Explore europe in a campervan

After Simon’s near miss a lot of lessons were learned. Most of them from sitting on the beach in the following days of very strong winds and watching other kite-surfers get in trouble and rescue themselves to varying degrees. Tarifa’s a beautiful place and the weather is warm and sunny consistently BUT!…when the Levante (easterly) wind is howling it’s not ideal for kite-surfing, sun-bathing (due to sand whipping violently across the beach) or even being in or around the van as the sand and dust blows in. Ok, so we’re not having a truly tough time but our activities have to be altered to suit the weather – poor us!

The next time Simon went out kiting was a few days later when the forecast said the wind would start lighter around lunchtime before picking up. He was only popping out for an hour so, after helping him set up and launch the kite, I sat myself on a chair at the edge of the field with a book so I was ready to help him land and pack up in a short while. Yeah, right. Although it was measuring light on the beach the wind was much stronger out in the water and he found himself over-powered again. After coming off the board he was unable to tack back upwind to get it as dipping the kite into the ‘power-zone’ caused him to be dragged out of the water. He came in eventually – much more safely than last time – and, of course, I had walked the length of the beach to meet him. No board.

We followed the same course of action as before – walking to the down-wind end of the beach, watching and waiting. We watched and waited all day in between me taking trips all the way up and down the beach and asking people. Even the following day we walked along the beach and around the next or 7 coves, but nothing. Realistically if it had drifted into shore when we weren’t right there to collect it the likelihood is that someone took it home with them. And probably ‘put it under their bed’ as someone suggested in the kiteschool we asked at. Less said about it the better but we managed to pick up a relatively-cheap replacement that is slightly smaller and probably better for progressing on.

Otherwise life continues happily in the sun, with just minor traumas. Our last tank-full of water lasted a week but when we went back to the petrol station to fill it up the tap was dry. Fortunately, in our walks along the beach, we’ve found the location of a natural spring we’d been told about. By taking four 5 litre bottles along the beach each day we had just enough to get by and the tank’s replenished now.

We also manage to run out of charge in the engine battery which only came to light when we tried to start the van to go into town. We thought we’d been so careful – checking the voltage almost daily and only using the cigarette adaptor to charge things when the voltage was healthy. Anyway, if our English mate who has been parked next to us had been here we would have asked for a jump start but, unluckily, he had driven to town as well. The solution was the Kipor generator! It came equipped with battery connectors and had instructions for charging a 12 volt engine battery. We were a little dubious but after disconnecting the battery from the engine and charging for an hour the engine started fine. The generator is actually really useful now and we use it for a while every day.

Life in the pig field is not fast-paced, but always interesting. We see a massive range of different vehicles from expensive plastic motorhomes to converted horse-boxes or removal lorries. This week we’ve also seen a ‘fifth-wheel’ motorhome that mounts on the back of a pick-up truck as well as a couple of conversions that appear to be caravans permanently fixed onto the flat beds of recovery-vehicle trucks. The vans come from all over the European mainland, although I suppose us Brits have had the furthest to drive.

We’re starting to plan our return trip – there are a lot of miles to cover – but we’re heading to the Netherlands before the UK to go to Lowlands music festival near Amsterdam.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Kitesurfing, Campervan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.