How to buy a van in 10 days

Upon arriving to France the hunt for an adventure van began. Ten days later, we were on the road! All it took was 3 steps: find a van, buy the van, then register the van.

Step 1: Find a van

After reading through what seems like a thousand van classifieds on leboncoin.fr (French craigslist?), I started to go a little crazy. I could identify the different types of cargo and passenger vans on the street and became a walking encyclopedia of the measurements of the cargo space for different brands. Then one day, the perfect van shows up. The van was in Saint Jean Pied-de-Port, a picture-perfect Basque town filled with shops, cafes, and surrounded by beautiful scenery. We discovered that the town, an old fortified city tucked away in the mountains, is a famous stop on the St Jean de Compostelle pilgrimage. Our seller owns a small gear shop where pilgrims/hikers can stock up on forgotten goods. It was a busy afternoon, so he gave us the keys to the van and told us to take it for a spin. It was already built up in the back with really nicely crafted wooden chests which made up a flat bed. We immediately loved the van.

Step 2: Buy the van

We needed a couple days to pull the Euros we needed from various ATMs. Ends up you can take out a surprising quantity of cash at once in Europe, in stark contrast to the $150 per transaction limit in Argentina. Once we were ready, we drove back to St Jean Pied-de-Port to close the deal. We signed the papers, forked over the cash, and thus we were the proud owners of 2006 Peugeot Expert in metallic blue! This was definitely the easiest step.

Step 3: Register the van

Now this one is a doozy, and absolutely required a French citizen. In our case, I am extremely lucky to have spent a year with a host family, and they really helped us out here. The system is extremely convoluted and it took a while to navigate the bureaucracy.

Throughout this process, we stayed in the lovely beach town of Hossegor and ate so much French food. Typically the weather in May is wonderful, but this year it was a bit dreary and rainy. We passed the time by reading, practicing yoga, and going on jogs around the lake. On one beautiful sunny day, some friends of our host family took us out on a hike with fantastic views of the coast. Life in the southwest is simple, so the days flowed lazily from one to the next.

Step 3.5: Go to IKEA

Shout out to IKEA for helping us deck out our interior.

Step 4: Start the adVANture

Insurance and registration (carte grise) in hand, we said our goodbyes (for now) and started Eastward. On our first evening we stopped in Pau and Toulouse to visit two of my old friends from French high school. Then on our first morning we stopped at the amazing medieval fortified city of Carcasonne. After lunch, we continued to Nimes, a city with Roman roots and ruins before reaching our first climbing destination near Marseille. What a great start to a grand adventure!