playa escondi-wha?

Okay, I know I’ve said this before, but I am going to say it again (and again); I am the luckiest girl in the WORLD.  I’m starting to think that it has to do with the possibility that I might have been the white-girl-foul-mouthed equivalent of Mother Theresa in a previous life. I mean, there is just NO other explanation.

Which brings me to today’s story.

So, you already know that I met some absolutely amazing people while on the Baja Ha-Ha. I mean people that I think I will know for life. One of these was this chick, Maria. She, her mom, and her cousin got this wild hair after they heard about the ha-ha and decided to find a ride for it. Now let me just tell you that Maria isn’t really a boater, just a bad-ass lady. So, she finds the one and only motor boat that is doing the rally and jumps on. As a story for another time, the boat turns out to be a disaster.

She joins up with our posse back in Cabo and then flies home to Boise to return to her life, running her own law firm specializing in immigration law (how freaking cool is that!!!). About a week later, I get an email from her, saying “oh yeah, I forgot I planned a vacation with some girlfriends at this sweet resort right by Sayulita and I’m going to be there in a few days. Are you going to be near? Would you like to join?” Are you freaking kidding me?!!?!? Umm…Yea please?

So we meet up in Puerta Vallarta (my boat has left that morning at 6 and I just kind of sit on the dock with all my worldly possessions for the day, waiting for Maria and her friends to come). A night of drinking super sized margaritas ensues as I get to know these hilarious ladies.

I heart mucho libre masks!

And then off to Playa Escondita!! We were planning on taking a taxi to the bus station and then a bus to Sayulita, but our taxi driver was so absolutely wonderful, he ended up driving all the way. We Kind of fell in love with him.

Well, anyway, Playa Escondita is absolutely like a dream. We are staying in our own two story palapa right on the beach.

All day long, we lay on the beach, let Jorge fill us with fruity drinks, go to the pool, go to the hot tub,

listen to music, hike into town, have the time of our lives.

One night, I hear “LAUREN! Your bag is getting attacked!”
I run down and this animal has used it’s creepy little hands to unzip my pack, find what little food I have in there and scarf some instant oatmeal and five coffee packets. Wondering what the hell that creature was we asked Jorge. He said that they call it a Tehon, a transplant from Brazil. Whatever it is was, Wendy described it best by saying, “it’s as if an anteater and a raccoon had a love child.” Well put.

A few days ago, I moved to a hostel in Sayulita (site of Leslie’s infamous Birthday Bash last year, this time). For some reason i decided that hiking over the MOUNTAIN with my pack would be better than taking a taxi.

I freaking LOVE this town. I mean don’t come here, it sucks. There isn’t beautiful beaches and jungle, and hot surfers, and the best fish tacos, all wrapped up in a cobblestone village. You’d hate it here, really.

Until next time!

cabo in a cave

Not much to report

I left Cabo about a week ago now.  My last night in Cabo was once more with the now skeleton crew of the kid’s posse. There was only 6 of us left as boats had been leaving for days now. We decided that we should check out Lover’s Beach at Land’s End. We had been there for at least a week and hadn’t even been to Cabo’s most famous landmark.

 

In typical fashion, we decided to make our trek at night with two dinghy’s and a bottle of tequila. Since one of the dinghies was a lot slower than the other, we made the trip from the marina to the beach side by side. A few of us holding on to the opposite dinghy and the faster one pulling the slower for the most part. It was just a big raft up moving through the water in the dark. Good times.

When we beached our dinghies on the deserted beach, it was about nine. We were the only ones there (I’m also pretty sure it is a national park, and we were there illegally, after hours). Everyone pretty much scattered to the wind, running up and down the beach, exploring, laughing, enjoying the freedom.

Land’s End is this thin strip of land that jets out and on one side is the Pacific Ocean and on the other side is the bay that cradles Cabo San Lucas. We landed on the side of the beach that was on the bay. I wandered across the beach to the Pacific side. The high rocks blocked out a considerable amount of ambient light from Cabo and the moon had not risen yet. It was a perfect night. I laid down in the sand that was still warm from the day’s sun and looked up to the stars.  I heard the crashing of my favorite ocean, the odd chirping of dozens of bats flying over head and felt the cool ocean breeze. I laid there for about twenty minutes, thinking of nothing.

When I got my fill, I wandered back to the beach on the bay side to see what everyone else was up to. I found that the three guys had climbed up the craggy rocks. I didn’t hesitate to scramble up. I have been really missing rock climbing. When I got to where the boys were I realized that I might have been interrupting dude-time.

I have a tendency to forget I’m not one of the boys sometimes. But before I had a chance to change my mind, here came the other two girls! With all of us up there, I said I’ll be right back, and scrambled back down again. I grabbed a bottle of tequila and shoved in down the back of my pants, another water bottle full of some sort of booze and shoved it down the front of my shirt. A girl’s gotta have both hands to climb, you know! And up I went sloshing the whole way.

We had a few celebratory shots and climbed down before we would be too tipsy to. (yep, bottles back in the clothing for the climb down)

One of the guys and I walked back over to the pacific side to explore a little more in the dark. He told me that while I was off on my own they rest of the group had climbed into a cave that they had found.

Of course, I couldn’t be left out, so to the cave we went! It was more of a crack in the rocks. The first five feet smelled prety strongly of piss, but once you got past that, it mellowed out. With no flashlight and no moonlight, we climbed in blindly, one hand over our heads so we wouldn’t hit anything and one hand ahead to feel when we had hit the end. Every image of creepy-crawliees filled my brain, but I was trying to play it cool. The cave ended about 40 feet in and we sat down in the sand facing out. The cave mouth was silhouetted in starlight. Inside the cave was warm with no ocean breeze to cool things off. It was wonderful.

We stayed in there for probably an hour finishing off our bottle of tequila and talking and bullshitting about books and life and travels. It was a pretty amazing moment in time.

This is about all i have to report right now. I’m sitting idle in Puerta Vallarta for a while, until I can come up with the next stage of my travels. Stay tuned.

Can’t go to cabo without a run in with the federales

So the Baja Ha Ha fleet is nearly 200 boats and 601 people. We’re all a bunch of sailors that were pretty damned stoked to get on land and take advantage of two for one drinks here in Cabo. And man, do we!
All 600 of us flooded the town ripping it up left and right. There is a core of younger people that are all crew on boats and floating like I am. We all found each other pretty quickly and formed a posse that we nicknamed The Kid’s Table. Since we are all broke and homeless, we can’t afford to go out to the bars and clubs all night. So we decided that we would all just meet on a dark, deserted end of the beach each night with a six pack of beer and a bottle of tequila. It is a cheap, fun way to meet up. None of us have cell phones so we just have to wing it most of the time.

So a few nights ago, I was chilling on the beach with Jesse and TR bullshitting and sipping our beers. We figured the rest of the posse had found something else and we were fine to just sit there and enjoy the ocean breeze with our feet in the sand and good company. After about two hours, this HUGE group of fellow sailors shows up and it is suddenly pretty obvious that the beach won’t be able to contain our crazy energy that was pent up on boats for so long.
The decision was made to finish off the bottle of tequila and make our way to a dance club or five. And then off we went. About 15 slightly inebriated, salty, mostly younger sailors out on the town. And man did we dance!
We were definitely a few sheets to the wind at about 4 in the morning when one of our group decided to take a leak in an alley (in reality,  what looked like an alley to a drunk sailor was in actuality more of a front stoop to a business). Not even half-way through, a van full of cops sweep in and throws our intrepid pee-er into the paddy wagon, slams the door, get in themselves and are about to leave without a word.
We are all a little dazed by how quickly everything happens, but a gal named Heidy and I march right up to the paddy wagon and block them from shutting the doors. Heidy speaks decent Spanish and I speak none, but there is no way I’m going to let the Federales take one of us away. You never leave a man behind, damnit!!!
It’s not long before we realize they are having none of our gringo-asses and are telling us that since it is Friday, our buddy in going to be in the slammer all weekend. And they don’t seem interested in our clumsy attempt at bribing them. That is when our angels show up.

These two Mexican sisters named Tatiana and Romina randomly see what is going on, march right in and take charge. Even after 20 minutes of pleading, bargaining and negotiating  the cops don’t seem interested in anything other than taking our buddy to jail.

You have to remember, this whole time, dude is locked up in the back of the van, terrified of spending a weekend in a Mexican jail. He’s listening in the whole time through the cage he is behind seeing the chances of freedom dwindling. Once in a while I hear, “Lauren!! Don’t leave me here!” Don’t worry, man, I got your back.

Well, Romi and Tatiana finally have convinced the federales into letting the “prisoner” go for a small fine. But they still want to drive him around before they let him out. I collect money form everyone, holler at Heidy, “Get your ass in the van, we’re going for a ride,” jump in the paddy wagon and close the door. The cops don’t like us ladies along at all and even try to stop us, but there is no way in hell I’m going to just trust that they would actually let him go.
We drive around for a few minutes, I pay the “fine” and they let my buddy out of the cage. He nearly kisses the ground. I thank the cops and then immediately find that two Mexican sisters and thank and hug them for the rest of the night. At least we made some new friends!!

Today’s lesson #1: don’t mess with my friends, not even new ones.

Today’s lesson #2: four heroines are better than one.

look out cabo, I have arrived

So here I am in Cabo San Lucas, on the Baja Peninsula. This is our third and final stop on the Baja Ha-Ha. I know I already said it once, but the boat I’m on is absolutely fantastic. Not only were we one of only about 8 boats that sailed the whole way out of almost 200, but we had hot showers, good company and yummy meals the whole way.

I’m not sure how we did overall, but I’m proud to say that there was no motoring. And believe me it was very tempting. My watch crew had a few watches that were dead glassy the whole time. I think our top speed for those watches was 2 knots. It was nearly tear-inducing. But then we had a watch last night that was amazing. A bright moon, 20 knots of wind, not less than 10 knots of speed and t-shirts and shorts the whole time.
Our stop before this was at Bahia Santa Maria. It was pretty much a desolate bay with a long stretch of beach that only appeared at low tide. There were only five squat houses on the hill and a few fishing huts up the river that had been recently devastated by hurricane Jimena. It turned out be our favorite stop. Our captain took us all up the river in the dinghy to the lagoon about two miles at the top. We beached the boat and walked up into sand dunes in the hills above the bay. The hurricane had dumped rain on the hills and what would usually be brown and pretty barren was covered in blooming cacti like I had never seen before.
There was a party on the beach that the locals had thrown for us. There was even a live band that had driven 40 miles over a pot holed, dirt road to came play for tips.
Our last night in the bay, the moon rose full and bloody orange over the bay. Mary, Captain Scott’s girlfriend and I went up on deck and without hesitation, started howling endlessly at the moon. Soon enough, the rest of the crew joined in with grins on their faces. When we stopped, we heard the other two hundred boats answering our call and howls washed over the bay like a wave.

P.S. My camera went in the drink and pictures are having a hard time uploading here, so I promise more pics later

safely in turtle bay

Less than 48 hours later, our boat was first in class, first to finish on our first leg!!
It was windy, a steady 20-25 knots with gusts to 30 pretty much the whole way. Our first night, we had a few hours of no wind, and just floating, but that is pretty much it. There were big, confused seas for most of the time, but we surfed well. The second evening we blew up our one good spinnaker. The head tore clean off and the whole thing went in the water. We have a great crew, though, and the sail didn´t go under the boat, we got it aboard relatively quick. The rest of the way, we sailed with the jib wing-on-wing or just the mainsail. We still were going along at a steady 10 knots the whole way.
I got some time behind the wheel and did okay. I definitely was the weakest driver, but the only thing that will solve that is more time behind the wheel!!!
The crew is great, everyone gets along well, we eat well, and I´m sleeping like a log every chance I get.
Last night was our first night at anchor and it’s still gusting like hell in the bay
Other boats didnt´fair as well as we did. One boat even sank, with everyone safe. Evidently a particularly aggressive whale rammed them for about 7 minutes straight  and they deployed the liferaft, set off the epirb and 2 hours later were lifted off by a Coast Guard helicopter. Everyone is safely in San Diego. One other boat was hit by a rogue wave and a guy there got a couple broken ribs and a bump on the head. He´s doing well too. All in all this was the windiest Ha-Ha- to date, and I couldn´t ask for a better boat to be on. I really lucked out.
Sorry this is such a brief update promise lots of pictures and great stories when I get to Cabo.

adios, estados unidos

Today is my last day in the U.S.

I just left L.A. after visiting David Ray for a few days. I was even able to see Shannon Evans and Dan Applegate. High school friends that I haven’t seen in over a decade!!!

It was David’s birthday and he had his annual Kostume Karaoke party. This year’s theme was “The Future”. I went as myself in the future. This is how I imagine myself: A gamblin’, hard partyin’ old lady named Nickel Slots:

The party was a blast, and David Ray rocked it as a marooned astronaut.

After L.A, I jumped on yet another train down to San Diego to meet up with my boat. The boat that I’m doing the Baja Ha-Ha on is leaving tomorrow morning with me and six strangers on it. I’m starting to think that I’m a little spoiled already. The boat that I got a ride on (thank you, Garret) is a gorgeous, well maintained J160 named Pipe dream IX with three around-the-world passages. It has most recently made it’s way down from Alaska. Here she is anchored in Alaska:

Today was the kick off party for the Baja Ha-Ha. It was costumed. I, of course, had to dress up.

As for me, I’m so stupidly excited and nervous to leave everyone and everything behind, my stomach hurts. The beginning of this adventure is real now, and everything will be unfamiliar. I’m not going to have a cell phone even!

I’ll be incommunicado for a couple weeks while I’m sailing. So don’t freak out if you don’t hear form me for a while.

Love you all!

my time in oregon is coming to an end

On Monday, I get on a train and a mere 30 hours later I arrive in Los Angeles to celebrate David Ray’s birthday. I’m actually really looking forward to the long trip to reflect on my time in Oregon and to get my brain ready for my upcoming adventure.

Cheeseball alert!!!

There’s a few things that I’ve realized since I’ve been here. And in no particular order, here they are:

My friends have the most amazing beautiful, charming, smart, delightful children I ever thought possible. Now I know I’m totally biased, but I’m not the only one that thinks this. It’s pretty much just pop culture knowledge.

Sofie

Evie, 1 year

Zack, 1 year

My family is fantastic. And I’m not just talking about one or two here or there. I’m talking about the whole damn lot of them, aunt, uncles, cousins, their spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends, children, pets…How I lucked out like this is anyone’s guess. I was fortunate enough to be here for my Mom’s 60th birthday, my sister’s 26th, and my brother’s 25th.

As for my friends here? So very special to me. I’ve started friendships that I already value. I’ve grown budding friendships. And I’ve basked, and bathed, and rolled in the ones I’ve have for the majority of my life.

Thank you, Oregon, for nurturing all of these beautiful souls.

missing my voice?

Most of the people reading this blog know me pretty well. They know that I happen to be bestest of friends with my ex-boyfriend, David Ray. He’s a pretty bad-ass guy. He writes, plays music, and is an all around creative dude.

When we lived in Portland together, we were surrounded by some of the most amazingly creative people. It was heaven to just be around all of those inspiring people. It always made me feel a little more alive.

So I have to say I got pretty nostalgic when David flew up for my birthday weekend. It was like a little trip back in time to hang out with everyone again. But like a bizarro world where everyone was a little older, a little more married and kinda kid-having.

Our friend Rob Campbell has a podcast, Hey Everybody! Rob Campbell Here. He interviews people in each episode, pretty much talking about anything and everything cool. Well anyway, he invited David and I to guest on one of his podcasts! we had an audience and everything! As usual, my voice is trashed so it’s a little raspy.

So, without further ado, here we are!

Hey Everybody! Rob Campbell Here. Episode 14.

just a saturday night in portland

Now, if you’ve spent much time around me at all, you’ll know that I have the sleep schedule of a toddler. In bed by nine, awake by 7 or 8. I’m one of those weird “morning people” that actually like being awake in the morning. But more importantly, I simple cannot stay up late.

Being designated driver last Saturday night, I was surprised to find myself dead sober and not tired at all when Kris, Jordi and I closed the bar down and left at 3:00. I was driving these lovely ladies home when I had to swerve my car around something that was in the street. Then it registered, there are high heels littering the street!!!

Without much of a thought, I told the girls I was turning around. We sent Kris out for re-con.

She done good.

But then we noticed the lawn across the street strewn with women’s clothes. The feeding frenzy started.

Well, I guess three giggling and squealing girls and the constant flash of a camera are not so stealth. Because all of the sudden, the porch light came on and the door opened. Now after years of sneaking around at night for various reasons, I knew to get the hell out of there. My ass was already in the car and ready to ditch Jordi and Kris when this guy walks out saying, “take whatever you want. My brother’s wife cheated on him and he kicked her out.”

Needless to say, the frenzy continued.

The night ended with a run for Mexican food and a trip to Kris’s apartment to scarf down a chili relleno burrito and pour over our road-kill scores.

ode to portland

My first week has passed in Portland. Other than being sick as I write this, I’m having a fabulous time. I have literally spent hours driving and wandering around city reminiscing and discovering.

Okay, so maybe the fact that I’m staying at Toni’s this whole week has skewed my opinion a bit, as this is my nightly view.

But, really, this is an amazing city.  So I must compose a love note.

Here are a few reasons this city is interesting, hilarious, and all around entertaining.

• Some serious talent calls this city home.
• There was a line outside Powell’s at 9 on a Sunday morning, waiting for it to open.
• Portland is the “greenest city” in the country.
• No sales tax!!!!!!
• The food here is endlessly amazing.

I guess I could go on and on, but I’ll leave some for another day. Good night, kids.