Day No. 124 - Day at the lake - Laguna de Medina

When we wake up this morning, it's very cold in the car. No wonder, it's three degrees outside. - We had turned the heating off during the night. We enjoy the luxury of switching on the auxiliary heating and shortly afterwards it's cozy and warm. Although we are much more sensible with our resources, heating, electricity and water, we are still spoiled.

 The cool box is doing its job and the heating is running. We take that for granted. But in the meantime, we have seen more and more vans that have neither a cool box nor a heater. Some even heat with wood. Yes, that's right, a fireplace in a van is not uncommon. - Which we think is cool, but where to put it?

 So we can't and don't want to complain. Our Dutch friends, Ilona and Jeronimo, have had it worse in this respect. They and their children are currently about 600 km north-east of us. With outside temperatures below 0°, their heating failed. Ice flowers on the window certainly sounds nicer than it feels.

The only thing that helps is cuddling. 

 We are doubly covered just in case. Firstly, we have sleeping bags with us for emergencies. Secondly, we came across an exciting solution along the way. - It's called a brick. As this brick has a good storage capacity, it can be heated on the gas hob and then radiates heat for a long time. In a van, this helps to get over the worst. However, I doubt whether this measure is sufficient in a large van.

We can turn the heating off again shortly afterwards. When the sun rises, not only does it quickly provide us with warmth, the sun also gives us the chance to charge our batteries via the solar bag. This gives us a total of 410 Wh over the course of the day. That's quite something.

 Otherwise, this is a quiet day. As the Three Wise Men are a public holiday in Spain, we decide to postpone our washing day until tomorrow. Instead, we take care of the end of the month, eat our provisions in between and explore the adjacent bird sanctuary.

 Torgit is training to be the second cameraman at the same time. But the new technique needs to be learned first.

She summarized the whole thing as follows: "I don't have a photo for you today." - I wonder where she got that from?

In the afternoon, we have a little chat with our new neighbors. Sofie and Bart, both around 30 years old, are from Belgium. They have only been on the road for three weeks in their self-built van. Nevertheless, we discover a gadget that was previously unknown to us. They discovered bamboo baskets in the kitchen department at IKEA in Spain. The material is light, hard-wearing and, above all, the ideal way to store fruit on the bus. At the end of the conversation, the two baskets are hanging in our Hector. The special thing about them is that they haven't even added anything to the price. They both want to go back to IKEA anyway. Things like that only happen on the street.

The way I see it, they've only been on the road for three weeks, but will be for a long time yet.