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About this episode

For this episode, I chat with Vendy and Marcel from @saltyvanventures who love travel, vanlife and living minimalistic. 

We talk about travel, vanlife, the impact of COVID and the many lessons they learnt along the way. Vendy and Marcel also share what they learnt from converting three vans and what tips they would give others wanting to convert a van and enjoy vanlife. 

After meeting in South East Asia, Vendy and Marcel reunited in New Zealand where Marcel was already living and Vendy was planning to spend a year on a work and holiday visa.  

Not feeling ready to follow in the footsteps of their friends yet who were settling down and starting families, as well as wanting to see more of beautiful New Zealand, the two decided to get a van and travel the country. They bought an empty van, converted it themselves and then hit the road. 

When winter arrived in New Zealand, Vendy and Marcel decided to spend four months island-hopping around the pacific before making their way to South America with the intention of starting vanlife there. 

Just as they were about to complete the conversion of their van and were getting ready to hit the roads of South America, Covid-19 turned into a global pandemic. With the situation in many South American countries unstable and not welcoming to visitors, Vendy and Marcel decided they had to leave. However, that meant splitting up. With borders closed to anyone except citizens in both their home countries, they had to make the difficult decision for Vendy to return to the Czech Republic and Marcel to Australia. 

After several tough months of separation, the two managed to get an exemption that allowed Vendy to enter Australia – and from there, even cancelled flights and Covid-chaos at airports didn’t stop the two from reuniting.

They are now together in Australia, working to convert their next van to re-start vanlife. 

Listen to the episode to hear the whole story and get vanlife and van-conversion tips from these two vanlife experts. 

If you want to follow Vendy and Marcel’s journey and see their incredible beautiful van conversion, check them out on YouTube or Instagram.  

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/salty_vanventures/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSqGj5KgpYFD0R-nCHqh_OQ