Van

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*Se quiser ler este Post em Português, clique aqui.

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When I wrote my last Post, I really had no idea that it would take so long until I wrote again. In fact much has happened in the last few months and my life had a 180° turn. Has I described on the end of my Post “Travel in 2017 – Office Thoughts..“, I wrote that there would be great travel news for 2018.

As some of you know, I was an emigrant working in Germany as a Mechanical Engineer, more specifically in the area of Industrial Refrigeration. On the Summer of 2016, on the middle of a hike on the Heiterwanger Lake in the Austrian Alps, I was talking with Andreia and I had the idea of leaving our comfortable life (but not completely happy) in Germany and do what we enjoy the most, travel!

For some of you it can look a little bit crazy and I totally understand if you think that way, but I was never a person of waiting around and complain about what my life is or what could be. If I’m not completely satisfied with something, I need to find a solution for it, even if I have to start it all over again. Fortunately both of us are crazy so I don’t need to do this alone. 😀

In 2012, when I left alone Portugal, my family and my friends, it was in search of a better life on another country. Not even for a moment I regret of this decision, because I loved to live there. But at a certain time, my mentality and goals changed. Although I had a successful career, for some time I stopped having joy at my work and I knew that not even a change of company would change anything.

Being alone with Andreia in Germany was sometimes difficult, because on a such a different land than our homeland, with different cultures and climate, sometimes we felt alone and wishing for another type of life for us. Where we felt totally happy was when we were traveling, getting to know new places and new cultures. It was because of travel that I discovered my passion for Photography and I know that that is my present and future.

To reach that goal, we made a plan: saving as much money until December 2017, when we were expecting to return. No one knew about our plans until the Summer of 2017, when we told our families and friends about it. For some the news were shocking for others pure joy. It was a year and a half that seem to last ten years, but here we are in February of 2018, already in Portugal.

Saying goodbye to Germany and our friends was quite difficult and complicated. Packing all our stuff and receiving them in Portugal was quite stressful and we reached a point where we didn’t know if we would ever see our packages again. Fortunately after many moments of panic, all went well.

And now?

I noticed now that I still haven’t wrote anything about the project..ups..

On the next years, we want to travel to as many wonderful places as we can. We will start on our homeland, that we barely now. After that we will travel to Europe and if all is going well, to the rest of the world, where Patagonia and New Zealand are on the top of the list. During those trips, I will expand my Portfolio and sharing our journey with you guys.

Those trips are not only for fun, because much work is waiting for us. We will work every day to create a business which is sustainable, based on travel photos and videos of landscapes and cityscapes.

We called our project Travel Inspire which is already online, as well as on the social networks. Our journey will be documented later on Youtube, which is starting very soon 🙂

Plans for the trip

“You must have won the lottery!” is what many persons say to us. Those persons are really wrong about the real costs of traveling. More than ever is easier to travel than on any part of our existence. What will define the cost of the trip is the way you travel. For us, the idea of backpacking was on our minds, but we had to exclude it due to the difficult of working at the same time we travel.

We decided to buy a second hand van which will be converted on a camping van by us. It is by far the best value to travel and working. On that van we’ll have a kitchen, bathroom and a working area which turns to a bed. Our higher costs will be diesel and food.

And is on that point that we are now. The van is already bought and is on this moment being restored, because it had some scratches and things to fix. Unfortunately not all is going as smooth as we wanted and we found that here in Portugal there’s a very difficult bureaucracy in regards to camping van conversions.

To convert the van on a camping van in Portugal, it is necessary to present a project to the Portuguese transport authorities, with drawings and a specification, as well as other documents such as technical characteristics and a statement of responsibility. Although there are companies that can do this project for us, I feel that I’m paying for something that I can do by myself without losing the ideas that I have for the van. We want to do it by ourselves, so that we can have a van that is different from the standard ones, made by this companies. This step cost us a month, but finally I finished the project. After this step, it will take until two months for the project to be approved. I hope it takes less than that..

After the approval, it will be the fun the part, the conversion! This process will be the start of our Youtube channel. After the conversion, that I hope it takes less than two months, the van has to pass on the inspection.

Finally after all is done, we intend to start our trip in Portugal in May and end it in December. Then in 2019 we will start to travel in Europe. Still after this unexpected delays, we are confident that our project will start very soon.

With all of this stuff going on, my photography and video work was left a little bit on the side. I didn’t stop completely, as I’ve been slowly refreshing my Portfolio, but I have been busy with earning some money from it. I’ve been dedicating much of my time on that, because it will be one of the basis of our business. I have much to show you, so stay aware!

I hope you follow our journey, which will be shown on our website Travel Inspire, Facebook, Instagram and later on Youtube.

See you soon and happy shooting!

Luís Pina