We can scavenge. Luckily, we scavenged at the Lidl already. Someone cleaned the beach for us.
What's for dinner love? Lisa's favorite line. What's for dinner love? No, what's my options? What are your options? What do you think it's like a la carte restaurant? I just want to ask, this morning, you said, "Ooh, you're going to have to make some changes immediately." And today Lisa said, "Ooh, trufi pizza, trufi pizza."
This is yours. We got a fresh salad. And who's this? This is mine.
This is mine. Nice chorizo. a tiny glass of wine. I'm still drinking beer.
Cheers. Good night. Good night. Super quiet in this place. There's a bit of a storm brewing somewhere, but the place still looks very much the same.
There's a few vans around. Old Milli next to the Concorde. We're going to go for a quick run. Maybe a little run all the way to Vera Playa. We'll show you that as well. Quite popular with camper vans on that side as well.
Can I go for a quick haircut. That's awesome. You can just have a haircut at the beach. Wow. I need one of those.
Very entrepreneurial. This is the Indalo man, which is symbolic of this region of Spain. A few years ago we visited Mojacar. And we tell the story about the origin of the Indalo man.
We actually got a little Indalo Man on the back of our motorhome. Just in time for the baker, let's see what he's got one nice thing about these areas. There's normally a dude coming around around 9 o'clock in the morning. Nice big bread. Yummy. Lisa bought the naughties! I did, I did, I did.
But they look so good. It's a triangle with nutella Should I get another one? You know, small steps in the process. Oh yeah. That was nice. Let's see what the day brings, we're going to chill out here for another day probably. It's just so relaxed.
Got a lot of work to catch up. And the weather is nice. The neighbors are quiet. It's super peaceful here. Actually really, really conducive to just being.
And if it's not nice, we'll just move to the back. As long as it doesn't rain because I think, here, it can get... a bit slip and slidey Very slip and slidey Good job. Awaiting instructions from the navigator.
So we need water. That's the problem. It's weekend. But we're actually meeting people in this exact spot tomorrow.
And it's a lovely spot. It's actually a lot more relaxed than I expected it to be. Yeah, we moved back from where we left you last time. Because the wind started blowing and it became very... How can I put this mildly.. Tight.
Sardine-like in there. For some reason, people like to clump together. Even though they have all the space. A bit weird hey.
I'm hoping the water place isn't closed over lunchtime. Because we know the Spanish like their siestas Don't even joke. Should we go straight there? No, let's first go to the shop. Cool. That's convenient. Four euro? Quite expensive water but...
You take what you can get. You know this will last us five days so... Go pay the man please. It's really nice when you can just do this conveniently. When you get the chance, you wash your windscreen, fill up your jerry cans.
You do all kinds of little domestic things. This is actually a very nice little stop. It's a private motorhome stop.
It's only 11 euros a night. Excluding electricity I think. There's a cycle paths all the way to the ocean.
It's a little bit far. Vera itself doesn't really have much charm from what I've heard. We got what we came for. Yes. Let's go back to...
Let's see if we can find a parking. Oh, I think we'll be allright. We can't help but wonder how long places like this will still be available to us as motorhomers. Because the truth is the police here are trying to make their lives as easy as possible for themselves.
So they're not going to come here and say, "Oh, you are parked. You are camping. You are parked. You are camping." No, they're just going to say, "All of these vehicles are over five meters. Everybody go." So if everybody behaves like us and don't put out their chairs and their tables and their awnings and their kitchen sink, then it wouldn't be a problem.
So we're really spoiling it for ourselves at the end of the day, which is unfortunate. It's not going to get easier. Some people might say that, "Well, the space is here. Nobody's using it,
so why shouldn't we enjoy it?" And sit and tan in the middle of the parking lot. That's what the beach is there for. There's enough public spaces as well.
You're not even very far from it. Just remember, you're sharing this public space with a hell of a lot of other people, and it's public for them too. Maybe someone can explain to me why would you want to sit in a chair outside your motorhome in a parking lot if the beach is right there? Now, we never sit outside, and it's because we typically don't camp.
We just don't see the point. If I sit outside I take my chairs and I go to the beach and I can enjoy it. Well, we just believe that you should really obey the laws because they are there for a reason, and they are allowing us to actually stay in these beautiful places for free.
So why go and ruin that for everyone? No, no, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm asking, why would you come to a place like this park with your 200,000 or 100,000, or in some cases 400,000 euro palace, liner thing? What's the others we saw yesterday? And then you park in the same parking lot as everybody else, and then you want to sit in your chair next to... It's weird. The beach is there. It's lovely. Go there. Come on. Everybody just go there. I know why. Too old to carry your chair all the way there.
Now she's being ageist. Ageist, I tell you. Conversation over. Let's make some food. What are we eating, honey? I've got some mushrooms, so maybe I'll do a mushroom risotto. Yeah, that's easy. Fast.
Ooh. Yummy. Super close up. Super close up. Don't come so close to me. Why's our rear view camera on? Who are we watching? We're watching what's happening behind us.
Oh, yeah. We've got to keep an eye on these dodgy neighbors of ours. Just joking. Almost a sea view. It's very gloomy. Having a mushroom risotto. And it smells delicious.
All right. Good night. I mean, cheers. Enjoy. What are you drinking? Water? No. White wine? Andre just told me that there's a market in this town tomorrow morning.
So I think first thing we're going to go for a quick run and then we're going to go and check out the little market. If it doesn't rain because... What's going on out there, people? OK, good night.
Good night. Cheers! Good morning. Good morning. Good morning to sunny Spain.
Oh, wait. Good misty morning. Who said it's always sunny in Spain. We've been here now for what, three, four days, maybe more. And so far it has not really been sunny at all.
No, there's this strange misty haziness hanging around here and it's been quite windy. The town we're in is called Villaricos and they've got a Sunday market, apparently. Apparently, according to the reviews on Park4Night. Why are you in jail cat? You're quite dirty. Uh-oh. Hello! What's your name, buddy? The ocean is quite ominous.
We're not going to be swimming here. Whoa. Look at the black little volcanic rocks.
Amazing. Wow. No swimming today. OK. Let's go shop. Let's go shop.
Let's go get some veggies. Mostly fruit veg, baked goods. Ooh, asado de pollos. Ooh, Those are good ones. Oh, it's quite busy, hey? Here's the epicenter.
Yo, there's music and everything. There's more veggies. Just check that guy's asparagus on this side. Whoa, just one bunch of asparagus. Pick a fennel, pick a good fennel Lisa. Yo, that's a big guy.
Oh, that's a beast. Take that guy. That's a big guy. How does his butt look? Can you show me his butt? Yes, nice. What do you think that is? That's glassy, that biscuity one. What do you think it's got on top of it? No idea.
Lisa's stealing the jeans. She's behind the counter. Trying on jeans over jeans. That seems like a solid plan, hey, Lisa? Why not? Way too big for you, baby. They're not too big. You think they're too big? Oh, the legs look a little bit floppy.
It's a flashback to the 90s. Yeah, it's bell bottoms. What about this guy? Umm it will definately.. For me, though, for me. .. a fashion statement. Oh for you! Oh, yeah, for me.
Yes, absolutely. Five euro leather jackets. Seriously? Five euro leather jackets. Stop touching everything.
Why? I like touching stuff. I'll never get you out of this place. They got some zucchini and nice peppers. That was one euro sixty for all of that. Pretty good value.
Cheaper than the fennel. Wow. Two bags like those for one fennel. I think we got away from the market lightly.
We have got some. I have got some secret snacks here in my bag. Okay, you don't have to show us! Lisa's always got some secret snacks. It's a cool little market.
I think it probably draws a bit of a crowd from this area on Sundays. And I can see why. It's got a really nice vibe. Pity the weather is a little bit chilly. Although I'm sitting in short sleeves.
It's still not cold. I think we're going to end this video here. We'll see if we hang around the coast or if we'll head inland a little bit. Hopefully we've showed you a little bit of what motorhome living, van life is like in this part of Spain for this time of the year. If you enjoyed coming back to Spain with us and you're enjoying our Spain series, make sure you click that thumbs up button.
Leave us a comment below. Tell us if there's any places along the coast of Spain or even inland that we should go to. Remember to subscribe.
As always, thanks for watching and we'll see you next week in Spain. Hasta luego! ¡Hasta luego!
2024-04-09 01:32
