Meet Carla and David, the parents of the Ligrones . They love traveling as a family in their camper van . A year ago, along with their son Roberto and daughter Greta, they left Tenerife in their van , with only a one-way ticket. They are brave. They dared to make a big change in their lives and they don't regret it.
They sold their belongings, left their rented home, and are using their savings to buy time. They're looking for remote jobs so they can live wherever they want, for as long as they want . They live on the move. Their magic formula: family, satisfaction, work, and enjoyment. All together. Right now, the family is in Lleida finishing a project, and very soon they'll be heading to Granada, where they're organizing a gathering of Worldschool families.
How did you start your adventure?
Our children's education was the final piece of the puzzle . In Tenerife, they attended a free school . This type of education/parenting makes you look very deeply within yourself. You offer your children something different from what you grew up with, so being able to do it requires learning, or rather, unlearning, for the adult. For us, it led to this inner search for what we wanted to do, how, and where. We wanted the same thing we were offering our children, and that was time. All of this, combined with our desire to leave Tenerife so we could travel more freely in our van.
What has happened to your work? Do you telecommute? Do you have a leave of absence?
David was laid off a year before we were due to graduate. I, Carla, was finishing my PhD, and at that point we agreed that he wouldn't look for work so I could focus on my PhD and finish it, and then… we'd go traveling in a campervan while we looked for a school we liked and reinvented ourselves. That was the initial plan… Now we're creating remote jobs . Last November we launched https://geckocamper.com/ , where David offers online electromechanical consulting and helps with finding and buying vehicles, as well as campervan conversions.
I have several projects underway . I'm about to open a shop at www.madeinthevan.com with @madeinthevan, which you can currently follow on Instagram and Facebook. We're not yet financially sustainable; we're earning very little. We're still living off our savings, but this is the time we're buying ourselves to create the life we want.
Tell us what is being the most difficult part of the trip… the fact of leaving the comfort zone?
The hardest part is meeting everyone's needs at all times. There are four of us, and the most important thing is that we're all doing well. Starting from this basic idea of feeling good, the most difficult thing is organizing ourselves so that each of the adults can work with the children all day. We know how to solve this because we have a clear vision of how we want to move: slowly, in a van, doing housesitting for periods of at least three months, and having the children attend alternative schools wherever we are. This way, we'll all have our own time and space, and it also meets our need for a pet... haha.
All long-term travelers spend the first few months. At first everything is a hurricane, because when you leave your comfort zone without leaving anything to return to and just looking forward, what you find is with you. And almost no one is prepared because we live disconnected from ourselves from birth, busy completing tasks and goals.
How do you manage the family finances and what advice would you give to other families who follow your steps?
When we left, we had limited savings. We calculated that they would last us for over a year and a half without any income, leaving us with a backup to start over elsewhere. We've realized that we were already living frugally when we lived in a house with a typical routine because now our expenses are almost the same. We need an average of €1.000 a month , and I assure you, that's very tight.
With that budget, you have to forget about living as tourists ...
Effectively. When we move, we are not tourists who visit everything that is payable, nor do they buy souvenirs, clothing, etc., unless we need something. In addition, in the van! It does not fit us !!.
We're still saving, although our perspective has changed. We've invested our backup in David's project, which you can follow on Instagram and Facebook at @camperizatufurgoneta . We hope to recover our savings by the end of the year and continue our personal journey. The same goes for my own projects. We hope they'll be launched at the beginning of the year.
Find out what is your monthly expense currently in a normal life with home, school, routines, activities, etc? Here you must include rent, mortgage, food, internet, telephones, fixed expenses, etc.
If you stopped entering today, how long could you live with the level you live now?
Predict what your trip is, make a budget of what it would cost you and see if you can take it and for how long.
Don't forget annual expenses like health insurance, car insurance and itv. Also include the cost of flights, visas, take into account tolls ...
Investigate workaway platforms if you want to work on the road.
Homexchange type platforms, if you have a house and thus be able to exchange it. And the well-known Couchsurfing, not only to stay but for local people to guide you or tell you where to go in each place.
If you take a long family trip, the community is important, so contacting other families can be useful, both for children and adults. If not, in the end you are traveling and raising alone, and that is very difficult.
Let's take a look back, how was your first trip in a camper or motorhome?
My parents had a vw T2. And in the case of David, his parents had a caravan where he traveled with his 3 siblings, his parents and a dog named Troika. As adults as a couple we bought our first van in 2010, a vw T4. Although the previous year we did a trip in the AC of David's parents.
A special town for you ...
Torla and the Ordesa mountains . We could return a thousand times and never get tired of it.
If you went to X Factor, what song would you sing?
I've never seen the show, but I could sing any tune-up song hahaha.
Your best traveling anecdote ...
On the second trip with the T4 to the peninsula, with Roberto at 4 months. We threw a lamppost of a camping site reversing with the van !! What a scare. We were told that it was not the first time. Uff ... insurance covered it.
What camper van do you have now? Its two best features?
We now have a Mercedes Sprinter L2H2, the Ligroneta . It's small enough to fit almost anywhere and big enough to maneuver easily. It has rear-wheel drive and is a tad taller than other vans of this size, giving us better access to the places we like.
If you could invent the camper or motorhome 10 of the future, what would it look like?
It could stay the one we have now. Seriously. I'd only design it with more space if it could be compressed whenever I wanted. I'd add a bathroom that disappeared when not in use. Haha.
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