Sven and Catarina are traveling in a Mercedes L407D. Since they met each other they always traveled in their van to windsurfing locations.
Hi, we are Sven and Catarina, a Belgian/Portuguese couple. Since we met each other we always traveled in our van to windsurfing locations.
We don’t live full-time vanlife but spend around 2 months per year in our van
We used to travel in a opel vivaro which was way smaller than our merco and since we have our lovely dog, a bit more space was welcome…
On one of our trips to Portugal we met a german surfer who lives in a Mercedes L407D and we loved the ‚charme‘ of this old bus.
After spending 2 weeks traveling together with him we fell in love for this kind of van!
In Belgium you don’t find these vans so much, so we started searching for it in Germany and Holland, after one year we found our van in the north of Holland so we took the 380km drive and bought it right away.
10 days and some paperwork later we had everything registered.
There was a basic layout but no electricity inside and no fridge, so we started working on this. Now we have 230Ah battery that gets charged while driving and lots of sockets and led-lights.
We also installed a compressor-fridge which was an absolute joy (finally cold beers…) Next up is to install a solar panel. The basic maintenance we also do ourselves.
We love the freedom of waking up to new landscapes every morning and whenever the surf drops in a place we can just move to wherever it’s better.
We travelled Portugal, Spain, France, Holland, Great-Brittany, Denmark and Norway. The favorite destination was definitely Norway because of the magnificent nature, no problems wildcamping if you follow the rules.
Being completely alone in some places also recharges our own batteries.
We never had big problems, we got send away once or twice by the police in Spain but luckily never had to pay any tickets.
All the time when we go to surf spots because the surf community is quite nomadic. We also have some good friends we meet every year in Spain who live full time in their van.
The rising diesel-prices would be one of them. Also we don’t have a hot water shower in our van, in the colder areas of Europe it can be a ‚brutal‘ wake-up when you are standing outside to take a cold shower…
A solar panel would be the next step in upgrading the van, a decent roof-rack is also high up on our list.
It would be an older type 4×4 because sometimes we tend to be attracted to the little rocky roads… A Mercedes 911 or 814 would be a dream.
We don’t work online, just once in a while upload some photo’s of our travels and maintenance of the car on Instagram. You can check it out on: notfast_buthappy
