Winter Van Life in Mexico | Climbing in El Potrero Chico
today we're enjoying the sights sounds and tastes of mexico it's so good is it oh that was a good taco still good all was fine and dandy until i lost more stay till the end for a surprise on our climb up excalibur up over there we're chico and moritz and we built this box truck to get outside and explore join us for van life reality on the road to pitches [Music] good morning good morning that's good no that's the italian clearly we still need to work on our spanish but as you can see we are way more well rested than we were a couple of days ago we took all of yesterday off just like decompress decompressed did some yoga just spend time catching up on life we've been traveling and doing a lot in the past week and it all caught up to us today we are going to the market in hidalgo and get some food get some groceries i'm very excited for all the produce they have here because it's really good stuff fresh from the farms around the area this is not our first time in hidalgo we've been here before in like 2018 and that's one of the photos on our blog actually of us on one of the climbs here and it just like feels so surreal to be back here but with our camper van every time we think about that it's just like we look at each other we're here we're in mexico can you believe it has it sunk in us in mexico for you now we're in mexico has it what sunk in no i still don't know not quite yet like you see it but you don't believe it it's been in the making for two years yeah like the last time we were here was 2019 2019 right before the pandemic so this is so crazy no it's almost as crazy as your eyebrows no all right let's i know let's put the bikes together and then let's get to town guys [Music] [Music] hola beautiful sunny day wow couldn't have asked for better weather that was quick from what i remember produce is on the right side so why don't we head right and let's go check it out oh oh [Music] [Music] look how cute these are [Music] cool i look good right yeah and they gave us a bunch of cilantro for free oh look at this blue jay look an alternator [Music] three for you two for me sure i don't know could we have body sink stink cinco cinco single taco you just gotta like go for it and let the locals correct you yeah and then slowly you learn yes but apparently they don't speak the essence yeah cinco de ah wow ready already thank you okay class yes how much is that okay [Music] my luck i'll probably get it on myself it was a lot so good is it oh gosh wait i can't have a bite i know what you're looking for you're looking for food now i also understand why so many people end up with strays when they come back from big cause look he's so cute but his left eye is buggered okay yeah you sit there this is really good is it yeah that was a good taco wow we don't do tacos like this i'm not like why don't we do that it should not be out of the question [Applause] i tell you that one time i was in this rural town in the middle of like nowhere northeast of thailand just like outside cambodia like a couple days outside of cambodia and we stopped in this town go to the market there and i wanted to try like deep fried innards or something like that and we had a whole train of like 20 dogs [Music] like 20 dogs and barking and following us the whole time it was pretty funny i was like scared at one point oh my god they're going to attack me steal my innards no which is insane and look how good it looks on a search for a blonde haired gringo [Music] [Music] no [Music] yes oh hello there what is this is it jicama oh jicama okay okay sure all of so [Music] is like a tomato sauce and then with the sweetness of the mango it's really really good oh i want to try okay the whole thing yeah so i've no idea what i know it's mango and jicama and some kind of melon it sounds like um i have no idea what any of this stuff on there is it works really well [Music] it's like salty and sweet and um i think there's chilis in it yeah dried chilies it's like the same stuff they put on the rim of the margarita so we gotta go back and ask jose at the bar what is this what he put on the rim of the margarita and this is jicama pick them as like apples like a woody apple well i think i think we've gotten all the produce that we were looking for here and that was such a great dessert i'm really glad we stopped i think this might end up being a tradition of ours anymore every tuesday taco's gonna go and pick them up alex arnold hey man how are you doing free solo in that mural it's pretty good it's pretty good yes okay let's head back [Music] by the time you're back we'll have whipped cream or butter [Music] [Applause] [Music] home sweet home man i love coming home don't you love coming home wow so we got a whole haul of groceries for 25 us dollars all sorts of fruits veggies we found some cream some tortillas like 25 eggs or so oh and we have papaya this is not like the most ridiculous fruits bowl you've ever seen that everything's about to fall off well we're gonna wrap up for today we got all our chores done shopping cooking relaxing which is a chore for you true for me so thank you for plugging in there i was just like my brains went look and then i guess we'll take you to the rocks tomorrow yeah so we're just gonna chill out for the rest of the day i just had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every time i eat sugar my brain just goes whoa no see you tomorrow [Music] good morning how are you doing today we are going to be heading up on excalibur which is in el potro chico and we've been here for a few days now right now we're making breakfast because recently we didn't film this part but we were climbing dope ninja which is like a pleasey-ish six-pitch climb just to get warmed up in this area again and um we were budgeting for four six hours at the most didn't eat didn't bring much food had like two pancakes and like a couple slices of cheese and we got stuck on the mountain for like eight hours because the group in front of us they were quite small the way up was okay we maybe waited an hour an hour or so but took us four hours of watching the way down they took four hours to rip out six pages with two ropes yeah we were on their tail the whole time and we would get to their anchor which is like two permanent bolts a fix in the wall where you could loop your rope over and then keep repelling down and then their rope would start moving like a couple of meters and then it would stop for like 20 minutes and we had no way of communicating with these people it was pitch black also it was dark and we didn't bring headlamps thankfully they left us one of their little flashlights and we had little lights on the bottom of our walkies but um rappelling into the dark was great fun because at some point you're just like i can't see what's happening so you don't you're not afraid of falling no that looks pretty good you don't see the ground it's less scary so long story short we are trying to learn from our mistakes right now which means eating breakfast packing head lamps and packing a decent amount of food to bring up on the climb today are you excited to pull out the excalibur on top at the top of this climb there is supposed to be an excalibur that's why it's called excalibur well let's see what it looks like i don't think i can pull it out isn't it like affects permanently do i gain special powers though no no you've got a seat at the table are you gonna pull it out sure [Music] so we haven't given a good introduction to el patrochico and this is a world-class climbing destination in north america it's got hundreds if not thousands of bolted routes lots of big wall sport multi-pitch clients which is why there are so many people here purely for climbing and what's super amazing is that the approach is so easy you've seen us approaching and the rockies where you walk two three hours before you can even start climbing we'll be walking 45 minutes today today 45 minutes but on a regular day you walk 10 minutes and you're at the bottom of these cliffs and then there's like 600 meters of rocket value so that's pretty amazing this is that tip over there that's dope ninja what i mentioned earlier in order to sustain youtube and keep our relationship with you healthy i mean you certainly don't want people to see every single aspect of your life either so we do keep some climbs and some adventures to ourselves purely just to enjoy without the added danger of losing a camera on a several hundred meter height clef oh this stuff is so spiky i got in it oh that's el bobo on the left [Music] is [Music] hey guys looks like we found the route and um on mountainproject.com there was uh someone who accidentally climbed the wrong route next to it and now there's a sign [Music] looks less intimidating from down here than i looked from down there so should be a lot of fun so after what happened last time i think if it gets too dark let's just wrap it yeah we can always come back like rapping in the dark a lot of things could have gone terribly wrong so usually accidents happen and climbing when multiple things go wrong and multiple things were going wrong for us on that climb we both have climbed in the dark before we have repelled in the dark we've done all these things and like we have a lot of ex not a lot we have some experience doing it but in my head i was like okay we're behind time it's starting to rain it's pitch black we don't have lights we don't have food we almost pulled the rope with a knot that means it would get stuck at the top and then yeah stuck so today if it gets too late look we can call it no if at 3 pm no if at 4 pm we're not up there we got a caller no but i brought headlamps yeah does we're more prepared rough fillet we arrived on the top of pitch four about to go last pitch five and we've got a cool ballet ledge here look at all this space this is like look at this you got some nice foliage you got a whole shelf for your rope we can both stand here comfortably this is like the size of a toronto downtown condo no nothing worse than a hanging fillet what's the beta for the next pitch we are about to encroach on pitch five so it's 12 volts two bolt anchor make use of side pools and work book your way into a dihedral well it starts a bit steeper here and then around and over and back and forth sorry plant oh that's something hi palm tree look at that palm tree over there that's so funny it's just waving on the breeze [Music] [Music] the excalibur holy this wall behind us i keep forgetting how big it is there's still a lot to climb and there is also a lot of canyon [Music] well it's going to get ready to drop down this is what we mean when we say ropes get snagged here there it goes watch your saddle on the tree [Music] [Music] [Music] bam another multi-hitch done we celebrate when we get to the ground here because you just never know after what happened last time you can't tell friends while you get to the ground excalibur that was fun okay i'm going to help more with the rope and see you when we get back to the van of course climbing day is never complete without cerveza beer and literally this is the taco shop i was talking about earlier and we climbed up over there so we got some tacos enjoy some dinner cheers gracias wow we got picadillo barbacoa whatever [Music] we made it back to the van we hope you had fun coming along with us on excalibur another five pitches 510c super fun-ish but dirty climb and having dinner the coolest thing is that you actually climb among these palm trees which you don't really get another climbs so you like that leave us a thumbs up let us know what you think down in the comments below we read each and every single comment and we love each and every single one of you so thank you so much for stopping by and subscribe if you want more of this content happy to have you here all right all right see you on the road to pitches
2022-03-04 16:31
