Our new accommodation: the car
As you may already know, our first attempt of hopping into new adventure was crushed, due to flight cancellation. Instead of jumping into the mediterranean sea, we were Couchsurfing back in our parents/grandparents house. As thirty years old independent woman it felt kind of a setback. Maybe all this happened because we were cheating. We cannot claim that our adventure of traveling into unknown starts where we already lived for a year. Ccccc, if you want to do it, do it right! To repent for taking advantage for free, cozy and warm accommodation at parents house, we decide to undergo sleeping in a car.
Let me start at the beginning:
We changed our canceled flight for a flight to Tenerife. It was the fastest departure to somewhere warm and beachy, but we still had to wait five days in Slovenia for it.
So, there we were, homeless, coatless and bootless. We already returned keys of our apartment in Ljubljana, we gave away all of our warm clothes and shoes, so it wasn’t the best news to spend five more days in a rainy, cold country. But we survived, although some numbness arose. The excitement of leaving was almost lost. We didn’t want our hopes too high if something goes wrong again. We didn’t even book an apartment in Canary islands.
All suspicious aside, we safely landed in Reina Sofia airport. It was evening already, so we rented a car and drove toward the sunset. El Medano was the closest, so we stopped there and tested the sea temperature. There were no swimmers left on the beach; the sun was already saying his farewell. Kids didn’t mind. They ran into the ocean.
After some grocery shopping and filling our bellies, we drove inland into the unknown. It was already dark, and we couldn’t see where some good sleeping spots could be. First, we stopped by some field. We stepped out of the car, and there he was, out of the darkness, our first Spanish encounter. “No se puede aparcar allí; es privado!” he said strictly to us. And we were like: “Huh!?!”
I did understand, but I didn’t know how to answer. So we tried in English. His response was: “Huh?!?”
There it was: realization. We are in a country whose language we don’t know how to speak. We apologized and drove away.
We parked in a small village by some playground. We arrange a trunk for kids to sleep in, back seats for me, and front seat for Leo. Poor guy! I heard him in the middle of the night. He was climbing over me into the trunk. He tried to squeeze himself with kids, but it was too big of a challenge. When I asked him why he tried something so unimaginable, he said that he was sooo cold (I was wearing his sweater because we covered kids with all the jackets we had with us) and he thought it would be warmer in the back with children.
We fell asleep quickly because we were all exhausted, but it didn’t last long. For some time there was nobody; it was complete silence, only field bugs had their party. But then, all of the sudden two cars drifted to the place where we parked. They had full volume music on, singing and shouting. Really!? In the middle of nowhere! They didn’t notice us. I was drifting in and out of sleep, synchronized with their yelling and quiet moments. After they left, I floated in some weird dreams, and I woke up when it was 5.30. Leo was up as well, shivering. He put over his long sleeves five A-shirts. I couldn’t help but laugh. I was sitting on a back seat, sleepy and cold, but strangely satisfied. In that closed space of a car, I had everything I needed. Except coffee.
We started the engine. Kids woke up, shiny and bright, still excited about the fact that they were allowed to sleep in a trunk. We drove to the nearest petrol station. Coffee!!!
To be continued…
