Van Adventures Surprises

We're making our way back to Estonia, and in today's post we'll see how our van doesn't want to make it home just yet.

There have been a few trips to the mechanic over the past 2 months. We were stuck in Tarragona, Spain for a week, and now we've been stranded in La Grande-Motte, France. I must say, there's no better place to break down than here.

Beach view at night, we went everyday to swim in the ocean, a lot of times after sunset so it was not too hot.

So what's happening with our van?

Well, the first time we had an issue was when driving from Madrid to Barcelona. On our way there, our van simply shut off after 600km of driving in the blazing 32-degree heat under the sun. I had to wait for the van to cool down a bit, then it would start and drive normally. After this happened a few times, the intervals between breakdowns kept getting shorter and shorter.

Funny enough, the van broke down in the same city where it first broke down when we were on our way to Portugal from Estonia (meaning the van has broken down twice on this tour). At least we had a mechanic nearby – about an hour's drive away. So I messaged Edwin from Colombia, who had fixed my EGR system 2 months earlier.

Only this time, he couldn't figure out what was wrong. All the tests came back perfect, nothing seemed to be faulty. We changed a fuel pressure sensor just to be sure, but the van still shut off after driving for 10 minutes.

When we decided to test the fuel pressure rail with a gauge to see if the issue persisted and check whether the pump was shutting down, the van didn't fail anymore. I drove 100km that day waiting for it to break down so we could run more tests.

So we just continued with our trip, hoping for the best. We drove from Tarragona to Montpellier, France, and the van performed great the whole time. One day we decided to go to the beach because it had been so hot these past few days. Once we arrived at the beach, the van shut off again. But now, even after waiting, the van would only run for 2-3 minutes.

We ended up pushing the van to the side, where we found ourselves in a great parking spot for campers with lots of trees and shade. It was actually a very nice location, not counting the fact that we didn't know what was wrong with the van and I had a deadline to get back to Estonia to start work.

photo of my skate shoes with france flag colors which I left behind becasue it was time for them to go :)
After trying to contact many auto shops, we only got one appointment a week away. So we just had to stay put. Since we weren't driving, we needed to keep the van in the sun to generate electricity. Oh boy, it was a hot week. Though the shade was perfect as I mentioned, so we spent a lot of time under the trees and going to the nearby beach.

The time felt like a nice little vacation to be honest.

Living in the van brings moments where we need to learn how to deal with stress, so there's always a teaching moment. At least we were stuck in the beautiful La Grande-Motte, with its interesting architecture, lovely nature, and pretty landscapes dotted with flamingos.