What has my life become?
I'm going to do the tea thing.
It's empty, I don't drink tea like.
Alright so, my name is Matt McCreary
and my journey began about a year and a half ago
when I did Britain's Got Talent.
I did a freerunning performance show
So I went on and did that,
got through a few rounds.
All going really well.
But after the hype of the whole craziness of Britain's Got Talent
I was just left like...
"Shit!", you know, "What do I do now?
So, my name is Olek Wójcik.
Two years ago I left school with a dream to travel the world
and find a lot of experiences that would teach me more than I was learning there.
And I basically got myself ready, packed a bag,
and I hit the road, yeah.
I started travelling around Ireland for a few months.
In that few months,
I managed to hit up Banbridge
where I met Matt McCreary.
Emmm,
So I met a guy called Olek.
Cool traveller guy.
He hitchhiked to my house one day.
We really hit it off and...
we had both the same ideas about wanting to go travel,
and see the world, and do...
just do mad shit.
We started travelling together for a while.
Travelled a few months in Ireland.
And then I got a call from an Italian TV show called Tú Sí Que Vales.
And they wanted my freerunning show,
same thing I did on Britain's Got Talent,
just, an Italian version.
So, I went over there.
We got free flights to Italy
I did the TV show, and then they're like,
you know, "Where do you want to go after?",
you know. They want to book us tickets home.
And we were like, "No let's just stay in Italy and begin our travel journey there."
But then they were like, "No, no, that's-... that's a bit mad."
So, they were like, "Right we'll give you half an hour...
...and we're going to call you back,
...and you've to decide where you want to go after in Europe."
So me and Olek were looking at each other like,
"Damn. We've got a free ticket to anywhere in Europe we want to go."
So, his parents were near Barcelona at the time.
So we were like, "Let's keep it local, not too far away."
"Let's start off somewhere easy."
We picked Barcelona.
So, we flew there,
stayed with his parents,
and then we began our journey in Barcelona.
Got into the city no problem. Came out and...
we were not really ready for what we saw, like.
We both had this idea
of travelling for as little money as we possibly could,
and that worked really well for me, because I'm always broke.
So we were hitchhiking,
recycling food from dumpsters,
and we wanted to not pay for any accommodation the whole entire trip.
And it was just like "Wow man! We've really-...
we're homeless tonight.", you know.
"We have nowhere to go. We...
we just need to find some friends that are in the same kind of position as us...
and just hope that we're going to have fun,
and we're going to survive,
and nothing's going to happen."
Within a few hours we managed to find some friends that were travelling.
They were just street performing by doing bubbles in the street.
We were invited to come down to a park in Barcelona
because people had told us it was filled with artists like us.
Parc De La Ciutadela.
That was a really...
[Heartily chuckles like a stoned hippie]
Really incredible place.
We are in the park...
in Barcelona...
waking up for the last three hours.
- Where did we sleep?
- Right here. We didn't move anywhere.
[Laughing like stoned hippie bums]
So we stayed in Barcelona for, I think that was a week.
Pretty much.
Met some Germans in the process, and we decided that
we really wanted to get away from the big city.
We decided to hit a train up anywhere in the mountains.
Got off at some sort of train station
and went, "Let's climb that hill." , you know.
But then come the second day,
We just-
We just run out of food. We hadn't packed enough to last us like 3-4 days.
So...
They know that there's a little restaurant
on, like, the peak of this mountain.
Like, all together maybe we would put in enough money
for one dinner at this restaurant,
which would obviously not feed four really, really hungry travellers.
But yeah, we decided to keep on going.
We were like, "Maybe we'll make a show, you know, or maybe we'll do something"
So, we hike up.
We're getting starving. Dehydrated.
We make it to this restaurant
and we were like, you know,
"Have you got any food you're going to throw away?"
And ehh,
She's like, "Yeah I'll-,
...I'll see what I can do, I'll bring you out something."
So we're like, "Awesome. We're going to get a few, like, vegetables,
or something to cook with."
But they literally brought us out, like,
plates of people's food that
they had already been eating.
So...
Like...
You know, there was lamb chop, like half-eaten.
and you're just,
"I'm hungry."
like, "I'm going to have to eat it, you know, I'm starving."
Like a little slice of chocolate cake we all fought over at the end. And,
yeah it was, you know,
We had to eat or we were going to be in trouble, you know.
But the amazing thing about this story is
The girl that was serving us the food,
she was asking us what we're doing, she notices we're travellers.
She's a bit alternative looking herself.
MATT: Olek!
Yes.
MATT: What happened now?
Oh, we climbed up to the top of the mountain to a restaurant
where we robbed all the food people left on the table.
And we met some waitress that is going to let us sleep
in her house and cook food and...
stuff because we were starving.
MATT: Marvin!
And we can take a shower
OLEK: We can take a shower. And we can take a shower
OLEK: We can take a shower.
And we can take a shower.
OLEK: We can cook.
It was a big, big...
Old country house
that was literally built on a rock.
And I'm not talking there was, you know,
that it was built on a rock and they had lovely floors with wood and stuff.
No, no.
It was a rock!
The floor was the rock, and it was carved into steps
going into your living room and then-
It was just incredible, like.
Big massive house!
Big farmlands all around, on top of the hill, looking over Barcelona.
BECKY: Isn't t incredible?
MATT: Woo!
And then she tells us
It's an occupied house.
It's a squat.
It's a house that someone has left for 30-40 years.
These guys basically came in and took that house...
as nobody was living there,
set up their own electricity
from solar panels and rechargable big car batteries that were all connected up
to supply electricity for the whole house.
With a little toilet out the back, and
them basically doing a bit of farming every week.
And they're pretty much self-sufficient.
four or five people living in a group in a big, big old house.
On top of the hill, having a big jeep just to go back and down.
It seemed like a-...
seemed like a paradise.
Before coming out,
for me anyway, like, my idea on a squat was
you know, a dirty hole in the corner of a city, you know.
Getting jacked up.
You know, and then all of a sudden, my idea just *woosh*... switched.
And I'm looking at this stunning house
bigger than the one I live in now.
This was probably our first time experiencing 'squatting'.
So our idea was to follow the sun.
So since it was September, the sun's going to slowly fade and we need to head south.
So there was-...
there was a say from all these travellers, basically, Granada.
There was some sort of a name being mentioned
that we heard is a really cool place for the winter.
So these seven German people we meet in the park have
the same plan to head south.
So we travel. Hopping trains.
Hitchhiking.
So after, say, a month and a half travelling from Barcelona
and finally making it to Granada,
we arrive in the city and it's sort of like,
"Aww shit. This isn't like Barcelona."
"There's no park we can just go sleep in that we know of, or..."
So we're pretty stuck.
And the first few days in Granada weren't special at all, you know.
Thinking it's a beautiful city, you know,
but there's not much attractiveness in it from artists' point of view.
But then we have this idea,
you can live in an abandoned house.
So we're like, "Let's search for an abandoned building
that we can possibly get shelter in.
So we're staying in this sketchy, like...
It was a really creepy building.
Just, it looked haunted. It was just dirty.
It was not our envisionment of how it was going to go when we finally arrive
in this city we've heard beautiful things about.
And we're exploring the city one day.
And I'll never forget this, because we're coming into the main square in Granada,
Plaza Nueva.
And suddenly from the other side of the square,
Our German friend comes running.
Shouting, "Olek! Matt! You're here!"
And we're like, "Wow! She's here as well."
We sat down and she quickly, basically went,
"Have you seen the caves? Have you been in the caves?"
And we're like, "Yeah we've heard about the caves, but wha-, what!?"
Becky was like, "Me and Marvin are living in the caves! We have a free cave out behind!"
"Grab your bags! Let's go! Let's go!"
I'm like, "What!? You guys are here!?"
And I remember going into their cave for the first time,
and I was just like, the most mind-blown I've been in years.
I just walked through the door.
This beautiful caulked wall. White cave.
Has beds. Has candles up everywhere. Has shelves.
And I'm just speechless.
Just...
Absolutely...
People live in caves! And they're nice!
They're livable! They're beautiful! They're...you know...
They told us that there's a cave right beside of them.
They said that that's free. Nobody's been using it.
Everybody's just been storing all their shit in it.
So we decided, "Right. You know what?",
"We'll have a bit of craic [fun] today and tomorrow..."
"We're going to get straight into the work."
"We're going to try and get that cave cleaned up and make it our own."
MATT: Olek!
What?
MATT: What are we doing?
Ahh fuck's sake. Not again.
MATT: [Goofy Matt Laughter]
We're building the cave man!
Not right now.
MATT: [Goofy Matt Laughter]
We're in Granada. Outside of Granada.
About 40 away from the city, walking.
With this amazing view.
Umm, we found a cave.
Got some neighbours helping us.
Etienne, how're we doing?
- We're doing fine, I think.
- Yeah, we´re doing pretty good.
Now get to work.
Stop filming.
MATT: Today, we've been using these sticks.
And tomorrow we're going to start constructing
a giant dome
connecting both of the cave holes.
One here.
And the one over there.
So it goes right the way round.
A big dome. And yesterday...
we made a couple of platforms.
Number one,
two,
and three.
So this was all slanted,
and we carved into the ground and layered it all out flat.
So yeah,
Down here, we're going to build a big, giant slide
to a training area across this bit.
And up here...
Yeah, so that's where Olek's hammock will go.
OLEK: Right here.
MATT: So yeah here's our space, here's the junk we need to clear away,
and here's the amazing view!
[spooky ghost sounds]
And that's our tour, mum!
Love you! Bye!
OLEK: Bye!
So ehh...
While Matt and Olek were going through Barcelona,
and Beneficio,
and had all these awesome adventures.
I was just
sitting in...
I was sitting in Tech, I was studying a media course.
I mean, I was doing well in it, but it was just really boring me.
I just had that feeling that it wasn't what i wanted to do with the rest of my life,
and I was just really bored with my life.
And I just saw Matt and Olek having all these crazy adventures,
And we went to Netherlands last year together, and I just knew that...
I had to be out there.
I'd spent about a month just really heavily debating it with myself,
and really trying to make a calculated decision, you know.
And then,
By the end of October, I guess, I just decided
"Fuck it. I'm going to go travel."
"I'm going to just drop everything I'm doing."
"Cut my commitments,"
And just travel and have fun while-...
"while I'm still alive and while I'm still young to do it. So..."
I just hopped on a plane with Dermot. He was also heading out.
And it was...
It was terrifying.
It was the scariest decision I ever made in my life.
So basically then, me and Ryan went out to Granada.
We first met Olek there at Plaza Nueva.
We were about there for a wee bit
and then he decided to bring us up and show us the caves.
So when we were going up I was...
you know, I was a wee bit apprehensive. I wasn't...
I wasn't really sure what it was going to be like.
So he took us up.
It was maybe...
Maybe a 40-45 minute walk out of the town.
Granada's just all built on mountains.
So it ends up being this big hike up to the caves
on this really scenic path. Like a real beautiful path
that goes up to these caves through the forests.
through the greenery and mountains.
And then eventually you see one or two other people's caves.
And then we got up there and
he told us that it was a dome that him and Matt had actually constructed.
Nothing from what I expected,
It turns out this whole thing was a DIY job.
You ready for 'MTV Caves'?
Come on!
Come on in.
Yo, when we got here
there was nothing but a weak, shitty cave.
But we decided we'd build a 9ft dome, and hang CDs from it.
Yeah check it out.
Pretty sturdy.
Pretty sturdy!
And then when we arrived here...
This was filled with junk, and we turned it into gold!
SWAG!
Now come on, I'll show you where I take a shit.
RYAN: Oh no! We're not...
RYAN: We´re not doing that part of the tour.
Alright, let me take you a tour of the bathroom!
Come on in!
RYAN: I don't want this part!
RYAN: I don't want to do this part!
Alright.
You ready?
Alright! Tour of the bathroom. Let's go!
RYAN: Aww no.
Alright so, as you can see here
we got a chair,
and we took the bit out of it,
so that you can shit into a bucket!
Yo!
Here's our toilet roll.
Yo, I'll show you where we put the shit!
So yeah one thing,
like, the biggest thing for me about living in the caves was
every single thing that you did required some sort of effort for you to do it.
Like, you wake up in the morning.
you want to to make a cup of coffee,
You can't just switch the kettle on.
You have to light the fire to cook the coffee.
But you need to collect the sticks to light the fire with,
But you need to cut down the trees, to get the sticks
to put on the fire, to light the fire, to get your coffee.
So that's just taken half an hour
for you to sit down with a cup of coffee.
And then
it's time to go in and start your day in the city.
But you need a wash. So...
You walk down the mountain, which takes 20 minutes,
to get to your shower, which is a big freezing waterfall.
You wake up and you're groggy.
You walk down, and then...
You have to prepare yourself for this waterfall.
And then, you step back into it.
And then you come out and you're awake,
like, you've just been slapped in the face, you know.
And then, that's your shower.
Granada itself is just...
it's...
Personally my favourite city I've ever been to.
It's just such a beautiful place.
The Spanish architecture was just amazing for all our training,
for all the freerunning we do.
MATT: Much nicer!
RYAN: You okay?
RYAN: Fucking hell!
Alhambra, one of the biggest, craziest castles I've seen in my life
was just on the edge of our mountain,
which meant we could have taken a big mountain path
right up above our cave.
You know, hitting little paths that nobody knows about.
We're going to infiltrate the castle.
Let's go.
OLEK: We jump over the gate and
we're in the most beautiful place.
MATT: So for us it was just like...
parkour paradise.
MATT: Be scenic Ryan.
MATT: Be scenic!
Yeah, I remember...
On my first night at the caves, we were cooking a meal over the fire
and then him and Matt tell us...
all the vegetables in this meal were found in bins.
And they were all just 'recycled'.
And 'recycling' is the cute term they use for dumpster diving.
I guess at the start I was very...
I was unsure about the whole concept of it.
I just thought it was a bit...
a bit skebby like, you know...
Just a wee bit ropey, like, I wasn't too sure.
Then we ate the meal and it was nice but,
throughout the whole meal, me and Dermot shared some uneasy looks together.
We kind of-
We knew of dumpster diving already and we knew the sort of...
the actual truth behind it but...
it still just made us feel uncomfortable, you know.
But I think definitely by the end of the trip my whole...
my whole perception of it was completely changed.
I kind of saw what it's really about.
The supermarkets, the fruit and veg shops, the bakeries.
They all throw away so much of their produce at the end of the night
that is, you know. it's perfectly fine to eat
but due to legalities, and expiry dates, and all this stuff
it's like they can't sell it to people anymore so they just throw it away.
You know, the food is actually fine to eat, just...
on the surface it looks damaged or it looks bruised.
That same piece of bread, that same tomato, whatever it was
they would have sold you that 5 or 10 minutes before you reached into the bin.
But because it hit 9 o'clock,
all of a sudden "The food's not good anymore, you have to throw it away."
I think in terms of budget travelling,
Recycling is... I'd say it's pretty much essential
in terms of getting food.
It cuts your budget right in half. You don't need to pay for food anymore.
We were actually getting more food than we would be if we were paying for it
and not recycling.
If we were on a budget and paying for it...
we would just be getting a loaf of bread between us all, or something stupid like that.
But this was completely free, and a feast every night.
There was the initial stigma to it, but...
after that like-...
once you get over that and just realise like, this is perfectly good food for free.
And all you need to do is wash it.
MATT: Let's see what we're getting up to today.
MATT: Dun dun duuuuunnnnn.
MATT: Ba dum bum bum
MATT: Hey!
MATT: What are we doing here?
(BAKED OUT OF HIS FUCKING MIND) We're cooking pancakes this morning
with blueberries, and chocolate,
and a bit of 'canela', which is 'cinnamon' in Spanish
[Stoned hippie laughter]
MATT: Thanks for that.
[More stoned hippe laughter]
[What? did you really think that a big hippie like that doesn't smoke?]
[Just look at the guy!]
MATT: What are you doing Taggart?
I'm cracking almonds for the pancakes.
MATT: Almond tree.
MATT: Almond pancakes.
MATT: Give us a flip.
MATT: Big flip.
[Laughs in Hippie]
MATT: Nice.
RYAN: Fuuuuuck.
RYAN: Well...
RYAN: It's been three weeks.
RYAN: six for Matt and Olek.
RYAN: And we're finally leaving the caves of Granada.
MATT: He's lying! He's been sleeping in hotels!
RYAN: True.
MATT: We lived in caves.
So it was starting to get bitter cold in the mountains.
One morning Olek wakes up and finds that the water had turned to ice.
And we had noticed it was getting cold overnight.
So we're like, "Let's keep heading south."
So we formulated a plan while we were in the caves
to make it to the Canary Islands for New Years.
So yeah, we sort of drew up a plan to hitchhike our way to Huelva,
which is like a main fishing port where all the boats come in
that go over to the Canary Islands.
But, to start off with, we wanted to stop at the hot springs,
which are like 15 minutes outside Granada.
And this was maybe, I think five days before Christmas.
So like, we really had a time limit and a push to get there.
At the hot springs...
Wow.
So we were at the hot springs, I think for about two days.
I wanted to go back because it was Christmas time.
And you know, we'd all say goodbye and then split off at that point.
And Etienne, he hitchhiked back into the city.
And I...
Yea I just trekked back from the hot springs back up to the cave.
It must've taken a solid six or seven hours that day.
RYAN: Why'd you walk it?
Don't know. Just...
thought it would be a bit of craic, like.
Walking buzz, like.
Me, Matt, Olek and Fynn.
We were all going to go to Seville.
Spend the night in Seville, then go to Huelva.
And then from Huelva there was a port.
We were going to try and hitchhike onto a ferry
See if that was possible.
And then try to get to Canaries for New Years.
MATT: Okay so we are here.
MATT: Granada.
MATT: And we're going to have a hitchhiking race
MATT: the whole way up
- MATT: To Sevilla. - OLEK: To Sevilla!
OLEK: We gotta make it there by tonight.
OLEK: Then we're going on a ship to...
OLEK: Canary Islands.
MATT: So the two pairs.
MATT: 2 vs. 2
MATT: Let's go!
There was Matt and Fynn,
and, me and Olek.
MATT: Now right! We have to call each other at sundown!
RYAN: Call each other at sundown.
MATT: And the loser gets the chocolate. They're the rules.
- RYAN: Loser has to buy the chocolate for tonight.
- MATT: Yeah!
- RYAN: That's a thing. - MATT: Let's go!
About five hours later...
It turns out, we're still suck by the road.
Our enthusiasm...
is gone.
We're just-... We're hating life right now.
I mean, I was quite new to hitchhiking as well.
I'd only ever done it once before back in Northern Ireland. So...
I was just not...
You know, I was not enthusiatic to begin with. I had so little faith in it.
And then me and Olek kind of realised like,
"Shit. The sun's going down."
"We've got nowhere to go."
"Okay, we're buying the chocolate. That's accepted."
"But... You know..."
"Where are we sleeping now?"
So me and Fynn picked a certain spot.
Stick our thumb out. And we get picked up in 20 minutes.
MATT: So, we won the race!
[Smug cheering... bunch of cunts]
MATT: We are in Sevilla! Look at that!
So we look for a place to sleep and we stay in this beautifully lit up park.
MATT: TripAdvisor could not find you that one.
Honestly, it was my best night's sleep of the whole entire travel.
OLEK: We'll try again tomorrow, all day.
RYAN: So tonight we're sleeping in some sketchy forest off the motorway
RYAN: and hopefully tomorrow we go to Sevilla.
It was like, really industrial.
It wasn't really a forest. It was just a collection of
trees in columns and rows. All bare.
And pretty visible from the street too.
We had fuck all food as well. We had like...
I think me and Olek had to share a tomato and an onion between us,
and like a bit of bread.
So we managed to record something on the camera but the batteries were low.
We were shivering the whole night long, pretty much.
Shaking and cold.
Not sleeping. None of us were sleeping.
I remember that as being the coldest, most uncomfortable night ever.
Our hammocks were wet in the morning, just from the air.
And we woke up like,
"Fuck this. We need to just go to Sevilla right now."
So we wake up the next day
and we realise that the boys are having a bit less luck with their hitchhiking.
So we're like, "Alright, let's play nice and let's wait for them in Seville."
What do me and Fynn do?
We both like to party and have a few beers.
So we go out and get smashed
and sleep in a kids park that night.
MATT: So hotel number 20 or something like that,
MATT: Pirate shíp!
RYAN: Day 2.
RYAN: Been here for about 2 hours.
RYAN: Still no results.
RYAN: FUUU-
OLEK: So, we slept over there!
RYAN: We slept over there!
RYAN: In these trees!
We tried multiple different spots in Santa Fe.
We really gave it everything.
There was no payoff, and it was just heartbreaking.
And we were left hanging.
Right in the middle of Santa Fe, with the sun coming down.
Going, "We do not want to spend another freezing night in that forest."
It was absolutely horrible.
We decide like, "Right we'll get the cheap bus back to Granada,"
we'll go back to the nice warm cave for 1 night, and we'll maybe hitchhike from Granada."
"Should be easier to hitchhike out of, because that's where the motorway starts."
You know, we really thought, "This will be a safe plan. We've got this."
MATT: So we got woken up by Children.
We're hungover and we're like, "Alright, let's finish the race."
So we stand at the side of the road in Sevilla.
Hungover.
And then we get picked up in 20 minutes again.
But this time we get picked up by a Spanish couple.
And they tell us that they're going to have their Christmas get-together with all their friends.
RYAN: Day 3.
RYAN: No luck.
RYAN: Nothing, like not a single car.
RYAN: So, Granada was even worse to hitch from than Santa Fe.
RYAN: We're going to the hot springs again because hitching didn't work here.
RYAN: Tomorrow we've got out 3rd BlaBlaCar organised.
RYAN: Hopefully this one doesn't fall through on us.
MATT: Brought to a party.
MATT: Celebrated Christmas.
MATT: Had a feast.
MATT: Then went to an absolute crazy party and woke up at 5.
MATT: 5 in the day.
MATT: Aww that was crazy.
Day 4.
We're still not in Sevilla.
We're at the hot springs.
We got a BlaBlaCar for today to Sevilla.
Hopefully it pulls through, but meanwhile Matt and Fynn are now in Huelva.
OLEK: I ran out of toilet paper!
And Olek ran out of toilet-
What!?
Spent a...
Actually, we spent a really good night at the hot springs.
Then by the time we got to Seville, I mean, the BlaBlaCar driver was kind of a dick.
And left us on the other side of Seville from where he told us he was leaving us
So we pretty much took 2 hours just walking through the city and really enjoying the sights.
And then we decided like, "we've got some time left in the day. Let's just try and hitchhike."
"See if we can get to Huelva in one day."
This was my 2nd time ever trying hitchhiking.
and it did not go well. We had been stuck in a place for 4 days
So I was not in the mood.
I just wanted to get on a train or something. I had the money for it.
I was like, "Let's just get a train. Screw this."
Started thumbing outside of this train station.
Luckily enough, I don't know how that happened, we found Prieto.
I'll never forget this man, ever, I think.
Hero of the day comes along.
This Spanish guy pulls up and says, "My BlaBlaCar didn't arrive. You guys get in."
"I'm going to Huelva."
And he left us with a few tracks, since he was a rapper.
He played us a few of his own songs that he's recorded, in the car,
that stay with us to this day. I have them on my phone and I play them when I train.
This guy just restored our faith in hitchhiking, you know.
That was a nice moment.
MATT: You made it!
OLEK: [Incoherent hippie noises]
MATT: Oi!
RYAN: Morning.
MATT: What are we doing today?
RYAN: Trying to figure out if we can hitchhike a boat to the Canary Islands from Huelva.
FYNN: Get on the fucking boat!
MATT: Where are we now?
OLEK: We're in a homeless shelter, yo.
OLEK: We slept here for a night.
OLEK: We got showers, we got some food.
OLEK: And we're ready to go.
We spent a bit of time in Huelva.
I think we realised that the port in Huelva was kind of a dead end for us.
So we decided to completely sack that idea.
As we knew that Cádiz is another option
of boats that leave to Canary Islands.
FYNN: ¡Sevilla por favor!
And we mixed it between hitchhiking and train-hopping
and hitchhiking and train-hopping.
And finally manage to get to Cádiz.
We arrived into Cádiz on Christmas Eve.
RYAN: Matt, what day is it today?
MATT: Uhh...Christmas Day?
MATT: Yeah.
RYAN: Nooo.
RYAN: Noooooooo
RYAN: Well, it was...
RYAN: The view was nice while it lasted.
So we had the idea of hitchhiking the boat to cross to Gran Canaria.
But it just wasn't possible.
The only way we were going to get on to that boat by hitchhiking
was by hiding in the car as a stowaway,
where the cars were being checked twice.
RYAN: So Matt, what are we at today?
[inaudible]
RYAN: What!? I can't hear you!
MATT: We got on a boat!
MATT: But we had to pay for it!
MATT: We couldn't hitchhike one!
MATT: So yeah, 150 quid!
MATT: But we're going to the Canary Islands!
MATT: [Sick boat noises]
We got a 36 hour journey ahead of us
And 2 days before New Years.
So we're 24 hours in on the journey.
Ryan's throwing up off the side of the boat,
I'm trying to stop myself throwing up off the side of the boat.
And then Olek starts to go paler and paler as the day progresses.
There was a bit of pain that was starting to come up in my stomach.
And I was thinking you know, "Maybe I just ate some really shit food or something and I'm sick."
I remember I tried to sleep and I just couldn't.
So frustrated from pain at one stage,
where I was pretty much punching walls, and twisting my full body.
He feels that it's not sea-sickness that he has.
So he goes to the onboard nurse.
And she basically poked me in my stomach two or three times
and went, "Do you know what appendicitis is?"
She told me,
the only way I can survive, if this has been going on for the last 6 hours is,
"you have to get off the boat"
"on the 1st island, which is not Gran Canaria. It's going to be Lanzarote."
"And you have to rush to the hospital and get surgery"
"Or you might die."
So we all go just into action stations.
We start preparing everything. Everyone sort of naturally takes a position to help Olek.
And I was starting to lose track of things,
I wasn't able to pack my stuff anymore at this stage.
And we're getting close to Lanzarote.
We get his bed sorted, we get him lying down, we get all our stuff packed, we get it ready to go.
We're trying to talk to the onboard service and trying to get an ambulance sorted for his arrival,
which, of course, didn't work. And there's a lot of hassle with trying to get a lift.
One thing I noticed at this moment...
Was how horrible and useless every human we met in this moment was.
People on the boat gave Olek this disclaimer form
that basically said, "Sign this. You're not our problem anymore."
We ask people on the boat.
We're like, "Can you take him to hospital?"
- "No, no, no. I can't"
We got off the boat and we go down to the office.
And there's this woman who-...
[Frustrated flashback noises]
The thought of her makes me angry. This...
This receptionist.
This woman's on the phone at reception desk,
chatting away to one of her pals.
We go in.
At this point Olek is crying.
His mouth's foaming a little bit, and there's tears streaming down his face.
He collapses and just falls back onto his backpack.
And he's just lying, staring at the ceiling, clutching his stomach.
And he thinks he's going to die.
So wer're like, "Help us out. Can you ring an ambulance for my friend over here?"
"Can you call an ambulance?"
"¿Ambulancia?"
"¿Por favor?"
She just doesn't care. She's on the phone to her friend.
She walks up to Olek and sees him crying, staring at the ceiling, red in the face.
And she's just like,
"Why?..."
"¿Por qué?"
We're freaking out. We're like, "You stupid bitch!"
Finally after maybe 15 minutes of trying to get this bitch off the phone,
She rings a taxi. The taxi pulls up.
and we all immediately get Olek into the taxi. We all put our stuff in.
You know, "Action stations. Go! Go! Go!"
And just as we're about to take off, another taxi arrives.
And it turns out
that the taxi we just got into was a random taxi,
and the taxi that just pulled up was the one we booked.
The two taxi drivers start having a fight over the clients
because, "he's stealing his business", and all this.
But we don't give a fuck. We want to get our mate to the hospital.
So we end up just screaming to this guy,
"Drive! Get him to the hospital!"
"Just go! We don't care! Just go!"
That taxi driver then decides, "Right. Okay. Well, I'll take Olek to the hospital for free."
"But you guys have to go into this taxi and pay."
It was just such a mess.
MATT: So Taggart, what just happened?
We're now in a hospital in Lanzarote.
Olek's being, hopefully, treated for appendicitis.
MATT: And it's New Year's Eve.
And it's New Year's Eve.
It's New Year's Eve tomorrow.
and also Matt's birthday.
Mad one.
In the end I managed to get there on time and...
I had my surgery the morning after.
RYAN: How do you feel?
Fucking shit.
Quite shit.
But I'll be back on my feet.
In 2 weeks.
That was finally over.
We could finally take a breath
and be like, "Right. Now what do we do?"
"Now we're in Lanzarote."
"Okay..."
Like, all I know about Lanzarote is, it's this touristic area that all the British tourists go
And that's all I thought of, when I thought of Lanzarote.
I was like, "Naah, I don't want to go there!"
So I spent my New Year's, pretty much...
with 13 metal stitches in the side of my stomach.
Just about there.
Olek was like, "You guys go on ahead. Enjoy your New Year's."
"We've made the goal. We got to Canaries for New Year's, so."
"You guys go have your party. Have your fun."
Shit
It is getting dark now, isn't it?
OLEK: It is getting dark.
We should probably add more lights to this...
Ehh okay...
Well, that's not a continuity error at all.
New Year's Eve, on the night of my birthday,
I was going to withdraw some cash from the bank account to go out for a few drinks that night.
And then i just realised, I had spent the very last of my money
on the boat ticket to take me to Canary Islands
So I was completely...
broke.
No money whatsoever.
And ehh...
It was just sort of like...
I wanted to do this whole 'free travel' thing.
But you always have the safety of having money in your bank.
But you never really truly know what it's like to travel with no money,
unless you literally have no money.
And no-one wants to be the guy that leaves with no money.
But eh...
You know...
I'm off the coast of Africa.
In a weird island that I've never been
with...
No money.
To be honest, when I saw the zeros in my bank account.
I was like, "Oh. I've got no money."
But then...
I just didn't really care
because I was doing it the whole time.
I was eating out of bins,
recycling clothing,
sleeping outside, no accommodation, so.
It was just exactly the same.
It just meant I couldn't splash out for, you know, the odd beer
or a hot meal, or something like this. But...
I didn't really need it anyway.
Arrecife actually turned out to be a pretty cool place.
By the sea. Beautiful views.
MATT: Bogan Games #4:
MATT: Get the phone down.
MATT: Fynn, where are you going?
North of the island.
MATT: See you later.
See you
MATT: Alright, bye.
Bye.
MATT: Cool.
Ciao
MATT: What is going on right now?
We're rolling bifters
in the house of the Moroccan guys that let us stay here.
MATT: Yeah.
MATT: What's this little room and...
This little room...
is a little room, on the roof terrace
that we, I don't know, invaded...
OLEK: Occupied!
And we pretty much stayed...
I mean as soon as it came up,
The Moroccans were really welcoming they were...
they were really understanding about what happened
and the position I am in life right...
and the position I am in life right...now...?
[Self confusion]
So they were super happy to help.
And Hassan was definitely one of those friends...
that I'll remember for a while.
He had a very funny philosophy in life,
"If you don't have something,"
"and I have it,"
"Then why wouldn't I share it with you?", you know. It's like...
It's the point in life.
MATT: Come look at this.
OLEK: Fucking knew it!
MATT: Dumpster dived.
MATT: This stuff is still warm.
OLEK: Today we pulled out a full bag of pastries.
OLEK: We went to the 'frutería'- Bleh-
OLEK: Panadería, to ask for some food they might throw out to the garbage.
RYAN: The bakery...
[Nice reaction time Ryan, you stoned prick]
OLEK: And they decided to gve us half a sandwich each.
OLEK: We knew that they're going to throw out a lot more food than that.
OLEK: We came back 30 minutes later.
OLEK: Full fucking bag of pastries.
OLEK: Croissants!
OLEK: Olivants [or something like that]
OLEK: Fucking, chocolate fingers.
RYAN: Look at this though! It's a massive bag!
OLEK: It's bigger than a Santa bag
MATT: And, we also...
MATT: Got a full cake.
OLEK: : Whoaaaaaa
RYAN: Good night.
RYAN: So what's the moral of the story about bins?
MATT: They're...they're good?
-RYAN: Bins are good. -MATT: They're our friends,
OLEK: They're our friends
OLEK: They feed us every night.
OLEK: That's nuts though.
So we got a bit of performance work at a gig for a restaurant.
Through a slacklining girl we met on Arrecife beach.
So that was kind of the first motivation to leave Arrecife.
So we travel down to Puerto Del Carmen
And I dressed up as an 87 year old freerunner.
So we had fun performing for a restaurant.
Got a bit of cash.
But we soon discovered how crap,
and touristic,
and boring Puerto Del Carmen was.
So we wanted to get straight out of there as soon as possible.
Yesterday we decided to find a better spot on the beach
And we found these amazing rocks that shelter us from the wind.
And where we could put our hammocks up.
We're here.
And we're going to try to get the whole way across to the other side.
Caleta De Famara.
Maybe today.
And so we hitchhiked there from Puerto Del Carmen.
For me, Famara was just fun.
It was just lots and lots of fun.
So after Famara we ventured down to a place called Playa Blanca.
One of the more touristy areas of the island.
In a mission to try and hitchhike a boat to Fuerteventura
To sort of, fulfill our dream of hitchhiking that boat that we didn't fulfill to get to Canaries.
RYAN: Explain yourself.
Explain myself...
Well basically, 2 days ago we all split into three.
And went and searched for asking people if they could take us to the next island,
being Fuerteventura
And the very first person I asked,
This guy right here.
He told me to hop on the boat
and pretty much agreed to take us there.
Providing that we help him shift a big chain for his anchor of the boat.
And eh, we're doing that today.
And as long as we help him out with the boat a little, we leave tomorrow morning.
RYAN: Solid
We didn't want to just, you know,
buy a ticket on a boat and get to the other island
we wanted to have a real surreal experience getting to the other island.
That's exactly what we went in for,
Not really knowing it, you know. That's exactly what we went in for,
Not really knowing it, you know.
Came back on Monday and Pirate Dave told us,
"If you can help me anchor my boat in Arrecife..."
then he said he'd sail us to Fuerteventura.
MATT: Woo! I'm getting these!
MATT: No way!!!
MATT: So Ryan.
MATT: What's your job on the boat?
I'm the 'Helmsman'
MATT: And what do you do?
Steer the boat.
PIRATE DAVE: I want you to wiggle it
PIRATE DAVE: And make sure that this thing goes, "Veep veep veep veep veep."
PIRATE DAVE: If this goes, "Veep veep veep."
PIRATE DAVE: It's okay, yeah.
It turns out that for quite a few years, he'd been eyeing up this spot in Arrecife
that he wanted to anchor his boat,
and just live on his boat, tax-free on the water.
He kept calling it, "His life's dream."
It was just... It was such a struggle for him to get his own boat in the first place.
You could tell this was like, a big thing for him.
PIRATE DAVE: Fuck yeah!
PIRATE DAVE: Woo! Finally.
Dave is...
a character, you know.
Dave was just a fun character to be with, like.
This is where I watched the boats.
I met this place in 2005.
I was only here for 5 days.
After every working day just down at the harbour, further down
We used to come here to buy stuff.
We'd sit right at that corner over there
with the skipper, and have a rum looking at the sunset.
And I would see all these boats here! And I was like...
This is the spot!
Perfect weather all year round.
I don't have to pay.
Nice...thing, yeah?
Uhh!
Fuck the Caribbean. Right here!
You don't pay rent, you don't talk taxes.
You don't pay the electricity either.
You take your little rib, you go over there, you can go shopping and come back, and that's it.
And if you're bored...
You let it loose, you go out sailing all the way down.
You see your friends.
Where are they?
Right there.
Right there!
I didn't pick this spot for nothing.
I have 25 reasons to pick exactly this place.
Between about 150 spots that I've seen all my life.
Ahh, I'm fucking bored.
Let's go out.
Dude!
Ey! Ey!
No lines
No people on the side.
You know how easy it is to get out of here?
You just drop the line...
and go out!
You don't have to go on the side, you don't have to go on the rib.
It's much easier from here!
You'll see it tomorrow.
You just drop the fucking line and you go out.
And we're nosing to the wind
What does she do?
Flap flap flap flap flap flap!
Perfect.
Yeah?
Drop.
Turn.
Start sailing, uh-huh
Goodbye.
Olek dove down to get ths boat tied up to the concrete block.
And I think whenever it happened
We made a bit of a botched job where
the ropes and the anchor were all tangled and screwed up together and...
It was just a mess, like.
So that ended up being a thing that stopped us from being able to leave Arrecife
until this problem was solved.
And sadly enough, that story did not finish as we expected
We thought we were going to get to the next island shortly after, yet...
Things...Little issues and problems started coming up on the boat and
Dave just had a little bit of tension in him,
at the same time as we did between each other, and
living longer on the boat and getting to the other island was just impossible at that stage.
At one point Dave just said,
"Right, screw this."
"I'm closing the boat down for a few days."
"You guys go sleep on the beach or something."
and I'm going to go get professionals to fix this problem."
OLEK: So Matt.
OLEK: Yo, what are we doing here today? What's going on?
So basically...
This is where we've been staying in Arrecife when we're not in the Moroccans' house.
and...
Yeah, pretty much we just started to pick up travellers. Walking past, they stopped.
And now we're squatting to beach, as you can see.
It is slowly growing.
Squat on the beach!
People are sleeping, because people are lazy.
RYAN: thank you lens cap
We were only meant to be off the boat for like 2 days.
And 2 days turned into a week.
And we get a call from him and...
he still hasn't fixed this problem with the professionals or anything.
We knew the minute we got off that boat, that we weren't going to get back on it.
And on one hand it really sucked, because it was like,
"We're back to square one. This sucks."
Now we have to go all the way back to Playa Blanca
and try this whole idea all over again, just to get to the next island.
At the same time though, we had just spent a week on a sialboat.
We were so grateful to Dave for giving us that experience, you know.
That was just an incredible, awesome experience in our lives.
But at the same time...
We were just so disappointed to be back to square one
So it was...
It was a funny one how it turned out.
But then on the beach we meet this guy slacklining called Shay
and his friends Steven and Victor.
So, I'd just spent a month sailing in South America but
I actually live here on the island of Lanzarote.
And uh...
The first day I got back I went to my typical beach in Arrecife.
Get a bit of slacklining in with some of the boys.
One of my good friends, Jose, was set up.
And we were talking about starting me on learning some backflips.
And all of a sudden these boys come strolling across the sand, you know
Big fucking backpacks. Looking like real street kids.
And he says,
"If you really want to learn how to do a backflip, those are the guys you have to ask."
So I see them just dropping their stuff by the wall.
They start doing these little parkoury runs, jumps, backflips.
and I was like, "This is some people I gotta meet", you know
MATT: Yipee! Squatting beaches!
MATT: And where are we going now?
RYAN: With some rasta guy in his car for a little...eh... what would it be?
for a little road trip around Lanzarote.
MATT: Cool.
OLEK: Just as we thought as we're finished with Lanzarote
OLEK: They decided to show us a bit-
MATT: Say it more dramatically.
MATT: "Just as we thought..." [all dramatically and stuff]
OLEK: Just as we thought we saw all of this Lanzarote scape...
OLEK: Some rasta slacklineeeerr [convulsions]
RYAN: What was that?
OLEK: Slackline!
OLEK: came over and told us that...
OLEK: we can go to his house
with a dick-shaped swimming pool.
RYAN: That was at his house?
- OLEK: He showed me a picture - RYAN: That was at his house? - OLEK: Yes.
OLEK: You saw it.
OLEK: We've got evidence.
And he's gong to take us to some crazy-ass volcanoes
that nobody else can reach because he's got one of those
'VROOM VROOM VROOM' cars, you know
MATT: Taggart
MATT: Where are we?
RYAN: In a lava tunnel.
MATT: And you can't actually see much on the camera but...
MATT: Yeah it's a big, awesome...
MATT: Cave tunnel.
Then we just spent the next weekend with Shay. Just like...
having an absolute blast together.
You know, we all got along so well
and he took us caving, he showed us around the island.
MATT: Now we're in a mansion in the mountains.
VICTOR: I ain't going again.
So, while they were over they were telling me that they really wanted to move on
and get to the next island.
And luckily my parents run a sort of boat company.
And on Fridays and Mondays they sail across to the next island, Fuerteventura.
So I told them like, "The next boat is tomorrow."
You know, if you guys want to go I can set you up, no problem.
So that was one of the most wonderful news for us.
That we-
Even though we managed to get back to Arrecife, to the same beach after the whole month.
And then this golden ticket to get across to the other island.
Everything just seemed to work suddenly again and be really happy.
So we'd just created these genuine strong friendships with Victor and Shay
And we both know that our adventure with each other, it's not going to stop there.
So we make a plan for when we arrive in Corralejo
for them to come over in a few days and meet us there,
and continue doing a bit of travelling together.
We arrive in Corralejo in the morning time.
And me and Olek want to do some street shows. We haven't done them in a while.
And we notice there's kids playing on the beach.
And it's like, "Okay, if I do one backflip, it's going to grab some attention here."
But what happened was just completely unexpected.
RYAN: That went well.
MATT: Yeah it was alright.
MATT: Breakfast is near paid for.
Spent a few days just killing time. The weather was terrible.
For the first time I'd seen in months it was just pissing rain.
Yeah.
So eh, it kind of started raining at night...
And we're kind of fucking wet.
And uh, we decided to go busking
and make some money for our food
and we came back and our sleeping bags were absolutely soaked.
So I might as well just live in the ocean now and become a fish.
MATT: Awww this is wack.
We've got-
We've got an idea
We're going to go and ask for some beautiful Samaritan
to let us into their house, and dry up, and cook some food, and have a coffee and a bifter.
So...
Sleeping bags are...
alright not anymore, but they were still warm.
We found a house
This woman decided to go and dry them for us
in a washing machine place, whatever that's called-
The laundry
MATT: Yeah. Good man.
Got it.
And...
And she basically just went and dried all our stuff
and she fed us. She gave us sandwiches and a cup of coffee,
and got us all warmed up and cosied up.
And then we met a guy in a bar
that came down and gave us some free ganja and...
MATT: We can't put this in!
MATT: We can't just say that.
So then the next day I got the ferry across to meet the guys.
We get to the island and we go to where they'd been sleeping the past few days.
Quite near the beach. Nice little house. It's kind of abandoned.
And the first thing they say is,
"Well, we've kind of been scouting out this waterpark."
"So, we've figured we're just going to break in tonight and like,"
"have a look for somewhere to sleep."
Me and Olek had heard about this abandoned theme park in Corralejo.
We checked it out just a few days before Shay arrived and we were like,
"Doesn't seem like there's any security here."
We hit it up around the evening time and
and found actually, an open door that lead us inside.
Didn't really have to jump over many fences or anything like that.
MATT: Alright. Here, Shay! Shay!
MATT: Where are we and what are we doing?
SHAY: We're in Fuerteventura.
SHAY: And we're about to go down a waterslide on a longboard.
MATT: Go for it.
Straight away we realised that the park has been closed.
Even the open one has been closed for the season.
The winter season.
They were re-painting and re-doing little things inside.
But there was also, half of the park was completely closed off.
Must have been like a water... zoo type of park
where they would have sharks and dolphins, or things like that.
RYAN: Opening shot of a hippie playing Hacky Sack.
They had a big, massive pirate boat that was kind of like, stuck into the ground as if it just crashed.
It was huge, like
Fuck, it's really hot man.
It's really fucking hot.
Every night, we'd go pick up some food from the local shops.
This was my first experience recycling
And I think the first day, it was me and Matt.
We went down to the local bakery.
We helped them bring in the tables and chairs and they gave us big fucking bags.
Then the next night, we were on 'bin duty'
And that was the first time I had any serious concerns with what we were doing
Because, you just feel a bit dirty the first time I guess.
You know, I was looking at it very skeptically like, "Are we really going to find anything to eat here?"
MATT: Massive bag of bread. Fresh bread from the bakery.
MATT: Sandwiches.
OLEK: From the bakery.
MATT: From the bakery. Filled with tuna, tortilla, bacon.
MATT: We got massive bags of grapes.
MATT: Carrots, all types of fruit and vegetables.
MATT: And then let's take you up to the pastry section.
MATT: We got two apple tarts,
MATT: about six of these mad looking chocolate whizzers,
MATT: and bags...
MATT: of pastry.
OLEK: yeah boy, this has all been recycled in the last 30 minutes.
Four people, two places.
OLEK: Check your bins.
There is something about that moment, your first 'recycle'...
that just opens a world inside of you.
I mean...
You just want to check everywhere.
You never know what you can find.
After the waterpark,
when we made the most out of it, we decided to keep travelling down the island.
We started hitchhiking the next morning to get down to Puerto Del Rosario.
And as we do in pretty much every town we arrive in,
We usually hit up the tourist information point for a map.
And this was the first time we met José.
Now José...
José was a different type of character, I mean,
Difficult to meet a man like this in your life I think.
When we came into this tourist office, and I said to the guy, like straight up in Spanish,
"Hey we're looking around for somewhere to go."
"And we don't have much money."
"We need somewhere to sleep, maybe some places we can get some food."
You know, I'm trying to ask about these typical bogan questions
without making it sound like we're just some homeless people on the streets.
And he looked at me, you know
and in perfect English he starts responding
and he's like, "Yeah you can maybe try these apartments down here.", or whatever
And then Olek looks at me, and looks at him. And Olek's like,
"Man. We don't have any money."
"You know, we're really looking for absolutely just, sleeping in an abandoned building,"
"Maybe some good places where we can recycle the food, you know."
And he just looks up with this massive grin and he goes,
"okay. I will make you a deal."
"Every time somebody walks in here while you guys are in, you have to give me 2 minutes."
"Just to talk to them, tell them about the local spots, whatever."
But you guys can take as long as you want. Just give me 2 minutes with everybody who comes in."
And we sat in here for an hour.
I mean, the guy drew us the best map you could possibly imagine,
He sat us down in the end and played us these videos
of him presenting these awards where he was singing Frank Sinatra!
I mean the guy looked like Bruce Willis, with the voice of a Spanish Frank Sinatra
It was incredible. What a guy.
And we were just asking for a map.
We were going, "What just happened?", you know
We get talking to José a bit more and he actually left us with his phone number.
He also told us that if we're staying around for a while,
he could go around the island with us and take us around in the car and show us about.
So it was a really nice connection from the start with José. He was quite inspired by what we were doing
and he thought it was pretty cool. And he thought he could be our host, kind of, for Fuerteventura.
He's just on this mad buzz about waning to do things for us
and help us with our laundry,
take us to all the sights he knows,
all the best spots in Fuerteventura,
take us out for dinner, meet his friends, you know, engage with his lifestyle.
MATT: Introduce what we're doing José
JOSÉ: He's going to the shower
MATT: Alright, I'm being ushered to the shower
MATT: See you later.
He was just literally the most kind person and giving person I have ever met in my entire life
and he just blew my mind day by day, of the things he was giving to us
And...
Yeah...
yeah he just...
A lot of them, like...
A lot of the stuff, it literally has blown my mind so much
I don't know what to say about it...
Like...Literally like...
RYAN: I think you just said it.
So on the last day before I headed back to sort my stuff out at home
José offered to drop me off at the bus station, to go get the ferry.
And finally my bus pulls into the station,
And we hear the intercom go,
"El bus para Corralejo ya se ha llegado, y saldrá en 10 minutos."
And then in English,
And then in German, which I can't pronounce
And it was José!
He was the voice of the bus station.
At that stage I guess, Shay went back home.
He thought it would be a brilliant idea to bring his jeep over.
So Shay and Victor come back over and they bring that big, badass, silver jeep of theirs.
We just drove south all day. Right to the tip of the island.
And about halfway to the main town on this beach
we see this side-road and I was just like,
"Hey man, why not take the road less travelled, you know."
"You never know what you're going to find out in these parts."
All of us started thinking like, "Wow. This is a different world out here."
So then we drove up a bit. Parked the car in this little hole in the side.
Perfectly wind protected.
Afterwards we actually built a little shelter, which is still there today. I've been back since.
And we didn't bring enough water to cook with.
So we used sea-water.
Which made the saltiest fucking pasta I've ever tasted.
We're dying of dehydration at this point.
It was just another moment where... just complete freedom.
I had the whole day to just go and let my creative juices flow
and I just had to go and train for hours
and just move about and explore all the different shapes of the rocks and the sand and...
I got a big boner just looking at the rocks.
So we had a really amazing time at that beach.
I mean, we spent the night there also camping
And the morning after, Victor had to go to work
and Shay had to go and bring the car back to Lanzarote.
And then we go down to the port. And me, Matt and Olek immediately just start saying like,
"Right, let's try and finally get to Gran Canaria."
"Let's go to the port, and talk to some people about hitchhiking."
So, we ended up in the south,
in the port, wanting to hitchhike a boat, realising that there's no way to hitchhike a boat here.
Nobody seems to be going over to the island.
Now it seems like what we have to do is get the ferry again
We give José a call
and we know that he's hired some people before just to work around his house and stuff.
We felt like we could maybe do a bit of work for him
And in return maybe he could help us to get across the islands
Because we knew he had a lot of contacts.
And then José does the most José thing possible
José being this really funny man that loves to give but doesn't care about receiving anything back,
He said,
"You know what?"
"You're in the port ready to go, aren't you?"
And we're like, "Well, yeah but not really. We've nowhere to go."
"and we don't have the money to go."
but there was no rush. We could just stay and help him out if he could help us out
And he went, "No."
"I just want you to get over to the next island."
"You've been here long enough."
"I'm going to send you the money right away, can you give me your bank details?"
We're like, "No! Wow José!"
"Wow José! Hold up like!", you know.
"You can't just give us the money for nothing and tell us we can go ahead."
"No, we've got to come and work first."
"Then, if you want, give us the money."
"But we don't feel happy enough to just leave like that and take money off you."
You know, it was pretty much 120 quid for the three of us.
And then he said something through the phone that definitely stayed with all of us.
He said,
"I don't really want anything in return."
You know, he will help us out...
But he wants to see us some time again in his life.
He wants us to come back to Fuerteventura and say hello
and pay off that debt, if that's the way it is.
He didn't tell us that it had to be in the next year. He didn't say it has to be in the next 10 years.
He said just some day in our lives.
To know that we're all here to help each other
and we do not forget about these things.
And that's what he left us with which was...
Like I said, really special.
And Matt put into beautiful words that, you know...
He taught us to give. Give a lot...
and wait for nothing really.
It was absolutely amazing.
So yeah, next thing you know
that night we're on a boat to Gran Canaria.
And we did not expect that at all, you know.
We did not expect to be on the next island by that night.
That was just...
Mad.
So before we boarded the boat to Las Palmas
I was already starting to feel ill. Like of getting the flu or some sort of sickness.
We arrive into Gran Canaria at about 9pm on a Sunday.
It's raining.
And the first thing we realise is that Las Palmas is a much bigger city
than what we've been used to for the last 2 months.
It's just intimidating.
We're walking around in the pissing rain just trying to find somewhere to sleep.
It was quite a sketchy night
as far as we were concerned with people probably stealing our stuff.
RYAN: Admittedly one of our sketchier nights.
RYAN: We arrived in Las Palmas at 9 o'clock with nowhere to sleep, in the rain.
OLEK: Yeah, so we just went straight to the beach and
OLEK: in between boats, rigged up a tarp
OLEK: Trying to stay dry throughout the night.
RYAN: In the middle of the city
OLEK: This seems absolutely WACK!
OLEK: There's so much homeless people here.
MATT: And I'm completely sick.
RYAN: And Matt's not well.
OLEK: It's...not a good situation.
OLEK: But we'll get out of it.
OLEK: We'll find a squat today hopefully, and meet some people, and find a place to stay and...
OLEK: Make sure Gran Canaria's awesome.
OLEK: We're so happy right now.
So the next day,
We're planning our whole day around trying to find a couchsurf, or a squat,
Or some sort of accommodation for us.
Because we don't want to do this again.
We're planning the whole day around it.
You know, "I'm going to go to the library. You're going to walk around the city and do this."
We're just at the showers at the beach. Olek goes to the toilet or something.
Me and Matt are sitting with the bags and...
this kind of fun looking guy with a funky haircut comes over to us, and he's like,
"Hey, you guys are travellers, yeah?"
And we're like, "Yeah, yeah."
"Nice. I've got a squat over here. Do you want to come?"
And it was like...
"It was that easy?..."
"I mean, it's 10 in the morning. We've still got the rest of the day now. Like...What?"
As we walked into the squat...
I've never seen anything like it, you know.
So the place that we were about to go into
turns out to have been a squat called, La Bicicleta.
La Bicicleta
Absolute...
Beautiful chaos.
Manic place.
It's a four storey building.
And this big massive lobby.
Had a kitchen in one corner.
An upstairs area with a load of beds for people just passing through.
There's a big stairwell that leads into individual rooms for 'longer staying residents'.
The squat had running water and electricity.
Every floor of the place just had a different character.
Because you have the peaceful area, the party area,
all these mad pictures on the walls.
About 60 travellers inside, from all over the world.
All these crazy colourful characters.
Constantly music and different types of art going on in the house
Street artists, acrobats, dancers, singers, guitar players.
Everybody there did something, you know. Everybody there did something interesting.
It was just really cool.
ANDERSON: I can't hold it for too long.
RYAN: I'm filming.
RYAN: I'm videoing.
ANDERSON: Cabron.
So I had some really really wonderful moments in Las Palmas
as we got back into doing our street performances.
We would head out with the band from the squat that would play Irish music.
They would jam and I would just do acrobatics along with the music
and just have a good time while the music was playing.
It was just...
Such a nice way to earn money. It didn't feel like going out and working.
A few hours' work,
We got enough money to last us a couple of days.
That was just a great way to be living.
Living in this beautiful house, beautiful people, going out to make money and in such a nice way.
MATT: Life in Bicicleta!
As soon as I went in there, I pretty much didn't leave that place properly for a month.
There was just so many different rooms.
So many different people to talk to, so many different stories to know.
that you know, there was just so much that you could spend
days and days just running around La Bicicleta.
Making conversations with new friends and really discovering what it was all about.
Every night at 9 o'clock, anyone who wanted to do it would go out and recycle
and everybody would just take shopping trolleys out of the squat and go around the city,
and raid the bins and come back with tons of food.
Which meant there was just an abundance of free food.
La Bicicleta really just
opened my eyes to this culture of alternative thinkers and
you know, occupying a building
and converting a rundown space into something that's essentially filled with life, and music, and art.
and just something really beautiful
and it opened my eyes to...
These places exist. This happens. And you can go and live there whenever you want.
After I'd been living in la Bicicleta for about 4 weeks,
I was messaging my friend from back home, Stefan.
He was talking about coming out to join me for the last 10-11 days
of my trip, before I had to go home.
I'd been out in Spain for 5 months and I was loving it
But my proddy passport was due to expire pretty soon.
And I'd to go back and get a new passport so...
It did also occur to me that
I'd been in Gran Canaria for like 4-5 weeks
and just stayed in one place, in this squat the whole time.
So in my final few days just before I went home
Me, Olek, this Italian girl Sonia and Stefan
all had this idea to go out to a "Secret Beach" that people were talking about
[NOT AS SECRET AS FARANG'S BEACH. THIS ONE ACTUALLY EXISTS]
Güigüí is this beach we'd heard of where
getting to this beach takes a few days in and of itself,
and leaving, once again a few days.
The idea was to hitchhike a full circle around the island.
To see the bottom of the island. Meet up with Olek and Sonia there,
and then go to Güigüí from there.
Hitchhiking was going quite slow trying to get there.
That was already taking us a few days
and me and Stefan only had 1 or 2 days left before getting this flight home.
The next day me and Stefan realised that we didn't have time to go to Güigüí anymore.
So we just decided to hitchhike on up the rest of the island and see some of that
before going back to La Bicicleta.
Me and Stefan finally headed back to La Bicicleta
to finally say goodbye to Spain and this mad Canary Islands adventure
and uh...
went back to my home life, which...
sucked.
So when Taggart left, we wanted to explore Gran Canaria a bit more.
We'd only sort of been in this one building in the one city.
So we heard about a couple of workaways in the mountains.
In a place called Tejeda.
MATT: Hey Louis, bai!
LOUIS: Good day my dearest friend. It is a pleasure to see you on this fine Spring day.
MATT: So...
MATT: We made it to the workaway yesterday
MATT: and this is where I slept.
So we spend like a week at a workaway.
Working for a woman that's building an alternative school for kids.
FRANCESCO: When you take everything from...
FRANCESCO: You need to...
FRANCESCO: It's better if you cut the roots
FRANCESCO: and you leave everything in the soil.
FRANCESCO: With this the roots continue to give the nutrient to the flower.
It was nice just to do a bit of hands-on work
and take your mind off other things and just
just spend a bit of time working and switch your brain off, I guess.
We went back and forward through Gran Canaria
checking out some things but, La Bicicleta was the base.
We always went back. That was our home.
That's where we kept a lot of our stuff.
We set one morning just to do another street performance gig.
And as the performance comes to a close,
we notice that there's a guy that's really engaged with our performance.
His name was Paco.
Paco really enjoyed what we were doing, and he was a film director.
And he wants to do a film about the Guanches.
The ancestors of the Canary Islands.
And he thought that we could play a lovely role in it
with our abilities of being able to jump around and roll around, you know.
He said he would take us to Tenerife
if we agreed, and he would like to film some scenes with us.
So whether or not the film would be any good or not we just didn't care.
because, we're going to be in Tenerife.
MATT: Yo Olek, you know what time it is!
MATT: What is going on? Where are we at? What is happening?
We're on another motherfucking boat.
We are going to a place called Tenerife.
We got our tickets booked by this mad director from Tenerife that wants us to help him in his film.
And then we're going to Barcelona so, tune in.
MATT: You're so pleased with that.
MATT: So what are we at?
Well...
We're just in our new apartment.
We're going to live here for the next 2 days
While we're having fun with Paco and going around the island
to see the biggest mountain, the biggest volcano in Canary Islands.
And then we're going to come back at some stage,
after we finish our holiday in Barcelona
to finish the movie, or start it, shall I say.
Because we're not going to start, I don't think.
We're just going to have fun.
And...
this guy's amazing, he even buys you your hash!
I turned out to be really sick.
I wasn't really capable of performing the things that we needed to do.
But of course, Paco doesn't really mind.
He's just like, "Okay I'm just going to drive you about Tenerife and show you all the cool places."
And we just ended up having a really good time with Paco.
He was showing us around the island, he took us up to El Teide.
One of the biggest mountains in Canary Islands.
MATT: We're literally driving into the clouds.
We're driving up so high into the mountains.
You go through the clouds and you're just surrounded by mist.
So he just pretty much gives us a tour of Tenerife.
Pays for our hotel and then says, "Where do you want to go next?"
We really got bored of islands in a way.
We've agreed previously that Paco would fly us to Barcelona after.
Because we didn't want to stay on the islands anymore we'd just had enough of that.
We've just got...
round the whole of the Canary Islands (actually just 4 of the islands Matt you dopey fuck)
not paying for a single boat journey from one island to the next
and now getting a flight for free
to...
back into central Spain.
For me it just sort of fulfilled the goal of
trying to make it to the islands... Across the islands for free,
even though we didn't hitchhike the boat at the very beginning.
MATT: Picking a very inappropriate time to do this.
MATT: But, what is going on?
I think we're about to crash to be honest, this guy doesn't know how to park.
But...
We're landing in Barcelona again.
Hopefully we'll have no broken legs.
We get in touch with our old friend Satel,
the guy that showed us the traffic light game.
He now has his own squat in Barcelona
So we go and stay with Satel,
Wake up every morning. We're in a beautiful routine,
just going to the traffic lights for a couple of hours every morning.
MATT: What did we get?
OLEK: Big dollas!
OLEK: No like, I want to do a lot more of that.
OLEK: 5 EURO each. Today that gives us 50 EURO for an hour, not even.
OLEK: Fuck yeah!
Making our money in traffic lights, living in the squat and then spending all the days in the park.
Jamming with all the artists and getting inspired.
SATEL: Okay now.
SATEL: Crazy stuff man.
SATEL: There's Matt.
MATT: You ready?
MATT: This one's for you Satel.
OLEK: The metro takes ages today because we've got strikes.
OLEK: So Matt got bored.
OLEK: And he's testing himself out
OLEK: after training for about 6 days straight.
OLEK: But he's fucking doing it. Look at him go.
OLEK: Come on. You've got it.
OLEK: They're burning aren't they?
OLEK: Keep going.
OLEK: They're burning but keep going.
Just the Barcelona life of
Getting up, doing what you want, enjoying the sunshine, enjoying the city,
and enjoying all the cool people that it seems to attract.
and yeah, I think that's why we have a soft spot for Barcelona.
Because it's just like a nice central point for travellers.
So my travels in Spain sort of came to an end
when I got contacted by another television program in the UK
to go over to London and audition for.
So that was sort of like, my way of edging back towards home.
I really wanted to keep travelling.
I'd decided I'd go up north since it was summer
and there was a lot of juggling conventions, you know, circus conventions going on,
festivals and things like that I wanted to take part of
So I pretty much left with Satel and Tala
and we just travelled through France for another month together.
Going to juggling conventions,
fire conventions,
big street art festivals
and just filled with lots of fun.
Hitchhiking was super smooth.
In France you don't wait longer than 2 minutes on the side of the road.
Even with a dog, you know.
It was fucking incredible, like.
Now I'm here.
Back in my room.
After all that time. Back in Ireland.
It was a long way, 11 months, you know.
A lot of things happened, a lot of things changed
and I really didn't want to go back home that early but
Managed to-
a few jobs came up and a few requests came up
to go back to Ireland and enjoy my summer here as well.
It's all just preparing and
getting ready for another big burst of a story again
to go out, travel the world and
find as many people as I can to have the craziest experiences in the world.
And that's, I guess, wrapped up really quickly.
I wanted something to just scare the absolute shit out of me.
I wanted something to put me on the edge of my seat, every single day
and just have the most unexpected things just to slap me in the face around the corner.
One thing I never realised until Matt and Olek showed me this,
was, through sleeping outside, hitchhiking, recycling.
You can just travel for free.
And if not for free, at least for very very little.
I think this style of travel just provokes...
just provokes that wild experience that i was looking for.
We're told that these wonderful kind people are just few and far between
and it's hard to meet and engage with them
But we had just that many incidents of pure kindness.
People just wanting absolutely nothing in return.
It's just completely switched my entire mentality on it.
The world's a scary place alright, yeah.
And when we get out there it might be quite scary at the start
But we go, and realise that behind every corner there's a helping hand.
The truth is like, you always see videos on YouTube or Facebook...
Fuck I mean, this is probably one of those videos.
You know it's all these awesome travel montages and everything looks so glamorous and amazing.
When you're out there in that moment...
It is just more life.
It's kind of the same as the current moment.
It's almost an even balance of a struggle and a high.
It's never as glamorous as people make it out to be, I think.
But...
that's just the whole part of travel.
If it was smooth, like, it would be no fun.
You just need to remember that,
just because something's going wrong doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong
It's just another challenge to overcome in this.
I don't think we really knew what we were doing at that stage either
But we just kind of threw ourselves into it.
After that experience, I just know now that I've got the confidence to do more.
You know, to go hitchhiking in other places. Just to travel by myself or with whoever.
And now I know how to do it.
Everything's out there.
Waiting for you.
Waiting for your response or your move to make it happen.
We found ourselves through biccies and bifters.
RYAN: Matt, what's going on?
MATT: Okay so what's going on right now is basically
MATT: We met a guy on this beach that makes sand sculptures.
MATT: We became good friends with him.
MATT: And he wants a break.
MATT: So he's left us in charge, essentially, of his artwork.
MATT: So we are literally pretending that we are the sculptors.
MATT: And we can collect whatever money we make.
OLEK: We have made quite a lot of money to go to Fuerteventura.
RYAN: We needed 18 EURO.
RYAN: And we've made 32.
OLEK: Not bad at all. Not bad at all.
MATT: So we pretty much have to convince these people that we're fascinating sculptures-...
MATT: Sculptors.
- MATT: Thank you very much. - OLEK: Thank you very much.
OLEK: Thank you very much.
MATT: Should we fix the bridge in the middle?
MATT: I could maybe sculpt like a swan or something.
- MATT: Awesome - OLEK: Thank you very much.
MATT: And so, just like that we pretend to be sculptors