Waking Up To GUNFIRE and MASTERING The SHEWEE (in that order) // S02E02

Welcome back to Combi Life amigos. So you know we're attempting to drive our vintage VW Combi all the way to Asia. And you know we've just spent the first few days of our adventure road tripping across France and that we've just arrived in Italy. What you didn't know is that after the disaster of our trial run and the month-long breakdown in the Spanish desert, the only way that I had convinced Tamela to join me on this drive across the continent was under one condition. Yep that's right. I said to Ben if we break down in the first week we have to turn around. Unfortunately around day five of the journey our wheels started wobbling and we definitely need to do something about it. So this video is about me completely ignoring that problem so that we don't have to go home. Yet. Don't start rumours. It's the internet. Anything could happen. On with the adventure. Sure it's around here somewhere. I mean it's been a couple of years since I was last here but it's down one of these paths. Look how beautiful this part of Italy is. This is why we do van life right? Wake up with views like this. Check out that cave. Look at that. Yeah actually the driving all day makes that totally worth it. What a view. Wow. Holy crap. You ready to climb on that? Can you see that? You need to lift up. Actually a little bit. There you go. Now I can see. Oh there's sea there. You couldn't see the ocean before could you? Okay this is Tamela's view and this is Ben's view. This part of Italy is particularly blessed. It's just around the corner from Cinque Terre National Park and the coastline is stunning enough to make it onto most people's bucket list more than once. Long-time Combi Life subscribers may even recognise this region as we previously passed through here when we visited Combi Crew member Riccardo in his hometown of La Spezia. These hills are a great place to spend the night and I know just the spot for us to park up. Or so I thought. More old boomerang on these bumpy roads. This is the way though. This is definitely the way. That's the old fortress. And we're here. Time for sunset. Literally just getting sunset. Look at it. My gosh. Okay now hold on. This is where I have to get up so I can actually see the sunset. Okay. Oh the way you can see it so you can't obviously look at the sun but the way it hits the water and it's so orange and then the clouds as well and it's about to go down into the clouds which are just above the water. Yay. Adventure for tomorrow as well but first let's get some dinner. Yummy yummy. Mama German. Thanks mum. So for tonight for dinner I've got some lovely Italian olives I just picked up from They look pretty good don't they? Woosh. And we've got some French goat's cheese. Bosh. And the main, that's just for starters, that's just to keep Tamara happy while cooking's happening otherwise I'll get murdered. You're not wrong. Such is the strength of the hangar with this one and then this one here thanks to Mama German. My mum sent us off because she knew we were doing a long journey. She sent us off with pre-cooked meals that we can just literally heat up when we get to our destination so tonight will be fajitas. Lovely. They're fried for approximately 10 minutes till cooked. What do you mean you didn't cook it for me mum? Yeah I've actually got to cook this myself. For 10 whole minutes. Look I've got these olives. Love you mum thanks so much. I love the fact that this just works. So many things that we've over the last couple of months that we're now enjoying while we're on the road that just working like it should is one of them. Okay. Is that the new thermocoupler in? New thermocoupler's in. It's nice to have two hobs on our stove back again. Sound effects. Is that what you're hoping to happen? They won't even notice we'll fix that in post. I'm sure you can imagine how the rest of the evening went. Fajitas, snuggles, a peaceful night surrounded by nature, waking to the sound of chirping birds and gunfire. And the next morning it has turned into a firing range. The army is here. Maybe testing their guns. That's uh quite an unusual start to our day. Are we supposed to be listening to this every day? All day? Are we supposed to be listening to this all day? No. Great place to sleep. Crap place to wake up. Have you ever been to another country and tried to use even just a few words of their language? What a difference it can make. Being able to connect and communicate with another culture has the ability to transform your travel experience. But that is easier said than done. Until now the Vasco Translator V4 can instantly translate voice, text and photos in over 100 languages. Hi, do you know somewhere for us to sleep tonight that isn't a military fort? Throughout our travels we have had a number of language barriers to overcome, such as when traveling through Spain and receiving voice messages from our friend Roberto in Spanish. And it would have been super handy to have had the Vasco Translator V4 to help translate. I hope everything went well. Whatever you need, we're here. Hugs and rest easy. Oh that's so nice. What a lovely message now that I know what they said. And just recently here in Italy we were stuck trying to communicate with some locals and we didn't have the Vasco Translator with us so we were trying to use our phones, which is much more cumbersome. With the Vasco Translator you can actually have a two-way conversation. How much better? We can use a translator to learn Serbian and this is very important to me. If you want to be with me forever. Forever? Forever. The Vasco Translator V4 has a accuracy thanks to multiple translation engines which are based on AI but verified by a human linguistics expert. But the best part for me is that the Vasco Translator V4 comes with free internet for your translations so you can actually use this translator in almost 200 countries. Wow. It's pretty good because normally you have like a subscription or something like that and it's all included with the Vasco so that's a nice touch for sure. Also Serbian is on there which sometimes a lot of other websites and translators actually don't have. The Vasco Translator V4 is certainly easy to use and a very useful piece of kit. It will definitely enhance your adventure experience and help you travel with more confidence. If you'd like to check it out I'll leave a link to the Vasco Translator V4 below. Thanks to Vasco and thanks to you guys. Next up Tamara has a low-tech solution to another travel problem. Does she? Excuse me wait where are you where are you going with that? It's time to go and try the shiwi. That's the shiwi? It's the shiwi. It's huge. How big is it? No it's what no that's not. You're sure that's not a sheepoo? It couldn't be a sheepoo? Honestly I was just going to be so bad right now and we are driving through towns more and more often where there aren't so many places to stop so time to practice. So you're gonna have a practice shiwi? Yeah and then I what do I do with this? You clean it later. You'll show me how to do it right? I've never used a shiwi and don't start rumours. It's the internet anything could happen. Hold on how do you think that I know how to use this now? I'll show you. I will demonstrate. First you must find a suitable place to use shiwi. Maybe somewhere like here. No. Like at the middle of the road and then you take the shiwi this part go inside like this. It's like a trumpet. I think that's how it works I don't know you try. I think it's like this right? Hey wait that's been used though. No stop it. Okay I found my spot. It's a new one. Good luck with your shiwi practice. It's very interesting very interesting. You know you wake up in the morning you just never know what's going to happen in band life and today's another one of those days. You got a stage fright? Is it working? Yeah. A real bonding experience. Is this going to be part of your daily carry list? Don't leave home without it. Phone, wallet, keys, shiwi. This is game changer. It now means we can potentially go through city life. Not that we'd do city life but anyways we can drive through a city or if we're stuck on a motorway like yesterday. Oh that would have been such a good moment yesterday. Did it make a noise when it came through the funnel? No. Do you want to hear? Do you want to listen? No I don't want to see that thing ever again actually. It's like a If you want to try it out. Do you want to see them? Go on blow through it if it makes a noise. Tune in for season two of shiwi adventures once we figure out how we're going to do this on a more permanent basis. It smells so fresh. Buongiorno. Esano ricotta con pan. I'm pretty sure that's spanish with an italian accent. Yeah but it seems to be working for you because everyone's just treating you like a local at the moment. I did I did get as per ban I did get tatted up yesterday people think because I'm really good at putting on accents they think that I'm from that country but no I'm just really good at saying a couple of words. Buongiorno. Buongiorno. Come stai? I just put kombi life with my right hand. You can't really see it but hang on wait that says kombi life. That says kombi that says life. That says lunch to me. Full stop. People are going to be really confused about the fact that I'm wearing the same clothes but I'm actually just wearing the same clothes every day. I've been doing that for 10 years. Yeah I could have this for breakfast every day. We've got the army coming up behind us in their 4x4. It's a modern white 4x4 and I'm determined to beat them up this bumpy track. Not that they know it. They don't know they're racing but they're racing. I'm beating the Italian army in a 1973 vintage van. With old school alignment and then come on. Yeah alignment might need some work after this. You just keep your eyes on the road. We've beat them. We've beat them. Maybe they got a puncture. What is that noise? It's the sound of my tyres deflating slowly. It's obviously gone. I had to cry to his mama. Let's go. Tamara. Can you please get into shot? Maybe if you stand on this bench here you'll be able to the people will be able to see your face at the same time as my face. Ciao. Ciao. We've had a recommendation from our good friend to go to a restaurant. Only you can't drive to this restaurant so I'm not exactly sure where it is. So let's go find out. Let's go for a little hike. I'm starving. Grazie mille. Say thank you when we find it. Yeah. If we find it and it's open and they serve food. I'm expecting. Ciao I'm expecting a restaurant with a view. I would say so. Oh yeah the view's already looking pretty banging. Wow. Do you think it's this way? It's pretty steep downhill. Come on then. Piggyback. I'm going to hold your hand. Flipping heck Ricardo. Are you sure there's a restaurant out here? This is how you cook a pizza in your Volkswagen. Why would you put a restaurant all the way out here? I came in my flip-flops because I got told the approach is really close and easy. You'd expect that wouldn't you? I mean kind of. Damn. That is stunning. This part of Italy, you wouldn't think. I wasn't expecting this part of Italy to be that beautiful really. I don't know why but it just definitely takes your breath away. Hopefully this will be a place with a decent view and it'll be worth the hike. I think we found it. Against all odds. The good news though is that this means we have worked an appetite but we can eat as much as we want. Assuming they're serving food. Assuming. Yeah that's true. Assuming they're open. Hopefully they are. Fingers crossed. They do not look very open. I think it's closed. That is not promising at all. To eat salami and cheese. Okay. Okay. Salami and cheese and salami. The option today is salami and cheese or salami and cheese. What type of salami and cheese? Times two. Wow look at that view. You see the mussel farms down there. Oh that's what it is. There's a really good mussels in this town. Unfortunately there's no chance of La Spezia mussels on the menu for us. We'd left the combi in search of food because all we had to eat was cheese and salami and we found a restaurant where all there was to eat was cheese and salami. Still at least the view makes up for it and we got some exercise in. Speaking of which. Three years ago Riccardo brought me here to this crag and this is the place that started kind of my passion for climbing and I've climbed in many places since. It's really strange to be back here. It's a shame he's not here with us. Funny thing is last time I was here with Riccardo he said to me you know oh there's climbing in the area. Do you want to go and do that for one of the days you're here? I was like nah I'm not really into climbing. I'm glad I did. This goes to show you always give things a try even when it's a bit out of your comfort zone. Sometimes it can open up whole new adventures in life like this one with Tamala. Shame not to have Alaska here with us. I'm sure she'd love to be here. It's quite warm for her I think. It is but it's nice in the shade and she was really good on our last trip. Like share subscribe to find out where we went. She was really good at hiding in the shade and I think she loved the different terrain as well. It's an adventure and she's an adventure dog. Yeah she is but she is also getting older so sometimes she's gonna have to sit out some of the adventures we're on. This time we've opted to bring climbing gear and we haven't brought our surfboards because this trip should take us nowhere near the ocean in theory. In theory. Although we might have to throw a bit of a spanner in the works. Actually I shouldn't use that expression in comedy life should I? No please don't. I think we'll get a surf somewhere just maybe not on this continent. Right get climbing. After a couple of days of living up in the hills working and enjoying the natural gym we decided to descend from Mozzarone area back down into La Spezia in search of something more tasty than cheese and salami. Stia Pescatori. This is the place that Riccardo brought us a long time. Or you. Or me. You weren't there yet sorry. But I would say us because it's me and Alaska but Alaska isn't here either. This is so good I'm so excited to bring you here. It smells amazing and I can't wait. This one. Maybe some of this. Definitely some of this. How good does that look? Yeah I'm ready. You've wanted that before. So good. You've got to try this. This is why we came to Italy right? I can't believe that our food literally goes from the fishing boats right there to the restaurant which is right there. You know usually on my travels I don't normally go to places I've been to before but like coming to this whole town and retracing my steps is a bit of a rarity for me. It's actually quite nice to be able to go back to somewhere that I've been to before. A lot of people tend to go to the same places on holiday every time. I think it's because they found something they like and they want to repeat it. What do you guys think? Are you one of those people that likes to travel to new places all the time or do you like going back to familiar favorites? I'd be interested to know because for me I definitely tend to go to new places all the time. Yeah show your thoughts. We've now officially made it one week on the road without having to get the tools out. That means the good news is we don't have to turn around and go home. Yeah but the bad news is we do now have to fix our wobbly wheel and for that Ben you owe me a date. But that is a story for next time. Hey that's my line.