The Van
My wife and I have been used to camping since a long time ago, just put the tent and a couple of sleeping bags in the trunk of the car and drive to somewhere with a beach. We did that since the very beginning, I have lots of good memories and stories about it.
Obviously, life changes when you have children, tried - and did - it a couple of times but in the end it’s not just “pick whatever and go” because kids need more preparation, and not only preparation but stuff (clothes, games, medicines, maybe some food either…) so in the end it means much more work and worries. In that case the easy way -if you can afford it- makes more sense: do a reservation in a hotel and keep the “adventure level” limited to a “what kind of mojito should I order today in the swimming pool”.
That is totally fine don’t get me wrong, but well, we usually need something else in our trips, little adventures, discovering new places, not to have closed schedules for everything, etc… So, after a lot of thought and doubts, two years ago (Oct'20) we decided to buy a van and do a full camperization according to our needs. We were sure that the project would help us to find the roots of those first camping trips.
I’m really proud and grateful to all the people that offered help and helped us to achieve this, taking in account I was that kind of guy that asked for help even for changing a bulb, you can imagine the amount of “try and error” stuff we had to deal with. Of course, Marta and the kids were there the whole time helping and supporting in every single problem we had to arrange, which makes the thing way easier.
And two years later, after lots of learnings, investments, efforts, worries and much more stuff I can’t tell with words… we did our first (and second) trip!. For the moment, even being in autumn and with so and so weather, it’s being a total success, children are always pleased to be on the road with that adventure feeling, “where are we going this time?”, “where are we going to sleep?”, “still a long way?”. Of course it’s not ideal all the time (#vanlife has “things”) we still have to deal with the basic services (clean and dirty water, electricity, park, etc…) but we already knew this stuff from other experiences when rented motorhomes so, in general, there is no big surprises for now.
🤷 I have lots of Gb. with videos and pics along this camperization process but dunno if I’ll ever have time to edit or do something more orderly and appropriate with them.