Enjoying the sun and salty water at the Mediterranean Sea help us to clear our thoughts and also find a nice place close to Bordeaux…
The place is called “Le Jardin des ZakYom” (http://lejardin.zakyom.net/) a place close to Saint-Antoine-sur-l'Isle. The place is run by two lovely persons called Kenza and Guillaume. Fortunately they were able to welcome us three travellers to their place even though there were already 4 others there.
Good for us, because we then got the chance to meet some other nice Workawayers. Work here was mainly planting trees, weeding, putting down hay for stopping the weed and watering. :P at least until Kenza figured out I can build and fix things hahaha xD…
Since then she gave me a long list of things that need to be done and also every day other persons who want to learn about building and fixing things. Because she believes in sharing knowledge and also giving people the opportunity to teach willing persons :)
those gates had no way for small people to open and close...plus it should also open only one side-> which we fixed as well
incomming is big, right left and straight leed to the gray water holes
"professional" piping :D :D :D the problem is the rain water pipe was underground already, so the solution is a pipe through a pipe ;) with only little rain water in the region that is possible
and finally the small chicken house got a new roof as well :D but only people with good eyes will not just see the sheep xD
...
Our day was good organized. We had lunch at 1 pm and ate the meal we prepared the day before. Then we worked from 2 to 6 pm and then after a little break made two meals together… the dinner for today and the lunch for the day afterwards. In this case we had dirty dishes only once were only once in the food making process and then had two meals as an outcome. Not such a bad idea.
Sometimes the weather was good ...
...
and sometimes we had just looots of rain
And when we got sick of the place and needed some change, we made a little trip to Bordeaux:
...
After a little while, they hosted an event where we instructed people to plant trees. There were about 20-30 interested people (they had studies in the field forestry) which came and planted many trees with us during this day…
We were there to fill up water, bring water cans, bring fertilizer, instruct and be kind and help with questions. It was a great day of sharing, working together and planting trees.
At the end of the day we (the Workawayers with Kenza and Guillaume) shared some nice red wine together and celebrated the day.
Generally the lunch and dinner conversations with Kenza and Guillaume were always very interesting, at least for me.
They both had such an interesting life so far. If I remember correctly they met in Casablanca while they both decided to live there… then they changed locations nearly every 5 years, lived in Madagascar, Burkina Faso, Morocco, France …. And even raised two very nice (at least one I know) children. The decision to “just go and live there, till it feels like to move on” is something I really like and probably was a little bit scared about. But why actually not. Maybe there I still some nomad blood in all of us and it want to be a part of my life stronger as well. In any way it definitely minimized the fear I had to go by myself to African countries. That’s why my bigger plans from there on started to develop to travel to Africa.
But how is Jack???
Well Jack is Jack as always. Normally Workawayers were allowed to stay at Kenza and Guillaumes place for 3 weeks then they will have few weeks off work to then welcome another group of Workawayers. In the mean time they can concentrate more on other things and also do the jobs the Workawayers do normally by themselves to see again how much work everything is to not forget the voluntarily effort people give and worship the work.
Not so me :P since I again got an appointment at the mechanic there, it took longer to get the parts to France and to get it fixed. To remind you
print(broken_parts_list)
[‘exhaust’,’steering’]
Well exhaust seems to work and still is on the car, I think we can
broken_parts_list.remove(“exhaust”)
remove it. But the steering is something I wanted to get checked now. That’s why I made the appointment at the mechanic in first place. Well he checked a lot of things then. The tyres, the connection to the steering gear box, the steering wheel, the shaft from the steering wheel and the universal joints… and he said, everything is fine, but the drive shafts at the right and left tyre had no more grease around there universal joints. That can soon get to an issue he mentioned and asked why the last guy at the last workshop (Slovenia) didn’t see that, because that should be obvious.
Ok shortly the list looked like:
print(broken_parts_list)
[’steering’,’drive shafts right left’]
Till I ordered the parts and he changed it. But still I was scared to drive Jack after the incident in Italy. So I kept nagging. I asked Guillaume (the host) if he can drive with the car and give me his opinion since he has experience with old cars too, which we then did. He then could see the problems I was talking about and also drove quicker. He said, for him that’s totally fine that the car responses delayed and if one wheel gets in a little whole, the car pulls delayed to the side and you have to smoothly go with the steering wheel in this “flow” and follow a bit the car……weeeell sounds easy but not easy for me. I guess till the almost accident we had I just naturally dealt with the car in the right way and since then I just get too suspicious and sensitive with every movement within the car.
In any way Guillaume said one thing which can make a big difference in driving the car on the country road with all the little holes and bumps could be bad suspension in the front wheels.
After a quick check it was very clear that the suspension was super bad. If you sit on the right side of the car and get of the car, the car jumps back up and down 3-4 times till it stops :D
Bounce bounce bounce …. I guess we listened to too many bouncing songs Jack and I, xxxxx.
Soo very quickly:
print(broken_parts_list)
[’steering’,’drive shafts right left’,’suspension’]
Then fixed everything and the drive home from the mechanic was much much better and much much more stable. BUT…. Back home I recognized the driving wheel was not in the middle while I drove straight. Also the right front tyre was tilted outwards by 2,7 ° (I just have good eyes :P).
Well ok back to the mechanic after the weekend and then he fixed that, also drove the car and said, steering wise everything is totally fine, I just don’t have to be scared!!! And the tyre was 2,7° outwards xD by the way hahaha.
Ok unfortunately since one wheel was no longer trying to pull Jack to the left and the other one to the right, Jack drove less stable after this fix, but still much better than before the suspension change.
Two weeks longer I stayed alone at Kenza and Guillaumes place for all that fixes and was fixing and building things of the long list of Kenza of things they have to be made/fixed.
print(broken_parts_list)
[]
Wooow that’s great….
So all the others went to different places during this time. Philip and two german girls Eva and Lilly plus Sebastian a French guy went to another workaway place, I wanted to join later on as well. Gemma went on to a completely different place, she wanted to experience some new place with completely new people. So she went to a place close to the Pyrenees. A place we already applied before coming to Bordeaux, but they didn’t have place for 3 people. The other 4 guys went to a place called “walnut wonderland” which sounds very cool in the description. Only 2h work a day. The guy loves to cook and share his walnut wine with everyone has 2 nice dogs and just got this place….BUT since they already have been there for a few weeks they reported that it was not nice at all… no work, everything super dirty and everything super broken and no motivation to fix things.
So I had the chance now to find something for myself, try to get to the other place but I didn’t really want to go to the messy guys place, or I drive down to Gemmas place even though Gemma had a climbing accident at the time I decedent to keep driving and she was thinking to leave back to England soon.
Well in the end I just drove south towards the Workaway place at the Pyrenees since there was another option the “Buddist place” coming up as well….but this is another story.
PS: a few final toughts to my friends...
there it comes..... BIG THX for the awesome time!!!!
xoxoxo hope to see you guys soon !
