Currently – Campervan Edition

It’s been a while since we last caught up on how much progress we’re making on heading out on our adventure in a couple months.  I wish I could reveal this amazingly different campervan to you, you know, Optimus having fully gone through his transformation.  But we just don’t work like that.

What we like to do is leave everything till the last minute, develop a twitch and then suddenly knock everything out in a crazy amount of time.  Which means we’re pretty much on track.

Currently – Campervan Edition

I thought I’d break this Currently up into something that could be a semi regular feature until we leave.

Are there any other sections you’d like me to include?  (I’ll save the sexy time feedback to when we’ve actually tried it out a couple times haha).

ITINERARY:

We have officially booked our first stay at the De Bakke Santos camp and caravan site in Mossel Bay.  I like that it’s far enough away to feel like this is all becoming a reality but close enough so if anything happens we can come back.  Not that this will happen, but I like that feeling of faux security.  Anyway, after that we’re staying a couple nights with friends that have a holiday house in Groot Brak and then possibly another couple nights with friends in the same area.

After that we haven’t actually booked anything else because we want the freedom to be able to stay somewhere for longer if we love it, or leave sooner if we don’t like it.  That’s the beauty of this trip guys – the freedom.  I don’t want to give that up too quickly.  Which I know is driving some of my more anxious friends and family up the wall, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to be OK.  We’ll start looking for a new place a couple days before we know we’re going to leave the one we’re at.  The only place that we will probably make sure we book is the Kruger.

SCHOOLING:

The schools are still all completely on board with our plans and I love them for it.  We still need to chat to the girls school regarding their curriculum and fees, but we’re going to do that in the next couple of weeks.  So here’s hoping that will all still continue on plan.

INTERIOR DESIGN:

I’m sure you guys have seen the interiors of all the vans that litter Instagram and Pinterest.  Even though we may be one of the few to document our trip in SA, this is a huge thing in America and Australia.  People make a living out of it.  I even have a whole board dedicated to it.  Anyway, in all of my searches I’ve noticed that you get three types of interiors – The ALL white (people that obvs don’t have children am I right?), the ones where everything is matched (think the same blue tone all over the space) and then those that are a little bit of everything but it just works.

Our aim is to have that last one.  As you can see from our little mood board above.  We’re going a little unusual with a glossy black, wallpapered ceiling.  Yeah, I know, it’s kinda weird but I love weird.  We will have white though, as the space is rather small and we don’t want to make it feel smaller.  So the bedding and the walls will be a nice matt white.  We did a test on the wall paper to see if it would give the desired effect and the good news is that it’s just going to take about 3 or 4 coats – how’s that for commitment to details.

We found our mat in a little carpet store in Franschhoek.  They had some really great options.

MOBILITY:

So for those of you that don’t read our news letter or watch Seth and my Insta stories – you probably won’t know that we got Optimus working about 3 weeks ago.  Then as Seth was pulling out onto a busy road in our area the gears just stopped working!  Which meant that we had to tow the thing back to our house.  Luckily it wasn’t too far, but guys, I had to steer the thing.

I have never freaked out so much in my life.  Firstly I have never been towed before so I don’t even know how to do it, but the camper is freaking massive and I was so sure that I was going to slam right into the back of Seth’s car.  Luckily I didn’t but we had so many moments where I stopped and he started and it felt like I was going to rip the chassis out of his car!  When we got home we basically had to push him into the right spot and man, that was an experience.  He’s way heavier than he looks!

We found a really great mechanic (thanks to ZA Cafe) who specialises in air cooled VW’s.  How amazing is that!!  He came over yesterday and managed to get Optimus working again and has now taken him to his workshop to give him a proper overhaul and make sure that he will cope on our great trek.

HOUSE RENTAL:

We have officially put our house on the market for rental while we are away.  Despite the first person just not rocking up even though I made special arrangements to be there, the second person that came was amazing.  She seemed to love the place and wanted to go through with the application.  She was even going to almost meet the amount we needed for it.  But then we heard yesterday that she isn’t keen anymore.  Which sucks.  We haven’t had much else come through.

I want to advertise it but honestly I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place.  I don’t really want everyone wanting to know exactly where we live.  Maybe that’s just me being crazy, but with the fact that we share so much on this space, I don’t want to take the risk.  So know we are just praying for the right person to get in touch with us.  We really can’t leave until we have a tenant so this may delay our departure date quite a bit.

With regards to packing, we are slowly giving away things that we no longer love or use.  We are also going to look at a storage option at StoreSmart tomorrow morning that I’m excited about.  But I don’t want to pack just yet.  I want to have one last big bash at home before we really start packing up everything.  Which we’re hoping to do end May.

INTERIOR RENOVATIONS:

The day the camper stopped working, we used the time to start installing the wallpaper.  We got about half way before giving up, uh, I mean needing to stop for the day.  We didn’t really do anything else on it since (for more than 3 weeks!) and when I walked in on Saturday there were pieces of the wallpaper that had come off.  UGH!  Anyway, this weekend we fixed it and finished installing the paper.  So now all that’s left is to paint it.  Which we’ll do when he comes back from the mechanic.

Other than that we have really taken out EVERYTHING that was inside and then started with stripping the floor.  I really like the way it looks now, I’m almost tempted to just varnish it instead of putting on the vinyl that we bought.  But we’ll see how that goes.

DOGS:

This is such a sore topic for me.  I’m really struggling with the thought of giving up my babies.  But we really don’t have another choice.  Sadly we still haven’t really had anyone volunteer to look after them while we’re away even though we will pay for all the food and any medical bills that may (but probably won’t) arise.  But instead of letting myself get all emotional about it, I’m just soaking up extra cuddles while I still can.

OVERALL OPTIMISM:

Although I have days when I suddenly have a bit of a panic and want to work myself into a crazy frenzy where I start running around the house, arms flailing and screaming, I think we’re doing pretty well.  It may feel like we’re not getting much done with regards to the actual renovations of the camper or packing up the house, but we have started the steps to get there.  There’s a lot more that goes into it aside from just those seemingly big things.  So we are making progress.  In fact writing this out and seeing how many words it’s taken to catch you up means that there’s a lot more happening than I give myself credit for.

Here’s to kicking ass in this last stretch!