the Camper Van Journey (Part 2)

September 15th, 2022

Anybody who’s interested in surfing recognizes the name Nazare. Well known for its near hundred foot waves during the right season, it’s a big wave surfers dream. After spending close to 3 months learning to surf in Panama and Peru, and watching the amazing documentary 100ft wave, Nazare was top on our bucket list for Portugal. Although the waves sadly weren’t pumping, we ended up finding the best camping site yet and got to see the exact spot where surf legends were made, which made the stop entirely worth it. However, I will definitely be back during big wave season! Although tempted to spend another night sleeping on the edge of a cliff overlooking the North Atlantic, as we figured we would never find a spot quite as good as this one, we continued to charge up the coast in hopes of getting out of the van as soon as possible.

Quickly realizing van life was not for us we decided to drop the van off one day early, but we still had to suck it up for one night. So where do we decide to go? The place with the Sexiest lifeguards I’ve ever seen, I mean seriously they all looked like they were plucked out of an Abercrombie & Fitch poster. So I of course spent my whole afternoon and morning walking the beach, working out on the beach, reading on the beach, and spending as much time as I could soaking up the beautiful views. After some nice R & R we headed to Porto to finally get out of the van and into our own space. 

Drunk off port at 2pm, broken down scooters in the middle of nowhere, a glimpse of solo traveling, and a pub crawl the night before our 6am flight made for a fascinating 3 days in the lovely northern town of Porto. Once we finally dropped the van off, we couldn’t have been more excited to go explore. We ended up renting bird scooters - which did breakdown 45min outside of the city leading to a very uncomfortable 2-person scooter ride, but ended in a fantastic Port tasting leaving us happy and very buzzed. 

After spending the last week stuck in a van with my dad, I decided I needed to get away for a few days which led me to staying at a funky social hostel called Pilot Design. Although I spent a week solo traveling through Cusco, its always a shock walking into a hostel by yourself and getting out of your comfort zone to meet people. Luckily, hostels are almost always super social and you can meet people within minutes. After another day of exploring the city, a beautiful sunset, and fantastic meal we were ready for the pub crawl. I had an early flight the next morning (had to be up at 5am) to Turkey so I was planning on going home around 2am. But, 4 clubs later and way too many drinks I found myself back at the airbnb at 4:45 and barely making it to the flight on time. To say the least, that was not a fun travel day.