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Ibérica Overland on What You Should Know About Overlanding in Spain · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I'm
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: your host, Ashley Jordano, and we are coming to you
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: from the field today in northern Spain with two very
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: special guests. We have Enrique and Eva from Iberica. Overland.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much for coming.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Hi, thanks for having us, and it's.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: So fun to be here in Spain talking to you
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: about overlanding.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: It's such a pleasure to have you here.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Awesome. So you have a YouTube channel and you've been
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: contributors to Overland Journal and Expedition Portal, so there are
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: a few articles out there with your names on them,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: but tell me a little bit more about yourselves and
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: how you got into overland travel.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Is definitely welcome.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: I would start there. I always been in over force
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: and oath since I think I have rye license. My
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: first car ever wash Susuki Samurai. So as soon as
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: I go my life like next week, I got the
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: summer right and I was already on the dirt, So
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: it's really what I always wanted.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I was like that was pretty popular in Sae. Yeah,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: I've seen them everywhere.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: Everywhere. There's like a very cheap car where you know,
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: everybody gets for just moving around small trails and going
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: to farms and stuff like that. So I've always been
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: like into dirt like motorbikes, dirt bikes, and always been
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: in the off road community and doing trips. But I
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: think it was more like when I got my first
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: JIP and I started to be interested on traveling with
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: the JEP and also like to make my own meals
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: and sleeping in the car and all that out of
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: necessity because I'm a photographer filmmaker, so it was the
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: way to get out there, get remote because I do
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: mostly in landscape and nature and being able to access
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: places you know will being possible and all that, and
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: you know, it was like a perfect combination, so you
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: can access to the places, you can sleep in the
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: car being there at the right time, the right light.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: So that's pretty much how I started doing, switching more
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: from from the off road to the overland.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Nice. Nice. Were you based in Madrid at the time
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: or were you somewhere else that you were starting from.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was living in Madrid. Then when I got
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: this second hand ground Turkey and I just threw a
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: mat like one of those inflatable mattresses and small fridge
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: on the side and camping gas and you know, boil.
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: And then I went to the Alps for two months
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: and just like I was hod, It's like, okay, this
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: is it. Wow, just sleeping in the back of the
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: jep with nothing but just a piece of wood and
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: a mattress and small fridge and not even one of
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: the good ones, just like one of those you know
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: that drained your battery because I didn't have a second
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: battery or anything. And that was it. You know, it's
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: just during the treat. But I remember buying a solar
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: panel and print it with zip tides in the group
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: rank so it was so darkay, and this is it awesome?
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: And how about you?
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: When we met, when we started living together and Rickie
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: already had the jeep branch Rookee. I used to travel
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: as a backpacker, so I was already really interested in seeing.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: The world and like maybe slightly weird ways.
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: So after my first trip with him, I was also hooked,
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: and I was more than excited to start traveling in
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: a way that is maybe slower and a bit more
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: comfortable than what I was used to. So that's how
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: we actually and then then then we got the dog,
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: so then that was.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Another reason to don't take planes. Yeah, just stop.
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: Taking planes and to switch to car based travel where
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: we could make our own meals and move at our
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: own rhythm, prepare our meals in sleep, well preferably in nature.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Very nice. And you met while traveling, right.
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: Yes, we met in Iceland, but we met a long
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: time ago. We met in Iceland in two thousand and
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: nine and we just met, but we kept in touch
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: and then eight years later, so in twenty seventeen, we
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: were kind of like maybe looking for an excuse of
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: like we were trying to find a thing to do together,
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: so we would have an excuse to meet up again.
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: Where were you living at I was living in Belgrade
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: at the time, and Endrique was living already in Madrid.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: So he spent three years living in Iceland, then he
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: moved back to Spain.
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: And so we came up with let's call it a
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: small project. That's what my upcoming article in Overland Journal
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: is about. Actually, So we came up with the idea
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: to visit these peculiar monuments to the.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: We call it in the region, we call it the revolution.
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: So actually the struggle in the Second World War all
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: over the Balkans so the seven countries that used to
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: be one, they used to be Ugoslavia. These monuments are
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: really like they have been there, very many in numbers,
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  Speaker 4: and they are very peculiar in aspect. They're usually very
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: abstract and you can't tell from them what are they
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  Speaker 4: supposed to represent, which is a big contrast to the
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: typical So Yugoslavia was a communist country, but that's a
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: very big contrast to the typical Soviet art from the
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: time that is very realistic. It usually has like human
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: figures that are like realistic in an idealistic way. Well,
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: Yugoslavian art is different. It is very abstract, and these
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: monuments are or at least like the biggest and the
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: most impressive, most important ones are usually in like battle
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: sites all over Yugoslavia. So these places are remote, usually
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: in the mountains very often and you do need a
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: four by four to get close to them. So we
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: made this has actually been three different trips and there
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: for sure are going to be more to come around
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  Speaker 4: the Balkans where we just like drove there with our
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: car and then explored this part of the history of
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: the region, not.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: Only the monuments but the areas around because as you
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: say that they are based where the battles took place. Yeah,
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: so just down in the middle of a hill sometimes,
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: so it's very cool to explore the area at the
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: same time and just going to see the money.
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and the road takes you or the trail takes
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: you to places that are vastly unknown to locals and
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: tourists alike. The communist history in Yugoslavia is a bit forgotten,
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: so since we have had the Balkan Wars in the
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: nineties and then every country has had its own transition
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: to capital democratic society and we don't like to think
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: or talk about it much so to us. To local
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: people from the Balkans, usually these monuments as well as
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: the stories connected to.
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  Speaker 2: Them are not very interesting. We don't know much about them.
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: So for me as a local, it was also amazing
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: to travel with the foreigner and discovered this part of
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: my own history that I didn't pay much attention to
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: this one.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: So there's a.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Message behind each of these monuments.
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes, every one of them has like it commemorates
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: a certain event or a certain battle, or a certain
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: site or something important happened. But all of them tend
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: to have like positive futuristic messages hidden more or less
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: or less within them within them, so they send this
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: message about the positive future that we are going to
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: have as like United Peoples of Ugoslavia, which is.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: A nice message to see nowadays as well.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what could you describe what a few of these
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: structures look like so people can get a sense of Okay,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: they're very.
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  Speaker 2: Very different, right, yes, yes, they're very Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Usually this was this was like a big it was
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: a big monument building movement activity in the country of
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: Yugoslavia in its golden years, especially in the seventies.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: So they would look.
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: Like very futuristic in a way, but like like dystopian
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: in a dystopian way. Also the fact that they are
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: in the middle of a hill or the forest, so
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: they made them very dystopian. You know, you arrived there
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: and it's like a huge piece of rock with ments
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: and with an a struct shape like a like a spaceship.
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: Its just description and it's just landing there and then
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: you look at it, it's like what is this doing here?
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So they're on the.
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  Speaker 3: Middle of the town, like we put the monuments here
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  Speaker 3: to commemorate something that happened in a hill like ten
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: minutes away that they put the people die in the battles,
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  Speaker 3: So it's it is amazing to see those space ships
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  Speaker 3: made of stolen in the middle of a hill.
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  Speaker 4: So yeah, very often some of them we visited at night,
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  Speaker 4: So the typical view would be you're driving in complete
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: darkness on a trail like through a forest.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: There's you could see.
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  Speaker 4: Sometimes we would see wild animals, like we would see
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: deer on on the trail and then suddenly your car
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  Speaker 4: lights would hit like this this huge concrete structure that
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: is like completely upstry. And one thing that makes it
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: really dystopian is the fact that they're not taken care
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: of really well.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: So all of them are. You can see that they
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: are old and.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: For broken some of them.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Some of them are broken. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: And also they're not like if fans like in a
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  Speaker 3: way like oh this is a monument, there's none of
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: this is just here. So you arrive and it's just
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: there in the middle of forests with no sometimes no
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: shign no anything. So if you don't know, did you
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: just let you there that you don't even know what
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: to think about it, you know, wow, And the reason
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: why we sometimes went the nineties because I wanted is
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: to tie laps from the stars behind or you know,
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: stuff like that. So we encounter some funny situations like
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: police stopping us in Bosnia, like what are you doing
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: here in the middle of the forest, and then it
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: was the slighted guy like next to the monuments and
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: Second World Wars like.
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, We've had some peculiar situations definitely.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: And how many are there out there? Do you know?
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: An estimation is around sixty or seventy thousand. Yeah, not
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: all of them aren't that big or that impressive. It's
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: like all kind hundreds, the big ones. Yeah, and hundreds definitely.
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: Then there have been a lot of big and impressive
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: and important ones that have been destroyed in the Balkan
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: Wars as they were and they continue to be seen
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: by the people as symbols of the old communist states.
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: So as the wars were independence wars from that as
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: several of the now existing countries wanted independence from Yugoslavia,
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: the monuments were destroyed as symbols of the country they
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: were living, which is a shame.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because I think what maybe it would be hard
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: to understand or people that don't know, is like in
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: the contrary, they are monuments as communists, monuments like celebrating communism.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: It's quite the opposite that they are like remembering battles
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: against the Nazis during the war. So they are not
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: like communists in that sense, you know. Monuments.
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe when we say like communist monuments, we imagine
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: like statues of dictators who committed genocide.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: It is not that. It's definitely not that Yugoslavia was
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: occupied by Nazi.
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: Germany in nineteen forty one, and after that the resistance
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: to the German regime was organized by the people and
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: a lot of them were like just regular farmers or workers,
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: and they a lot of them died trying to liberate
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: their country from fascism. So the monuments are usually to
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: them more than to like communist leaders.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: It's just now communism has it's a bad connotation. Well
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: from the fifties, I think.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Right right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there was a specific
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: term for the collective of monuments.
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the monuments have started gaining popularity with foreigners, mostly
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: in the last ten years. Maybe, so the term that
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: we use ismenis comeniq is a word in all the
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: languages of the Balkans, that just means monument. But if
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: you say it like that, then to foreign years it
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: will mean one fighting in theses.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and it is these.
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: A world that has been adopted, you know, to use
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: specifically these kind of moments.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: So you have a really great article in the winter
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty three issue of Overla d Journal, and it
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: has photos of what these look like and descriptions and
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: locations of you know, they're all in a bunch of
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: different Balcon countries. The people have can find them or
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: read more about the history behind them and your journey
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: three trips to the area to discover these monuments.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: It's very cool.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, some of them we went twice because you know,
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: we wanted to shoot them properly or now the drawn
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: or different different seasons, and you know, we realize also
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: like they will look even more dystopian in the winter,
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: you know, because you go to the summer maybe you know,
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: back guns they are like any other countries, are normal
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: like forests and look pretty and colorful. And that was
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: it wasn't looking you know how I wanted. So okay,
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: we had to go in the winter, so we took
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: the car this time for rangers that we have with
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: the root of Tent and we went in the middle
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: of the winter and we were visiting some other monuments,
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: camping in the in the snow, like below zero, under
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: the snow, and it was it was great. It was
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: a right decision. We got the last quire two times
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: that we wanted was smooth, the right. The footage is
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: multi very I think it just fits, you know, the atmosphere.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Yees yeah, yeap ye excellent. I look forward to seeing
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: that in print.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, very very cool. I love the concept of doing
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: an overland trip that's linking together. It's like a scavenger
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: hunt with history involved. And yeah, very different, so very interesting.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Give me an idea a bit about your backgrounds because
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: you're talking about photo and video and I know that
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: you and Rique have a bit of a background and
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: food real well.
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: And you now, I've been a photographer and filmmaker for
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: almost my entire career of life. So first I started
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: as a photographer, and then I moved to documentary filmmaking
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: and and and then I specialized more on travel and tilups,
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: specifically doing store footage or creating time ups for for
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: advertising big companies, sometimes for phony or brands like that,
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: and it was it was great. It took me like
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: to a lot of countries, so startling a lot, getting
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: nice footed travel footage for for Modo all over the world.
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: That's how I kind of got so addicted of this
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: traveling thing. And that's I loved it. But that's at
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: some point I was kind of out of planes in
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: you know mind. So that's why I think I really
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: like overland so much. And it's just different paces, different
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: way of trialing allow you to to get better footage
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: in a way because you're traveling slower and always have
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: as much gear of you want in the car, not
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: trialing in the in the planes. That's when a few
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: years ago we started overline. Then we created the YouTube
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: channel kind of like out of necessity, we get out
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: of bored. We were so bored because because COVID so
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: we couldn't travel, and it's like, what are we going
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: to do it? I don't know, channel, do some videos here.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was kind of hard.
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: We had both at that point when when COVID hit,
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: we had careers in travel filmmaking and then suddenly we
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: weren't allowed to leave our own So we spent the
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: first two weeks of the shutdown, just like refreshing news, like.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Without like just just just.
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: Panicking and without thinking, like COVID cases in the US,
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: COVID cases in Spain, COVID cases in Serbia, like just numbers.
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: And then we realized we had to find something to do.
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: And the thing we found was the YouTube channel. So
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: which is like it gave us a thing to shoot,
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: gave us a thing to think about, to research a bit.
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: We have no idea how to do it well and
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: what what does it take to do to create a
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: successful YouTube channel.
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: I was in a very specific niche, you know, like, yeah,
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: I know a lot of filmmaking, but just of these
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: like the YouTube channel, you realize you had to do
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: one hundred different jobs for me. Yes, yeah, and see
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: that's kind of the other ninety nine. I think I
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: wills keep them. And you didn't tell.
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: Your bankground, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Well I am a political scientist. I am really not.
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: I at least I wasn't a professional filmmaker before meeting Endrique,
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: but yeah, I used to work in education, and then
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: we discovered the monuments and the Balkans and then everything
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: changed slowly for me. So yeah, I started, we started
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: working together, and I think we make a good team
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: because we're good at different things. Like he's really really
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: good at the creative part of it, all right, So yeah,
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: let's say he's good at images and I'm good at words.
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: So we've been working together in this for a while
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: and traveling.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Together for a while.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: So we also now with the new company, we have
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: split rolls and maybe you can tell us more about that.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: The last years, we were actually seeing that the market
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: is getting difficult on the image or like in the
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: media part, as you know, like everything is changing with
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: artificial intelligence, like with the democratization of of images and
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: all that. I think our job as filmmakers and photographers
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: is getting harder and harder. So it was good to
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: have to use the channel because it allows us to experiment,
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: to try different things, you know. So we kind of
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: started to invest more time on the Juty channel, on
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: the stock footage and the traveling, and we realized that
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: we really like it because it's like let us explore
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: the world in a different way, not just like looking
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: for the images, but you know, also looking for the adventure,
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: the travel that driving learning new skills, like like overall
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: or I don't know it just like so many other
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: things that you get to learn when you are doing
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: or land, not just like you should. Yeah, so we
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: really invested more time and then we started to focus
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: more on the very cowland kind of company then in
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: the filmmaking. So that took us to a different path
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: where where we spend a lot of time traveling with
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: the car and we needed a better a better setup.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: So so far we had a roofto tent. It was fine.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: But then because we like to make very trips in
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: the cold weather places and you know, like Scandinavia or
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: the Balkans, balance up.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: That the Madrid heat and.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: The desert, we are not. We don't like actually the
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: heat here in Spain, so we always tend to drive north. Yes,
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: so we end up in a very bad weather situations.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: So we really needed a setup where we can have
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: some space to work inside, to get refuge when it's
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: really bad weather. So we decided that the best compromise
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: was to have like a canopy set up, you know,
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: like or like a wedge camper do you call it there?
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: I think, yeah, we yeah, So we were looking for
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: options and then she here there's like we cannot import
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: anything from the stage will be very, very expensive. And
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: at that point there was only like one option and
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: it was like out of our budgets, just too expensive
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: for us.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: And this was for your four granger. Yeah, yeah, what
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: year is it?
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: We have a twenty sixteen extra Carky for a ranger?
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: Great and Diesel two point two. It's something that you
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: don't get there, I think, no, And yeah, it's working fine,
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: I mean, very happy with it. It's been working great
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: for like seventy thousand kilometers. Yeah, so we needed one
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: of these and then we couldn't afford it, which at
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: the end it was actually good because we decided, okay,
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: let's just build it ourselves. It should be that difficult.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: Ended up being difficult. We need all help. It took
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: us a while, but I'm kind of quite perfectionist, so
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: I wanted to leave to make everything perfect, not just
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: like oh because I did the MEGANASI is just going
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: to just throw some metal and let's go.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: So how did you even dart? Like how did you know?
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: You don't have an engineering background, so like what was
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: the first How did you know which materials or what
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the design would be like or how it would go together?
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: That's a lot of hours on YouTube. Yeah, you really
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: make every you want if you spend enough on YouTube,
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: like absolutely everything you want.
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: A lot of time watching videos on YouTube, and when
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: you hear that, your first instinct is the thing. This
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: is like really lost time. But it's always like he
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: gets deep into learning, like practical deals and many things.
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: Many amazing things have come out of his many many
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: hours on YouTube, which I find really impressive.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: Injectors and JEEM and stuff.
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, because like the time I spent online is
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: rarely that productive.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: Well, you learn different skills, like her thing is languages.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: It's always like the same hours that I spent on
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: YouTube sets to spend on Yeah, like we can almost
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: every word because it will just pull from German, some
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: Strench or whatever. So that's that's good apart from the Russian, Serbian,
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: Spanish that speaks already impressive.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you can travel and comfort and communicate, Yes, exactly.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: I'm a communication officer as well. Yeah.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a photographer that didn't know how to change
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: the oil of the car and then ended up changing
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: injectors and a few pumps. Just spend enough hours in
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: YouTube and I ended up making videos for our channel
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: explaining how to change injectors or the differentially because I've
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: done it, not because I'm very smart, because I learned how.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: It's like, if you've done it before, you can sell
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: the people how to do it right. That was it like.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: And then I started putting on videos. People was asking
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: me on WhatsApp like, hey, what the what do you
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: put here? What you used to like?
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: Still do it? They still do it?
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: And then it was easy, Okay, I'm going to make
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: a video, so and how I do it? And then
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: and every time somebody asked me, I'm just going to
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: send a link, you know, just escalated. That's how everything
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: started to grow. And then we got quite a big
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: following in a way.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: I mean not to be yeah for Spain. It is
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: nice for the niche that we have. I think we
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: have a good Yeah.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: So like about the campus, So we decided to build
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: it and then just spend a bunch of hours learning
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: about materials and design and how I wanted and I
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: have a very clear idea of what I wanted and
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: what we need, which is important. And then I did
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: the design. I learned with the schedule how to do
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: really design, the basic to design, the structure that I wanted.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: And then when I went to a friend and asked
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: him like if I said I want to do this,
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: can you weld that? I don't know how to weld?
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: It is not that good. And then work did the
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: structor and then started building from there nice and then
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: these all these like no all go into the canopy
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: ended up looking so good that then people started contacting
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: us saying like, hey, you're going to make more? Can
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: you do one for me? Are you going to sell them?
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: Because there's nothing here, there's only one brand that comes
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: from and then it's very expensive. So we say like this,
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: why not done one? We can do more? Yeah, so
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: we just already delivered to camp person.
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: So we started a company some months ago and now
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: we make canopy campers here in the North Spain.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Incredible.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: What were the priorities that you had at the beginning
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: when you were thinking about the important things for you
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: that you wanted to have included, or the materials you
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: had to have, or what were your the things you
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: must include?
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: I think the main thing was that it has to
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: be like I think the biggest mistake you can make
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: is to want to have everything, because that is like
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: even if they give it to you, here's everything you
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: know for free is going to be very heavy. So
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: the first thing we have to design something that is
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: very like. Also that to me was very important that
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: follow the lines in the track. That doesn't look like
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: a box that just fell on the truck. So it
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: has to have a design. I'm you know, very like
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: design oriented, so to me was super important that for
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: the lines. And it's compact because in Spain is not
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: the States, and here the trails are very narrow and
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: you cannot have a box sticking out of your sides,
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: so I have to follow that. Of course, that is
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: I means you're not going to have a queen I
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: don't know you call a queenside bed or a king
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: side bed. Yes, maybe it's not that big, but we
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: are not that big either, so that is maybe the downside.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: It is not as big as a place other maybe setups,
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: but it means that we have space inside and appreciate
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: to go everywhere as we were going before with the tent.
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: So actually right now I think even with the canopies
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: even lower than it was with.
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: Iraq and attempt perfect Yeah, and then also one of
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: the priorities we had to make it comfortable.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: And I remember when we left for our first trip.
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: So we went to Germany and Chechia this summer with
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: the canter camper, we actually had a level of comfort
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: that was very close to what we have at home.
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: So we knew we've done enough long trips to know
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: exactly what we need to be able to sustain ourselves
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: on a trip that is like several months long. So
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: we knew that we needed a good mattress, a good
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: fabric for the tent. On the counter camper, for example,
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: we had to make it completely waterproof.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Things like that. So a lot of the.
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: Small details on it come from our personal experience and
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: the things that we value you are super important on.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: A longer trip.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: When you build the prototype, What were some things you
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: learned from that prototype that you would change or had.
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: Changed so much? It's just like it's totally different right now.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: In a way, the design basically the same, but we
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: improve promance every part. When you start like using a view,
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: realized like okay, this this hinge doesn't work well. Now
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: we this log also we have to improve these here
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: and there. The fabric cannot like the window cannot open
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: this way. You have to open the other way.
• 28:32
  Speaker 5: For example, we made the windows really big because it
• 28:35
  Speaker 5: looked really good in photos, and we still think it's
• 28:38
  Speaker 5: super photogenic, but then looking at the experience, yeah, the
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: windows needed to be a bit smaller.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: So for example, that is a thing that we changed
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: about it.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: You always want the windows to be bigger though, Yeah.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: Feel when you open it and it's just flappy, yeah, yeah.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: That it doesn't have right because you want to feel
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: like you're outside when it's nice, or you want to
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: review something in.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: That situation and that sense. What we did is we realize,
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: like if you's graining, then you close the windows and
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: then you're in total darkness inside. So we did the
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: front window. Now it's transparent, no way, like even if
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: it's raining, you can you don't close the second layer.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: You have light. You're inside with good light.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So the whole process has been it's been really
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: exciting and really interesting because every day we both learned
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: something new. You both don't have a backgroundness. So it's
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: of course we've made so many changes and I'm certain
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: we're going to make so many more because we're just
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: like we're learning about it, and that's the nice part.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: That's the part that we enjoy the most fun.
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's the best. Like every day, come
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: here to solve problems, because that means that you have
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: to make an effort. You have to financial listen for something,
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: so you have to read a lot all of that,
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: learn like maybe watch on you do this again, and
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: find services for problems. Like I'm always like you know
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: with my young partner. So I have to just do
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: something wherever I go and have ideas how to improve
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: or find different parts. And it's a Chinese because first
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: are not engineers. Second we don't have any like an
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: investment firm or anything. Yeah, so we have to put
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: everything from our pockets and yeah, just create this that
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: may or may not have a future with them.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: I think it will, let's see.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: I think, sweet, Well, what're you best of luck with
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: all of that, very very exciting and I love the world.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: You know, your real world experience and what you are
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: looking for in a product you're creating.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: So that's that's pretty cool, thank you.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: So yeah, so you're using obviously you've taken this camper
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: canopy outside of Spain, but you're also using it within
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Spain as a proving ground I want to talk a
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: little bit about Spain because out of all of us here,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: you know the most about Spain and you can probably
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: give the best guidance to somebody if they want to
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: come to the area to do a trip.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: Maybe, you know, for lan entrepreneurs.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about if somebody hasn't been to Spain before.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: This is one thing that I really tried to understand
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the organization of the country in terms of regions. Different
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: regions have different things to offer, just like you know
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Canada or the US or the UK or whatever. But yeah,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: just understanding the different regions maybe and breaking those down
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: a little bit, what kind of landscapes or offerings or
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: history they have behind them.
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: I think even if I am the Spanish one here
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: sees the political science and so I think it's better
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: if she explained the system and then I explain you
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: more about the landscape.
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: So Spain is divided in seventeen autonomous communities. These are
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: not exactly like states in Canada or the United States,
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: but they are similarly have their own governments more or less,
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: they have their own culture or their particular characteristics, and
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: very often they have their own unique landscape and language
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: and language very often the language. There are four co
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: official languages apart from Spanish and Spain.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Wow yeah, yeah, yeah, that's.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: Not official that many communities also.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: Have yeah, like dialects order being a separate language.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: But then there's like regions that we can talk like
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: what I was explaining before with the map that is
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: like the north coast is kind of like what you
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: will understand that Scotland or similar. And then there's the
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: center that is more like what could be for example,
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: California or Nevada or and then there's the center that
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: could be more like the Southwest. And then we have
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: the south which is really more like like almost like
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: Ashirt area. It's just much much hotter, and the proximity
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: to Africa make it.
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: As a foreigner in Spain, I would say that in
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: my experience, other foreigners very often have this like very
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: simplistic image of Spain that like all of Spain is
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: the sun, the beach, flamenco, some typical foods symbol absolutely
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: at the beach, and yeah exactly, And I've found since
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: moving here that Spain is so much more there there's
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: all of that, Like if you're looking for the typical
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: Spanish experience in this sense, you will find it. It
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: is not hard to find, but there is so much more.
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: There is so much culture here. There are so many
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: different cultural things to discover beyond bullfighting in Spain. And
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: then the landscape is so diverse. I've been living here
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: for six years now and I am far from being
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: tired of visiting different parts of Spain. And all of
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: them are so diverse and beautiful.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: Even though you say like they are not like the
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: seventeen communities are not totally different, but they are in
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: a way like you will see when you travel. You
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: will say you don't need to look like in what
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: community that you are. You will see that the landscape
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: is different, the cultural architecture, you will see it changing.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: And that's what it's amazing. You drive two hours and
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: you're a totally different place here in the north. You know,
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: everything is green and everything's like more like forest and wet,
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: and then you drive two hours to two three hours
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: south and you're in a different community. I'm Castillian and
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: it's more dry, more mountaineer, and it's just incredible how
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: much the language change, the accent, everything changes.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: Find exactly what we talked about before on your travels
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: in South America, and when you move from one country
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: to another, the Spanish changes. It does the same with
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: with within Spain in different communities.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: And I'm really.
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: Curious to hear after your time in Spain, what was
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: the hardest dialog for you.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: I'm so curious.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: About that Spanish period.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: The same for if you know somebody from from the
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: state or anyone else in common Spanish for them is
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: everything's going to be Spanish. But you that you already
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: know some Spanish, you you can tell the different like okay,
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: this is not the Spanish. That the same than they
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: were talking in the other community. That is different. You know,
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: the accident, the page, the tone and everything changes. Yeah, yeah,
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: and that's the beauty of this country. That is like
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: having seventeen different countries in one, you know, right, and
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: that's great. Like people think everything is the same, but
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: that's because they only go to the you know, all
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: the country. But if you start like investing more time
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: and running for longer and learning more, you realize how
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: different is I.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Think when I was researching Spain where we had just
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: arrived in Spain, I was like felt a bit not bombarded,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: but I was getting all of these different terms thrown
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: at me in travel guides and stuff like that about
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: the Asturias or probably pronouncing that wrong or some other
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: like Pyrenees or Novara or some other regions. But I
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: didn't really understand like where they were, I guess, or
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: what where do they begin and end? Or what are
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: some examples of names of those communities that you would
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: say people should look out for, and maybe like just
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: not all seventeen, but a few in the north, maybe
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: some in the middle and the south. So just a
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: few different terms.
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: Maybe I guess what everybody knows out of Spain is
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: like Madrid Barcelona because the football clubs Madrid is one
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: of those cities that has the same name as the
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: community that there's only one. But for example, Barcelona is
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: a city that is in Catalonia.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: That one Catalonia.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: Is the one that one independent. It is like Catalonia
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: is like the California States, you know, you know, Barcelona
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: is in Catalonia. And then for example, like Bilbao is
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: in the Basque country, Basque country, but is one of
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: the cities. There's kaya there is you know, the city.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: So there's cities and then there's the capital of the community.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: Which is you know, you know in that case, so
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: I don't know, and people might not also Servilia, yes,
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: in the south, and they all become they all are
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: apart from Andalusia and Andalusia.
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so that is maybe the place that people apart
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: from maybe the beaches, which which would be in the
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: Mediterranean coast, when people think about the typical Spanish culture,
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: it will be the very salt.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: I think that was a good way of breaking it
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: down though, because most people will be familiar with the
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: names of a lot of the bigger cities, and then
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: to give an idea of like a regional span, of
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: a regional span is always helpful. So that just helped
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: me a lot for sure, because even in the north,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: So what are we in now?
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: We are in Asturias, So this is very north of
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: Spain at the Atlantic coast.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: There are four communities in this build so it is the.
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: Past Country, then Cantabria, Pas Studios and Galicia, these four.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: And then each of those this may be wrong, I'm
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: not sure you can correct me. They all have their
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: own kind of food culture associated with each one. And
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: then you were saying regional like language.
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they would have some similarities like maybe the dialects
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: or the languages are going to be similar because they
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: share borders. Food is going to be largely connected to
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: the ocean, so it's going to be a lot of seafood.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: Every region is going to have its own peculiarities.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: Example, here in the studios, they have like a dialect
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: and most of people talk that way. But they also
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: have like an old language that's called Badly that they
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: used to talk in the past. They they're not using anymore.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: But it's totally different than Galicia, and Galicia the Spigaelo,
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: which is more similar to Portuguese. It's like a mix
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: of Portuguese and Spanish.
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: Portuguese and Spanish are already quite similar, so the Galician
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: language would be like one exactly in the middle.
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: So we understand them, yeah, but it's just different that
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: you can understand itially from Spanish to Yeah.
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: And the regional language here, which is called a studia
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: or in ballet, is a very peculiar one because it's
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: not a standardized language.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: So if you would.
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: Write in it today, there is no right and wrong
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: way to write to spell things. For example, there is
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: no yeah, there is no standard for it. So one
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: town would write it in one way, or say it's
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: called one thing in one way and then the next
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: town in another way. It has seen it is seeing
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: a renaissance right now, so more and more young people
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: are interested in it. So there is more and more
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: touristic organizations and events for tourists done in this like
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: because it can be understood by a Spanish speaker, so
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: more and more people are interested in preserving it, which
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: I think is amazing. And some years back it finally
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: brought like there is a university degree in it finally,
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: so it is a big part of the regional history
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: that I'm so glad to see now.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: I think that's the beauty of this country. There's so diverse.
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: I mean, there is no on in one country. It
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: is kind of in a way of seventeen you know, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: And that's that's great. That's the fact that you can
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: go to another part of the country and to understand
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: what the guy's saying to you. It's just kind of amazing.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're saying that although you speak Spanish, she may
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: not understand one hundred percent of Yeah, somebody else is saying.
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: Not just because the action, but if you go to
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: the Basque country. They talk to totally different language that
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: nobody can understand. But then it's not serious, not similar
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: to anything.
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so the other whole official languages are kind of
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: similar to well they're Latin roots and then to the
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: Spanish language. The bust language is just something complete, something else.
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: It is not related to any existing language on the planet.
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: So it's like in just an island, they just speak
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: it there and that's it. It is very peculiar, and
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: they're also putting a lot of effort into preserving it.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: I just think that is wonderful.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for planning purposes, and always think about planning and
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: where am I in the world, and what are the
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: things that are offered in the area, And so for
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: folks that are listening to the podcast and want to
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: go to Spain and I this sounds so obvious, but
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: it's like, figure out what of the seventeen communities you're in,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: like say it's the Basque community you're in. That will
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: help your search term if you're googling or youtubing for
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: research purposes, and it will also help if you're looking
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: up the region specifically in your travel guide or even
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: on your map, and then you can get an understand
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: of the culture and the food and the language. That's great. Yeah, yeah,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: you know, I know it sounds so obvious, but when
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: I got here, I was like confused as to where
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: it was and what was happening and where was best country?
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: What what's happening? You know?
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: That's the great thing that you never get bored here. Yeah,
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: thing for everybody. Yeah you like the beach, Okay, I
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: go east, you know, you just like to be on
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: how parties and you stop going to Momba or Melisa
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: and all that that you buy? Know, but do you
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: like the mountain? And we have huge mountains in the Pounies.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: I don't know. You like desert here? We have in
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: the south the only desert in Europe. I don't know.
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: Just whatever you like, there are the stuff here. Maybe
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: we don't have the rocky mountains. Maybe we don't have
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: the Grand Canyon. It's like a bit of everything in
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: a small country is great and for traveling around, and
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: it's really relaxed and a lot a lot of empty
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: space in a way, like empty meaning like free space,
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: Like it's not tight. It's not like being in in
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: I don't know, in Belgium more or being in I
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: don't know in the Netherlands that you can barely touch
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: some dust. Here, there's a bunch a bunch of trails
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: that you can eat.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Big landscapes. Yeah, you were saying you don't have the
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: rocky mountains, but there's some serious mountains here, yes, very serious,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: very Yeah. The Picos Thierropa definitely a very beautiful place
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: in the north part of Spain that yeah, very difficult hiking,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: but also really I think attainable hiking for everyone here
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: as well, which is great. Richard and I have been
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: here for two weeks and we came on the boat
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: from the UK to sand Tender. I don't know if
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: that's how you pronounce it. Been finding there are some
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: things that are very different from the UK, and some
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: things are very different from Canada and in the US. And
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: it's been really nice to be driving on the right
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: hand side of the road again, the right right hand side.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: We're finding the high highways and a lot of the
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: roads are wider, which is nice for our Toyota tundra.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: We're also noticing that laundry has been a lot easier
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: to access here. There've been some very easy places, yeah,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: but they're everything's automatic, soaps already going in by itself,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: and it's not expensive.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: It Yeah, it's hours the showers.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: I found a one year of shower yeah.
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, trackers you can just pay three years. That's what
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: we do. Maybe we used to go to gum grounds
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: like every maybe Thursday or something like that, but then
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: you realize we just hated to be surrounded by people,
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: even if fatures.
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: For some Yeah, campgrounds here are different to what you
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: have than North America camp.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: It is just like a place to start, right. A
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: lot of people come with families.
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: There's always like a lot of children running around. So
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: it's not like a peaceful escapade in the woods. In
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: the woods, it is going to be noisy. It is
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: going to be like a low cost hotel very often,
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: so it is different. We prefer wild camping whenever we can, so, yeah,
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: we try to avoid them.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: When we need a shower, then we just look for
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: a gas station. That's on maps of gas stations that
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: they actually tell like which one.
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the big gas station chains have usually an app
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: or a way to search on the website which gas
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: stations near you have shower facilities?
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, great, yep.
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: Usually they are quite Okay, quite clean because not many
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: people use themselves. Yeah, it's quite good finding.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Well, tell me more about wild camping in Spain because
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: I know in certain areas it's prohibited.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: That is a million dollar question.
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: It is we That's something that we usually don't discuss
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: much because it's very controversial. By default, if you read carefully,
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: the law is not allowed to count. Now if you
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: have a regular yours or like something similar, it is
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: very hard to determine if you are really camping or.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: Just stop there parking and okay parking, Yeah, okay.
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: So then there is like with the Evans over the artist,
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: it is also like a difficult and different because they
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: have the legal status of those vehicles are like more
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: homes like their homes, so they have a different regulation.
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: So they cannot apply that regulation to yours because yours
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: is a truck. So is a car. Yeah, if it's
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: a car, you can just say like I'm just you know,
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: I just park here and I'm just chilling in my car.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: So and then there are yeah, there are parking lots. Yeah,
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: specifically if you're in a pinch or if you have
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: a motor home where you can legally park. If it
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: doesn't look like you're camping, so no awnings out, windows
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: open and those are fine, are fine.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: But then we don't like to do that, right, We
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: don't like going right. We like to be in nature.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: Then by the food, you're carefully in the law kind
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: of camping. But it's not why because okay, what are
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: you doing there? First of all, if not camping, you know,
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: just that night you're just it's I'm not given a
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: sleeping I just parked here. So it is kind of
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: a limbo, and it's kind of a limbo so it
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: is usually nothing happened because there's nobody there to enforce
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: that great law.
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we do have this confusion also because there is
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: a lack of controls. So we've never run into anybody,
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: any officer who could tell us, hey, what you're doing
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: is illegal.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: Who is going to tell you five in the morning
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: in the middle of the forest that you know there
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: is no legal Sometimes happened, happened a couple of times
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: that slept a be late, and then you know somebody
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: like would you call a park range or something, But
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: no party because it's not in a park in the
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: park like a natural park, national park. It is totally forbidden.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: You never do it, yes, that's for sure. But we
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: were in the just in a hill, and then a
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: guy from the municipality or whatever came is like, what
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: are you doing guys. It's like, I just can to
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: take some pictures. It's nice, oh beautiful track. You're not
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: doing anything wrong.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: Really, everything up, you know, really careful.
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: So that's why, for example, now we are going to
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: move to induction cooking. We don't want to have any gas,
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: any fire, and in the in the track we want
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: to cook with electricity. Don't have anything because it's true
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: that if you are in all of these areas in
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: the summer, sometimes it's totally forbidden to even drive through
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: the trades because of faster of fire. And for sure
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: it's forbidden to make fire, but that also include using
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: a gas stop that is because it's also fire. So yeah,
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: now we just got an induction cook and we're also
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: gonna cook with with induction, which is like no heat
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: at all, following the normal, like common sense and laws.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: I think it's it's a very reluxue country. People like
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: to complain a lot here, like everything's forbidden. No it's not.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: You haven't been in Germany. You haven't been in in Netherlands. Yes,
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: like that is everything is forbidden, right, Everything is hard.
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: Even if it's not like if nobody see you, you
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: want to do it legally, it's hard to do it.
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: It's hard to make to find an open trail right here.
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: It is not like you might you maybe you shouldn't
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: go that trail, but it's just allowed. It's easier to access.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me more about the trails here, because there
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: are established off pavement trails throughout the country. Are there
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: any specific rules behind those or or I'm curious about
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: that questions.
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: That also changes a lot depending on the community.
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this is where where the community division becomes important
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: because if this is what every community besides so for
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: example Madrid, any kind of off road driving is explicitly forbidden,
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: and you will see that all trails are going to
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: be just closed off either.
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: With a chain or they're going to have a shigne
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: and that there's no way you cannot find dirt without
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: a sign, so nothing. Then you go to other communities
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: like in the center, that is more allowed, it's more open,
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: no problem, And I think also depends on like how
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: many people live there. You know of course, there's like
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: six million people living in Madrid and a small community,
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: you cannot have trails. It's just no possible. People would
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: just ruin everything. It's like having a I don't know,
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: like next to Vancouver, having like some some trails there
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: like open from the public. I think they would just
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: get run. And then you have another open area, very
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: low density and population, where it's nobody cares if you
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: go there because it's first of all, nobody goes, and
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: if you go, like, nobody is going to care that
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: you drive your car to trail because mostly you are
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: used for farming and livestock and all of that. So
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: you're driving with the pick up there. Just one more
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: that's right, right.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: What happens in Spain is what happens I guess everywhere,
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: is that some places become famous, become like Internet famous,
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: and then become massified. So then the rules become more
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: restrictive in those places. So yeah, there are certain parts
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: of Spain where wild camping or off driving is harder
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: and illegal. But in this is the beauty of Spain.
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: It has so many beautiful corners that are quite accessible
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: where you can get lost for days and days on
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: end without any problems, just maybe don't expect to be
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: able to sleep on the beach at absolutely every spot.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: Absolutely that's the problem.
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: And then most people complaints are like I gotta find
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: for sleeping here is like where we're here, it's like
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: they were by the beach, like the one to sleep
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: with the window open and just jump into the water.
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: It's just maybe another important point to mention that especially
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: during the pandemic years, the first two years of the pandemic,
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: there have been growing tensions and several conflicts between especially
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: van lifers, so people traveling in vans and local communities
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: in certain beach towns. In those towns people live out
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: of tourism and they feel like van lifers in particular,
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: but this applies to some overlanders as well, don't really
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: contribute to the economy.
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: Of the town.
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: And just like they take all the space, they leave
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: all their trash and so in certain popular places, vehicle
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: based travel is not viewed as something positive. This is
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: maybe a thing to have in mind. So it is
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: always good to be friendly and mindful and respectful towards
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: the local population and to the nature, especially to the
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: beaches as they are most popular locations.
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's only happened if you realize, like summertime
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: around the coast.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, so I could see how
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: like some of the parking lots or beach parking lots
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: would get really really full, and then a local comes
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: by and it's like I want to surf. There are
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: no parking spots because we're all parking overland traveling through
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: and we're like cool, this looks like a great spot.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: But now nobody can actually find parking who lives.
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: There, which, yeah, it's so so funny because we have
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: such a huge amount of territory. Of course it's not
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: the biggest states, but it's huge. There's so many beaches,
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: and sometimes happen that we go somewhere and there's like
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: playing your room. There's not nobody there, just that everybody
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: want to go to the famous one, especially like in
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: the east and south of Spain the war to be
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: in on the work, and here you can probably camp
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: in any bitch now you want, and there's not going
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: to be anybody. Nobody will tell you anything. And it's
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: the north of Spain, so it's like different, right.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: Good advice, What are some of your favorite off road
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: routes in Spain. Thank you.
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: I will go for First of all, we are discovering
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: every corner of a studias here and it's amazing.
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we've been living here for two or three months now.
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: We were living in the bridge before, so this is
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: we're also discovering our community here and.
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: It's incredible, Like you only have to drive twenty minutes
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: to be in an amazing trail. So every day we
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: can go to a different trail and discover the corners
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: that they have nothing like amazing by itself, not like
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: but it's just such a beautiful nature, beautiful corners, remote,
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: not explored, nobody there and we just enjoy that more
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: than going to the hotspots. Yeah, I show there are
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: like amazing places here that are more famous. But last
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: year we spent almost two months just traveling around a studios.
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: I'm doing a lot of miles on on gravel roads
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: and it was great. But if if I had to
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: recommend like specific trails to people I want to come
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: to Spain, I would say, what if we call Transpirnaika,
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: which is like transpioneers transparent and it's like a route
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: that crossed the Pyne Mountains. Like let's say that you're
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: going like like I loaned the line that divide the
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: Spain and French, so you go from the Mediterranean Sea
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: to the Cantabrico, so you can make like it's almost
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: like a thousand kilars, which like maybe sixty seventy percent
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: is gravel. Wow, it's very good. And then there's in
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: the south there are a few that they are very good,
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: like Gorafe, which is a beautiful desert that you can
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: feel like you're in more and the same with Tabernas
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: is really nice and similar. And then if you go
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: like a bit this is a little bit out of Spain,
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: but it's inside the peninsula that's in Portugal. There is
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: a rut that go from the south, from the tip
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: of the south to Lisbon that is called Costa Visantina.
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: And it's like I don't know, like how many kilometers,
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: but maybe five hundred kilometers or four hundred kilometers just
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: on dirt roads, but there are made of there are
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: of sand roads because there's very close to the beach,
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: so you're driving on sand like almost like like dunes
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: for kilometers and kilometers.
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: Fine, And I would say my favorite routes were like
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: the ones that we made a q in a way.
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: For example, we've done a route in the south in
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: the city of high End, close to it the one
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: that I recommended for olive oil. We've done a route
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: that went through tunnels, so they were supposed to. The
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: idea was to construct a railway system that would connect
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: this city with the capital. But then the idea was abandoned.
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: So what is left is a network of tunnels, just
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: like tunnels are there and nothing else. So we've done
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: a route exploring that and it was really so much fun.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: It is well.
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: Railway tunnels and endless sorry endless fields of olive trees.
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: It is really beautiful landscape.
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: And then several times we've done we had to go
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: to different cities for different tasks, and then we had
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: this idea, what if we look for trails to connect
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: I don't know, but we were connecting Madrid with for example,
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: which is fire to go all the way there, we know, Yeah,
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: and we discovered this area that we haven't seen before,
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: and looking at our comments on YouTube, many other people
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: didn't know we're there, which is also very sandy. The
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: ground is sand and the landscape is reminiscent of like
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: beaches in Portugal for example. That the plants are the same,
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: and the beach is nowhere close. So we've had just
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: for for this small business trip. We had the pleasure
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: of driving in almost like sand dunes and having a
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: lot of So I would say that my favorite trails
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: are the most unexpected ones.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: What are you using for a trail info? Like how
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: are you finding your trails? Like a Google map situation?
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: Do you have paper maps or is it a wiki websay?
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, here it works pretty well. I think it's like
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: when many people adopt the same map or the same
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: website or whatever it is, when it works good because
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: there's more people in contributing. So here it works pretty well.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: Weekly abs we record sometimes, or ruts or we go somewhere,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: we just find them there and it's it's been working.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: It's been working well, especially when we travel abroad, Like
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: sometimes we go to Italy your fronts and it's like, oh,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: we want to go here, let's see if it's something,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: and there is always something and sometimes take you to
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: very remote, unexpected places.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: So yeah, we've had this experience this winter in Italy
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: and it really took us to places we would never
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: even think about going, and they ended up being amazing.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: What are some things that you think that travelers coming
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: to Spain should know about or prepare themselves for.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: I think one of the probably the things that people
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: don't expect is that this country can be very big.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: Not if you compare the like just by side with
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: the states or the country, but when you want to
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: start exploring places and visiting places, it becomes big because
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of stuff to do and it's kind
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: of far from each other, right, so's not a place
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: that you can just sell like I'm going to spend
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: a week or two just drive around and see it.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: It's like you can do that. So if you really
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: want to like go deep and get the sense of
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: this country, just prepare to spend a while here or
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: just like focus on one area and do that just
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: like two weeks in that area, like in the north
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: or the south, and then leave the restaurant military because
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: otherwise you're just going to drive by and you see anything.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: Great advice, And I would say a little Spanish goes
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: a long way.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Spain is it has its own culture.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: Not many people will be speaking English or any other language.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: And it always makes me so sad to think how
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: so many visitors miss out on so much just because
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: of this, this language barrier. So people are very when
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: I've moved here. When I moved here, I didn't speak
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: any any Spanish, and people have been so welcoming and
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: so so supportive of my language learning journey. And I
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: encourage anybody to just just do like a few words,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: a few phrases.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: It will open so many doors for you.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: I am so grateful for the tiny bit of pretty
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: crap Spanish that I do have, But I was thinking
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: that when we got here, after we've been here for
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, that yeah, I'm very grateful for
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: that Spanish that I do have, even though it's very
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: basic and minimal. But I've been able to communicate, which
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: is great. And more, I would say my experience has
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: been that in probably Mexico and central South America there
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: might be more English spoken than in the main.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: As soon as you get out of Madrid, Barcelona. Yeah,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: it's like, I mean, you're not gonna have fine.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: It's very hard.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: The gas station people took into this.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: Like note yeah, yeah. And another thing it's been cool
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: is people have just started speaking to me in Spanish. Yeah,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: and I just assume that they're like a tourist, you know, languish.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: Maybe they are, but they're being nice about it.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So I always like, I was very mad when
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: I started learning English because it kind of like it
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: was hard, and I was pissed because I have to
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: make that big effort than all countries that you know,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: it is their mother toone. But I'm so happy now
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: because we get to learn all the language use is
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: Spanish because it's usual everywhere in the world too, So
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: you have two languages that they are probably the most
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: spoken in the world. While many of most of the
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: of the people are speak English in the motherton, they
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: don't really get their fort don't make the effort to
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: learn other languages most of the time.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: So practic car, Yeah, practicar mucho. One thing that it
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: might be helpful for people to know is the eating
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: schedule or when things are open versus not open and
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: you have the time.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: That is a good point.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: That is a good observation of Spanish traditions.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: For us, meals are a very important part of the culture.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: So it's not just like fuel, so we don't understand
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: that thing of its sandwich and run or do this
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: and that, or like even like the coffee to go.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: Or the concept like, oh, I eat when I'm hungry.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: No, lunch is from two pm to three pm, and
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: that everybody sit down and need to get.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: Okay and drink together.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: Drink and you can do the lunch at four because
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: it's not lunch time. Lunch is from two to three
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: and twelve not twelve. It's not ready yet. You at twelve,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: Lunch is not ready yet. Okay, you cannot order just
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: can you make me a no, just lunch is going
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: to be sure two to three.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: This happened to me a lot in the beginning, in
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: the first few years.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: I would come to a restaurant when I'm hungry and
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 4: the ship literally goes home.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: There is nobody to cook for you, right.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so three through thirty you can order. Still that
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: you can order meal like a lunch of four. Same
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: with dinner. You cannot show up at dinner at six
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: pm because it's not there yet. Dinner it is from
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: let's say eight to ten, ten thirty.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: Spanish people love to make it is lighthearted fun, but
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: they still like to make fun of foreigners.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: They love to go like, oh.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 4: We've seen British people eating dinner at seven pm or.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: You are we we are here like you know proper,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: you know, yeah, human people human we have dinner at
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: ten and.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: Then these people don't know how things are done.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah that's the same. Yeah.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 4: Another thing that is that is peculiar about Spain is
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: that Spain is just at the end of the time zone.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 4: So the whole schedule, the whole schedule is a bit like,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: everything is a bit later. So if you've noticed maybe
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: that the sunrise is quite late, it's like, yeah, it's
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: almost at nine am this time of New York. So
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: everything is like a normal like job scheduled in Europe
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: would be a nine to five here is already ten
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: to six, So everything is a bit later. So people
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: tend to eat very late, eat their dinner very late,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: and then stay up talking.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: And then also one every day and then if.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: You if you, if you like, and then if you
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 4: like to go out, parties tend to last until the
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 4: morning and then like.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: Before yeah yeah, yeah, you know when you go out.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when is breakfast then should be like eleven. I
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: would say that's like a normal breakfast time.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: Yes, I mean like in the week, it's like everybody
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: got breakfast eight day thirty.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but then you have like a second breakfast around
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: And then like you started eight and then then because
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: you because the meal is not until three, you start
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: working at eight. You can you cannot be without eating
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: until three.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: And the breakfast like coffee and a little.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, which is just ridiculous.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: Breakfast.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: You have a pinch or something.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: Can you tell us what that is?
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: Is like a small piece pinch on meals, like pinch
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: or like like put a stick in something, so it's
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: like like a small piece of meat of food that
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: they put like a wood one of those wood sticks, like.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: A tooth stick, like a long tooth pick, and.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: Then you just take it and needed it's like.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: Just like one bit thing.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: And something that you eat between meals and you know,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: to get you to the to the big meal that
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: we made a big meal at lunch and it's a break.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: That's why they come to cliche like the of the
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: siesta that we have.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: A cestes is a real thing. It is especially in
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: the summer.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: The thing is like in the summer, it makes sense
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: in the summer between two and five pm, you cannot
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: move because it's forty if something degrees, So why are
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: you going to go like you cannot go work, you
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: just ate. So then what they do is they split
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: the time schedule like they're working hours, and then they
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: give you a few hours in the middle of the day,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: so you just chill on the shade. You can go
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: to sleep, or you can just chill. Don't have to
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: go to bed, uh, and then going back to work
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: later because it's it's cool anyways.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: It is typical, especially in small towns that for example,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: shops and supermarkets will close normally from two pm to
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 4: five pm, even in winter, even when it's not hot,
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: even if they don't want to sleep.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: This is lunch time.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: What's the difference between a pinchos pinchos It's yeah.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: The pinches is bite sometimes small, and the tapa is
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: like a small play it's a bit bigger, right, So
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: pinch is something that you just like snack snack. Tapa
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: is something that if you have to with a friend
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: then you already have lunch.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: It's a bit bigger.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 4: Person and that does They usually come with a drink.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: The idea is that.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: A few borders.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: Depends on the place also, but typically what it's supposed
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: to be you order, so We also talked about this before.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 4: The alcohol culture in Spain is quite relaxed, so people
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 4: usually don't drink to get drunk, but a lot of
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 4: people drink all the time, and it's really normal to
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 4: have a glass of wine with lunch or like, this is.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: A different drink, it's just that happened to have a
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: little bit of alcohol.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: So normally what you would do is order, let's say,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: order a small beer.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: Beers are small here, so like they come in in
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 4: a small glass and you will get yes, and then
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 4: with the beer you will get top up, so you
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: will get something to eat with it.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: But that is also pretty cultural and depends a lot.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: It changes a lot depending on the community. Pinches are
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: in the north like Basque country. Tapas are thin from
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: Madrid lot and then the south South if you go
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: to Grenada, you only have to ask for beer. They
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: give you pieces, so you're only one beer, one beer,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: you're the four beers. You already have dinner.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, oh yeah.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: This is a typical low budget traveler like look for
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 4: places that have big pinches or okay, piked up us
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 4: and go there so you say on dinner, love.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: That yeah, love that tip so much I'm excited. I
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: had a really nice chilled red wine the other day
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: and I was like, this is a chill red wine,
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: the child red wine. But it was amazing. So yeah,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: the food culture here is amazing, definitely worth digging into
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: while people are here. Thank you, guys. I think that
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: people are probably overwhelmed now with all the information.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: You're still here.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: It was so helpful, super helpful tips, especially coming from
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: people who live here.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: That's the best.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: So I guess we can wrap it up and thank
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: you again for coming on the Overland Journal podcast and
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: sharing your experiences and all your tips on Spain. If
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: people would like to follow you or find you on
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: the interwebs, where should I go?
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we are everywhere Betty Cower on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: Our social media is in Spanish, however, we do speak English,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 4: so for anybody that would like any tips on Spain
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 4: or any think we do look at all of all
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 4: of our messages and respond to all them, so feel free.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and also many of our duty videos have.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah sweet, Yeah, fantastic. Well it's been a pleasure. I
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: can't wait to go explore the seventeen communities and the
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: tap us and practice my Spanish with regional differences. It's
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: very fun, so always a pleasure. Thank you guys so
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: much for coming on, thank you for having us, and
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: thank you so much to our listeners of the Overland
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: Journal podcast tuning in for another episode. We appreciate you
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: and we will see you next time.