Category Archives: Puru Hiko

Day 9 – That summer feeling

We call every day where we don’t move camp a rest day on our trips. Most of them end up being everything but. So if you imagine a quiet afternoon with a good book on the beach … not quite us. We move at a brisk pace, especially for a family of four. So we always have 5 more things to do on a rest day, because you know: We got time, right? That is on top of everything that made us stay in the first place.

Both kids enjoyed having the place to themselves

I tried to be smart though and venture a bit into multitasking. So after our breakfast, we packed a few essentials and moved to the lakeshore. I was able to finish up the two blog posts in our back-log while Number 3 (and, to the extent that we let her, the Agent, too) enjoyed the lake. We were the first ones out and had the lake all to ourselves. Small mistakes were made, but overall this was a great success. In hindsight, we just should have told Number 3 to take off his clothes all at once rather than waiting for him to get first his pants and then the undies wet. He had a blast, though, and even made new friends with the 5 and 8 year olds kids of the campers two lots down from us.

This is why we went on this trip. We get to spend so much time with our little ones – who are ever so slowly turning into remarkable little characters. Many times a day, I get this flush of emotion when realising just how much I love them and how blessed we are to get to knowing them.

We somehow managed to squeeze another load of washing into our lunchtime window, although naptime was a bit of a challenge, probably because of the heat. Oh, and Number 3’s digger addictions. There was a sit-on toy digger on the camp’s playground and he found it. Getting him off that playground took a serious bit of convincing.

So naptime dragged on a bit, organically transitioned into coffee time – all the while, promises about things we can do started piling up for Number 3. For the first time on this trip, we decided to split up. I am not much of a water nut, so Nina and the big brother decided to go for another (real) swim, while I took the Agent of Entropy out for a shopping run. I had added “cooking risotto from scratch” to get rid of our remaining fresh zucchini to the long list of to-dos for the day. Oh, and it was finally time for ice in our icebox – the butter demanded so, or at least that was my excuse.

A brief stroll along the lake later, it was now 4.50 pm, we all joined up again. Number 3 had turned slightly blue from an hour in the water while I was a bit hot from my walk in the sun. We equalized things by a minute or two of cuddle time 😀

I got to work on the risotto – and it was around that time that things turned south a bit. Our hero up to this point lied to his Mum about me having approved it and walked away from his sous-chef duties to play with the damn digger again, all on his own. When dinner was ready, tantrum ensued and he outright refused to join in the meal. Slightly soured by that turn of events, I maybe were not the most patient dad at bed time – and it had maybe 35°C in the tent – so that took almost exactly until it was time for us to hop in the car, start up discord and play our regular Friday night game.

Rest day, eh?

Side note:

– to avoid another disappointing take off, I religiously forced the car into “drive” mode every few hours to force it to charge the 12v battery. That works fine while it is charging the main or when the charger is disconnected, but leads to weird behaviour when the main is at 100% but the charger not disconnected. It seems like some software optimisation is still required. We’ll find out if all that at least had the desired effect, tomorrow –

A good morning starts with an encounter with a garbage truck 🙂

Day 8 – Lake time

Got up, made breakfast, started packing. The usual things we do when we move to a new campground. As Flo hinted at in yesterday’s post, it was hard to find a campground for tonight as everything right next to lake Como was fully booked already. In the end, we decided on a site next to a small lake called Lago di Piano where we could at least stay right next to the water. It is only 58km away anyway and still on our way to our next stop Como.

Once we’d packed everything including our not fully dried washing, we were ready to go. Just…Puru Hiko wasn’t. The battery was flat … again. Somehow, we still need to nail that part. -.-

By now, we knew the drill though. Flo got someone to jumpstart the 12V battery, the fully charged big battery started to charge the empty little one and we were on our way with only a 15min delay.

Driving through Chiavenna on our way to the lake, we realized that this is the biggest town we’ll come through today and we still need to stock up on supplies. Thus, we stopped again after 5min on the road for a shopping break. The Agent of Entropy had fallen asleep already, so I stayed in the car while Flo and Number 3 got the supplies. It took way longer than I had expected but when they returned with a full shopping cart rather than with the 5 things that where on my list, I had my explanation. Oh, and there was even a watermelon to be stored in the car somehow. XD

We continued our way and soon hit the lake front of Lago di Como. Most of the lake front is privately owned so we couldn’t find a nice lunch stop for a while until we stopped at a car park next to where a river flows into the lake. With our new supplies, we had an extended lunch, including dessert.

All in (and a good first field test of No3 waterproof camera)

From here, it took us another half an hour to get to the campsite. Which turned out to be a good thing as the campground is lovely! First, Number 3 and I had ice cream. Then, we went to check out the lake and decided to go swimming straight away (Sunny and temps in the high 20s). Number 3 needed only a short time to remember that he looooooooves swimming and was happily splashing and swooshing in the water. The Agent of Entropy has never been swimming before (thanks Covid) but was intrigued. She hung on to me for dear life but when I went out of the water, she immediately pointed back to the water and make certain that we’d go back in. Where she continued to cling to me. Oh well.

After the swim and a hot shower, the kids and I were almost asleep. Flo whipped up an awesome dinner including our fresh zucchini and capsicum.

Getting the kids to bed was not a problem, however, it was still rather warm in the tent. We hoped for the best, kept the windows open and crossed our fingers for tonight’s gaming session. 😊

Day 7 – Post Bus to Gluttony

It is rather unusual that we stay in one place for three nights. But we had full supplies, no deadlines and plenty of choice for things to do. We did want to take a break from any serious walking, though – the memory of the tower incident might still be too fresh. So, we decided on what we love to do and what this kind of travel affords us the spare funds to do so: Explore the next best town!

It rained during the night and stayed overcast for almost the entire day – which was kind of perfect for this kind of excursion. Not having had many distractions in the morning allowed us to meet a rather ambitious 9.38 am bus ride to town. It is only 4 km and we could have walked there, but for only 2 € the convenience of a bus was too hard to resist.

As a sign that we are -that- close to the Swiss border, the bus was operated by the Swiss postal service (a High Alps thing). We got almost a bit confused when all the signs and ads in the bus were in German instead of Italian 😊. Six stops later and we decided we were “in town” enough to hop out. Time to explore Chiavenna.

We got our first glimpse of things to come looking into the old town from the new bridge over the rushing river Mera. And we saw a lot of ongoing construction on the banks, covering up some but not all significant damage done by severe floods in northern Italy in the last years.

Before we would hit the old town, we couldn’t help but stop at a brand new Pasticceria (plus café) on the far side of the bridge called Soul Cake. I mean … we had to, right? I myself was quite delighted by the realisation that we are in Italy now – for I had the best coffee in weeks served to me. Nina was completely enchanted by the huge selection of petit-four, filled croissants and cakes on offer. We settled on a variety of three croissants and a bit of relaxation. After all, we had two hours to fill before the chosen restaurant would open at 12.00 noon.

Well prepared, all of us performed admirably at the 1 ½ hours stroll through the narrow alleys of the old town. The most impressive feature had to be the steep 8m drop in between the 4-6 story buildings down to the rushing river Mera. The shift to “Italian” feel and architecture is pretty severe – only 10 km up the valley you can find the wood-clad romantic idyll of the Swiss Alps, whereas here the Romanesque window openings and slightly crumbling yellow washed facades evoke a clear Mediterranean feel.

We finished our walk with a mere 20 minutes to bridge and we were able to distract the Agent with a feed and Number 3 with a magical little footpath cut into the rockface – all mossy green and gloomy. The place where you would expect to meet nymphs and fairies.

We got lucky by being there right on opening time and still got a table even without reservation. It turned out, as is kind of our luck, it was Republic Day today! No wonder we had trouble finding a free campsite for Thursday and Friday.

Anyway, we went to a “Crotto”, a local form of small menu restaurant that evolved of cellars for curing meats and cheeses. They had few enough items on the menu that we could basically order “one of each”. Once more, we got a bit emotional – because the food was excellent, home made gnoccetini (with cheese), cold cuts from their own cellar, polenta (with cheese :D) and biscotti for dessert – but more so because eating out has become part of our identity, and we were not able to do so for almost a year by now. We missed it so much! Even the house wine was great.

The bus was on time (Swiss precision and so on …). Unfortunately for us, we were not able to convince Number 3 to take a nap or at least a bit of rest. So, the rest of the day was a bit of a drag with him getting up to worse and worse plots cooked up by his sleep deprived brain. At least when it was time to go to bed, he fell asleep mid-sentence.

— sorry for the amount of pictures. We had to nights of gaming and I want to get is out, no willpower to be tough on the selection anymore 😀 —

Day 6 – Recuperating

After yesterday’s long drive to get to Italy, it was officially our rest day today. Unfortunately, the kids don’t understand the concept of “sleeping in” and thus, we were awake way too early again.

It was a bit chilly when we got up but breakfast is a good way to cheer everybody up. Afterwards we just went to explore our immediate surroundings: The waterfall of Acquafraggia first of all. It is a five minute walk from our campground and we can see it from here through the trees. On the way there, we found a cool place with access to the river where Number 3 put his feet in already. He was generally amazed by the rapid flowing water.

The waterfall itself was loud and there was a lot of spray so Number 3 stayed back a little, while both Flo and I got ourselves a little refreshment when we got close. 🙂 The Agent of Entropy had no choice but to go with Flo but since she didn’t complain it couldn’t have been too bad.

With our spirits high and the temperature rising to a lovely 21 degrees, we started to walk to the next village over to see if we could find a little restaurant for lunch and a shop to buy some groceries. Though the walk was basically along the main road but on a pedestrian footpath, we saw lots of animals. The lizards especially fascinated Number 3. There was also a little chicken hut where we spent about 15 minutes trying to convince Number 3 to keep on moving.

The village of Prosto di Piuro is rather small. We still found the artisan bakery/cookie shop for me to buy some fruit bread, cookies, jam and a bottle of red wine in.

To be honest, Flo and I didn’t know how travelling would be during the pandemic and if we’d feel unsafe. We are really impressed with Italy at the moment as everybody seems to be “no nonsense” about the rules. EVERYBODY wears a mask. And correctly, too! Not just covering mouths or such silly business as I often see in Frankfurt. Everybody keeps their distance if possible and they just get on with it!

Shopping was a pleasure even if I had to stretch my almost non-existing Italian. We didn’t find a restaurant in our price range that was open but we found the little supermarket to buy some groceries.

We hurried a little on the way back as it was time for lunch and everybody was hungry. That turned out to be a bit of a drag for Number 3. Even so, he refused to have a midday nap after lunch. Chilling on the campground in the afternoon was an exercise for our patience. Only when Number 3 observed the guy on the lawnmower and started role playing it did things improve again.

By dinner time the Agent of Entropy was causing havoc while Number 3 redeemed himself by being a superb sous-chef.

Day 5 – Like clockwork

My plan was, to say it mildly, not well liked. It better work like a charm, or I would have gone to the dog house for a very long time. I suggested to add about 50km to the trip to our campground to go back to Germany for our mandatory rapid covid test (needed for entry to Italy). The main reason: 140€ less for the two of us. Germans get their tests for free in Germany. Secondly, it was way less hassle to get an appointment in Konstanz compared to Wil – it is a major border town and has about 10 full-time testing sites to choose from.

The kids were a bit over eager and were up an hour ahead of schedule, but overall the morning went according to plan. Nothing was left, that we could tell, and the heartfelt goodbyes were made easier by knowing that we will see each other again fairly soon. I did forget my car key fob in my other pants, but we only lost 15 minutes.

And so, in time for our 10.27am test appointment we rolled into the car park in Konstanz. It was all pretty orderly, so within 15 minutes we were out again with an electronic results form to be delivered within 20 minutes. I was even able to add a bonus stop to remedy a previous fail on my part: MediaMarkt had both a generic charger for Nina’s laptop to replace the one I forgot in Germany for just 27€ and a cheap usb hard drive replacement since ours died the previous night after 10 years of hard travel.

Next up DM (a kind of drug store, minus the real pharmaceuticals) – I also forgot to take any charger for our three identical electric toothbrushes. Good thing Phoebe still needed one, since they come with a charger. Better still, DM also offers printing on demand, so we could commit our fresh (negative) rapid tests down to paper – just in case. I must admit, time has crept up on us a bit, so at 11.20 am already, we also stocked up on some sandwiches for lunch in the car.

[Nina: It was here that I made the colossal mistake of letting Number 3 ride on a coin-operated train for ONE SINGLE COIN while waiting on Flo to finish all his tasks. Such a huge mistake. Though, at the time I thought Number 3 was really good as he got off the toy train without any complaints.]

The eating part was fine, but 10 minutes into the actual 229km drive to our campsite we realised we forgot to check on the Agent of Entropy. The diaper was, of course, full. Alright, another brief pit stop in some sort of quiet office park. Diaper changed, consolatory feed given … just in time for Number 3 to announce he would definitively and 100% certainly need another potty break. In the car, to the supermarket and the kid rushed inside … and it turned out it was a lie, since he was expecting another coin-operated toy train thingy ride after the business was done. Nina was not amused … 30 minutes for 3 km.

But that was our last hiccup … almost. Next stop was a rest stop with a few fast chargers for Puru Hiko. She was doing excellent, anyways. But then, 9 km before the exit, Number 3 decided it was time to play around and pull the emergency eject (i.e. the door lever going 110km/h on the motorway). Car started a panic inducing beep, wind rushed, Nina half jumped and pulled the door mostly shut again. I know, I could have set the child lock on the door – but this way, he has learned his lesson for life, I am quite sure of it …

Fast charging was uneventful – I mean, this is Switzerland after all. The toilets were clean enough I almost wouldn’t hesitate dining off them. Complete with coin-operated Heidi animatronics … that kind of thing. I restrained myself from buying a 10€ plant based whopper (try it though, really good … just not in Switzerland).

This left us well prepared for the last leg of the trip – 2 hours for 113 km. We did have to come up to 2114m to go over the Splügen Pass, after all. This was SO MUCH FUN! At least for me – the other three got rather motionsick, with the Agent of Entropy actually giving in on our way down from the saddle. Nina and I realised that we had done this exact same pass on the motorcycle before, roughly 10 years ago and coming from the other direction. That was then our second long-distance trip on the bike – or in other words, 70.000 km ago. Something to chew on 😀

Driving an EV on this road is second only to our bike, I would say. Blue George was fun because it was so nimble, and I think the electric version with only 2 passengers would be even cooler than our fully loaded 3 ton family car, just for that go-cart feel. But the sheer amount of torque without any interruptions for gear changes makes going uphill in an EV just a smile-fest. And going down, recuperation takes a huge amount of load off the breaks, so that you can be quite aggressive without risking break damage.

The others disagreed a bit – so with three white-faced passengers, we turned into a great and friendly campsite in a stunning location deep down in the Mera valley. The place is called after the adjacent waterfall: Acquafraggio. And even though we had our fill of waterfalls, this one is a real stunner, visible from the campground. We had absolutely no hesitation locking in a 3 night stay – quite unusual for us in most places.

Time to let it sink in – we are here. We are travelling. On the road again, at last!

Goodbye – Christine first, as she had an appointment. Her wee one got confused 😀

Day 4 – Old friends in new places

Our original plan was to leave for Italy today but when yesterday turned out to be…substandard, we decided to stay the whole day at Christine’s place to relax and catch up with one of our oldest friends. Luckily, Christine, Torsten and their little one were able to host us longer than they had expected. J

The day started off with Flo making pancakes for everyone (such a treat!) and they were devoured in record time. To be fair, we haven’t had enough sleep as the catching up part started yesterday evening which stretched into the night and then our two rascals were awake from 5.50am onwards when the Agent of Entropy crashed into the wooden train set with gusto and woke us up with a start. The best thing to do to remedy some of the effects of a night with not enough hours of shut-eye was to immediately plan our second breakfast. At 8pm, Flo, Christine and the Agent of Entropy left for the bakery to buy more baked goods for our indulging shenanigans.

Second breakfast started around 9.20am and after so much yummy food we all agreed to go on a walk before taking advantage of the more relaxed Swiss Corona rules and eat out for lunch. As it is with kids though, it took forever to get three of them ready to leave so by the time we were outside we had about 40 minutes left before the aforementioned kids would demand lunch. -.-

Our walk was postponed until after even more food and we headed straight to the restaurant in the next village up. Neither Christine nor Torsten had been there before so it was nice to explore something new with our hosts. This part (or maybe many parts) of Switzerland are very rural so we passed sheep and chickens and a picturesque fountain on the way. All three kids absolutely loved it.

The restauarant…what can I say?…it’s been almost a year since we went out for food. It was a celebration in itself to be able to do this again. Also, the food was delicious, the place kid-friendly (Number 3 had a Pizza Batman and a scoopf of mango ice cream) and our outside seating had just the right combination of sunshine and shade.

On the way back, we then had to hurry to be home in time to get the kids to bed for their midday nap. Well, two out of three kids had to nap. We still took the scenic route home with time for cows, a tractor and all things Swiss. It was a bit of a task to get the kids to calm down enough to sleep but once the Agent of Entropy slept there even was time to play a boardgame with Number 3.

In the late afternoon we went to the playground where much fun was had.

Back home we opted for more food followed vy a much earlier bedtime. J Tomorrow, we’ll head off to Italy…with a detour (back to Germany o.ô) to refresh our rapid Covid tests first.

Day 3 – Below minimum required

Ok, first on-the-road packing day. We can do this. Today’s trip is only 190km planned. Smooth sailings. Maybe we even would have time to stop for a roadside attraction. After all, our friends would be at work anyways – no point in rushing, right?

still pretty good at packing – even with spectators

Everything worked out pretty well. First time we had to pay by use for electricity. 21€ for a 60% charge. Not great, compared to my usual charging card, but a major convenience. We could start with a battery 100% charged and not worry about topping up for the day. So, with packing up at a leisurely pace, we were ready to hit the road around 10:45 am. Would have been, I should say. For I, in my infinite capacity for foolish things, reprised a well-honed tradition: Draining the battery of my vehicle.

Yes, you heard right. As some have recently learned from a clip of a well-known former Top-Gear host: Electrical Vehicles have traditional 12v batteries in them, too. See, all the car tech is old world, well optimized towards the 12v ecosystem. My 48 Volt 64Wh battery pack has as much to do with that as the fuel tank in a stinker. There are some practical considerations, too. You can’t just run something of such a huge power source – some level of electronics is required. And as in a desktop computer, it has to start somewhere, usually small. That is the 12v battery. I drained it completely by forgetting to unplug a charger and keeping puku hiko in her half-on state. When we were ready to leave, there was no juice to register the key-fob, let alone kick start the other electronics. As soon as the main drive computer comes on, it would register the low voltage on the 12v and start feeding it from the main. But we did not get that far …

Hat in hand, I had to ask the campground warden for a jump start. Of my EV … much amusement all around. Jumper cables didn’t quite work, but an emergency starter / booster battery did the trick. Main ECU came onboard and the car ran. Just like jumpstarting a stinker … only that mine didn’t sputter blue clouds from the rear but instead hummed its artificial VESS hum as if nothing had happened. There was the first half an hour lost …

Charging made easy – right they are. Every supermarket should have these.

We had a shopping / charging stop halfway, having made good time. But then, both little ones had to go to the loo just as we were heading out … ah well, here goes another 30 minutes.

Our lack of (daring to start) planning bit us again, a bit later. We had to have another stop. I did not get the cooking facilities in order in time. The butane gas for the cooker was ordered a bit too late and did not arrive before we left. The first two options to stock up were deemed to expensive at 4 € a bottle (the ones now sitting at home were 90ct a piece). So I had to try my luck at two rest stops and a hardware store, only to pay extortion prices of 5.39 € rather than lose more than this additional hour.

By now it was getting late but we were finally on the last stretch. Crossed the border to Switzerland without hassle and about 15 minutes out from our destination, I almost bunged it up for good this time. Temporary traffic light at a construction site – I missed the “stop here while red” sign and thought I’d go that wee bit back down the hill. Only, I did not switch into reverse but rather let it roll. And only used the wing mirror, without realizing that no rear radar or rear facing camera was active without puku hiko being put into reverse. When a “bang” stopped us, I almost lost it.

It must have been the luck of fools, as it turned out there was absolutely no visible damage and the other driver was super cool about it when he saw us in our whole kit. No time lost, but we gained a few more grey hairs on our scalps.

In the end, we arrived quite late at 4.40 pm. We were heading over to Number 3’s Godmother and her family, so the day turned bright from there. Dinner, quickly putting our kids to bed and then staying up way too long, as you tend to do with old friends, rounded off this rollercoaster of a day.

Day 2 – An unexpected daytour

The first night in the tent…let’s just say there is room for improvement. 😊 Flo and I were toasty as our set-up is tried and proven time and again. Both kids were cold and complained, waking us up repeatedly. So our mood was not the best when the alarm went off in the morning.

we had colder before, but not the wee ones

Breakfast was the first ray of light in a grey day with lots of drizzle. The Agent of Entropy devoured a whole banana. Nonetheless, you could just tell that everybody was sleep-deprived and slightly grumpy. Flo wouldn’t be deterred though: There was a tower on a hill which you could see from our campsite and he was determined to get to that tower. Today. So, we packed our backpacks and hit the track.

Number 3 was not amused. He was in no mood to walk. At all. He managed to cross the field to the village where the track was about to start. Trying to solve the conundrum, Flo decided to carry Number 3 in the carrier while I had the Agent of Entropy in the cloth wrap. It was quite an exhausting way of hiking…

The track, however, was worth it. It started with a steep section through dense forest with animal statues on both sides to show kids what kind of animals used this habitat. Further up we went to the saddle where we had an early lunch with delicious bread and cheese. The Agent of Entropy took a nap while Number 3 explained that he couldn’t sleep because he had to see every single tree we passed.

About 1km from the tower Number 3 decided that his battery was sufficiently charged now that he could walk a little. It was okay for about 200 meters and then he had a full-on melt-down when he wasn’t allowed back into the carrier. He screamed at the top of his lungs for the rest of the way to the tower. Since I had asked him about a million times if he was sure that he wanted to walk now and that he couldn’t get back into the carrier before we reached the tower…we just all had to suffer through this. At the top, we had another break with snacks.

Tower at the edge of Baden-Baden city limits

Flo went up the tower to enjoy the views, the kids and I stayed on ground level.

The way down on the other side was fun. Number 3 more than redeemed himself with being a great pleasure to hike with for the rest of the way. First, we went down quite a rocky path, then a steep slope to finally come back to a wide hiking path. Only on the wide pathway did Number 3 need more encouragement and the occasional boost off being carried a few meters. We were back at the campsite around 4pm, six hours after we started.

Flo was totally the hero in this piece as he carried both kids for the last kilometer of our hike. Needless to say: getting the kids to bed was easy this night. Not falling asleep right next to them proved to be much harder…

Day 1 – Electrifying

This – this was my bloody dream ever since one of those enchanting nights in Portugal. This was the thing we had mulled over, planned and made many a decision based upon. We chose to push the last two months of parental leave as far out as possible – for the chance of good weather and for the glimmer of hope of outlasting the lockdowns and limitations.

We chose our car with this in mind – had to have certified roof rack carrying capacity and be big enough for four and our stuff. We lined up friends, options, mulled over potential routes.

So the 26^th of April came – and went, with us firmly in lockdown grounded at home. No way to move the dates, no point in fussing over anything. Just hunker down and suffer through this – one more month to add to all the ones added up already.

May a half-dead rat’s feces hit all of those sharing the blame for spreading and failing to contain this bloody thing. Cursed be every super spreader! We HATE the novel corona virus! [/old man yelling at cloud]

But then, as always, things get better eventually (at least for us cis white European whities, that is). One by one, we managed to snatch up our first doses of the vaccines (after the boomers were finished and immediately demanded everything go back to normal for them, of course). European countries started to loosen travel restrictions and we finally allowed ourselves to think about actually doing it.

So, what is “this”? Well, it is our meager attempt at doing what is unfortunately very unsustainable (long distance travel) in the least harmful way we can think of. And to embrace our continent of origin and what the most dense and top tier level of infrastructure can support: Camping with an EV and our well proven iCamper SkyCamp roof tent.

The thought that struck me on our last trip: We stick to campgrounds anyway, because in such densely populated parts of the world there is not much room for wild camping (plus the fact that it is illegal most anywhere). So why not use that time to fuel the vehicle that we are using? With the kids, we would not travel more than maybe 300km in a day and, if we needed to, the charging infrastructure is good enough to just top up during a normal rest stop.

So here we are, 250 km from home on a campground in the black forest. The car is charging, number 3 and the Agent of Entropy are sleeping peacefully in the roof tent and I get to be really electrified about traveling again.

We are doing it … be a naysayer if you want – yes this is not edge of the unknown adventure travel. But it is the road.

My kids will experience that. They will meet cool people, friends we have across Europe and they will breathe fresh air and see the open sky.

And no virus could stop us from doing that …