Driving Around the World? 🧐🌏🚐💨

Ah yes, the idea of driving around the world. Shall we discuss? After driving all the way from South America north to the Arctic, a six-year overland journey of epic proportions, we gave away our Kombi to a Kombi crew member and made the new bold adventurous plan to drive from the USA all the way to Australia. Which didn't exactly go to plan, did it? In this video we're going to do a super fun recap of the main events from the last five years of our overland adventures, discuss the plan to drive to Australia and discuss our very exciting plans of what's coming up. Whoa, hang on, what? Hit that red button. This part of the Kombi Life story, the fateful plan to drive from the USA all the way to Australia, began picking up speed in 2018 when myself and Leah moved to a dusty corner of Arizona to begin the preparations of our newly purchased 1973 Volkswagen bus which we call Boomerang. The work was difficult as you might imagine, getting a 50 year old vehicle ready for an expedition of this magnitude was challenging and perhaps more so than even we expected. But we did have some help along the way. There was Arizona Bill who sold us the bus, hosted us and helped us in the early and arguably most challenging phase of getting our wheels turning. Then there was the Skinners of California who showed us how to transform our dusty desert bus into something pretty special. Don't forget our friends at Wolfsburg West who helped us with sorting out all of the wiring and weatherproofing of our Kombi. Next came Mike from Rancho Performance Transaxles who helped us upgrade our two-wheel drive Kombi in preparation for the world's most challenging roads. Then of course our friends at CB Performance who gave our Kombi a heart transplant with a modern twist on a 50s classic motor. This thing has performed incredibly. Oh and finally our good friends at Go Westy who explained all of the overlanding mods we could do to a vintage V-Dub. We hadn't even left the west coast of the USA and by this point we were already six months into the project. It was early 2018 and there was no time left on our visa to finish the van build before we had to leave for the USA. So we made the great American road trip and a mad dash from California across the wild and endlessly awesome landscape that America is famous for. Stopping briefly in the southern states before pushing north to New York City to ship our Kombi. If you're watching and you're from America, did we miss much? I kind of feel like we did. Crossing America is a dream road trip and we really kind of rushed it. Maybe we should return. After all we did call the Kombi boomerang. By the time we left the east coast of the USA we weren't sure which would be more difficult getting our South American street dog into Europe or shipping our van across the Atlantic. Well the dog turned up six weeks before the van which actually got lost at sea. So that answers that. When the van eventually turned up we moved into my home island of Jersey just off the coast of France where we began to build the Kombi into our new off-grid home and mobile studio. It took the best part of a whole year to build the Kombi interior with a few setbacks on the way. But eventually we had something that was not only an off-grid mobile home and studio but also a fairly capable overland ready vintage adventure wagon. I was so happy with the final results. Not so happy that someone reversed into me within the first 10 miles of hitting the road. Bad start, bad omen. A brief tour of the UK and all the way up to Scotland was super fun. We even got to meet a bunch of the Kombi crew supporters and see our old Kombi Capito which Grant had won in the giveaway at the end of our Pan American Astro Alaska series. I wonder where Capito is now. A month on the road and we already knew that we needed to make some additional changes with the Kombi before hitting the road for the next leg of our massive journey to Australia. I personally think that van builds are a bit of an evolution. There's always something that you want to tweak or add or change after you've lived in the vehicle. So you're never actually going to finish. Van builds are a kind of constant work in progress. Hitting the road through Europe was awesome. We finally felt like we were getting to enjoy the open road. Life was reasonably cheap and all the free wild camps made a great backdrop for our nomadic lives as we documented life off grid and on the move. We got tear gassed in Paris. We discovered the incredible food, history, culture and landscapes of France and Spain before planting trees in Portugal to offset our carbon footprint for our travels. And we finally left the continent and shipped our Kombi to Africa. And that is pretty much where things started to go wrong. I mean, it wasn't Morocco's fault. Morocco held up its end of the bargain providing plenty of opportunities for exploration and adventure. But after some family visits and van life in the Sahara, the pandemic arrived and laughed in the face of our plans to drive to Australia. I think at this point, a lot of van life has struggled around the world as you could probably imagine. Morocco had one of the strictest lockdowns in the world and we were housebound for seven months. Wild boars literally battled with rabid dogs on the streets and life was different. Eventually the British government arranged a rescue ferry to get us out of Africa. That was a good episode. There was a lot of good episodes in that series. And if you haven't seen it, I will link it below for your binge watching pleasure. By this point, it was the fifth season of our driving around the world adventure travel series. And it would be our last together at least. As travel vloggers, we, I, felt compelled to embrace the reopening of borders and continue our journey east towards Australia. And it was a great adventure. We met more Combi Crew members and we shared some of their own culture as we passed through their towns. We scored incredible wildcams all to ourselves and there were other great benefits in the year that we all slowed down. I mean, being able to stand up paddle in the empty canal streets of Venice was unforgettable. When are the Venice canals ever empty? But then the pandemic came round again. Everything closed down again for wave two or three or four or whatever it was. And we had to head home. The series finale was also a good episode because we had another issue with the Combi. No time to fix it. And basically had to bump start our Combi all the way across Europe. At that point, Leah flew home to Australia but the borders remained shut for a whole nother year. We didn't break up because of long distance or the pandemic or any other logistical challenges. We broke up because through all of these challenges, we realized that we were not best suited for each other. So where does that leave me driving to Australia? Well, there's a couple of things you should know. One, I've already driven around Australia in a pre-YouTube life. If you haven't been to Australia, you should go. The road trips are epic. Aussies are some of the best people on the planet. I highly recommend it. And two, the reason we were driving to Australia was because we were moving there because we were going to live closer to Leah's family. Obviously I'm no longer moving or driving to Australia but if I do find myself in Australia, I would 100% have a coffee with Leah. She is an awesome girl. I love her to bits and I still speak to her regularly. So what now? Well, to be honest, since all of that, life hasn't been that easy. What I really want is to share inspiring and entertaining stories with you about life's adventures. And what I'd really like is someone who enjoys life's adventures to share them with me. Recently, I attempted to do this again and failed again and learn from the lessons again. God loves a trier. So what is going wrong? Well, I figure it's either the Kombi, the lifestyle or me. And we are going to find out once and for all because next week we are starting a brand new adventure series from Kombi Life. This will be a terrible start to something very special indeed. Let's look good, rolling. Rolling. Okay. Guys, I'm so happy that you are here for the start of this. The most important and potentially final chapter of the Kombi Life saga. If you want to watch our new series, it will be linked here when it goes live. If you'd like to watch the van build and the travel series we've discussed in this video, that is linked here. High five to the Kombi crew. Thank you so much for supporting our new series. I cannot wait to share it with you. Until then, happy travels.