PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT: NO MORE CHOCOLATE

Don’t fear the title, of course there’s still chocolate. I’ve startled you here today to make a public comment involving my recent work with the chocolate company.

I’m no longer working at the chocolate company.

Actually I haven’t been for a month now, it just took this long to put words to screen and figure out what to say. It’s hard to split from a company you live and breath, and eat in my case. While I know it seems crazy to part ways with a job that encourages gross chocolate consumption in the name of research and development, it’s also crazy to stay in a business that you don’t enjoy. It is now time to chase new opportunities, challenges and potential exotic locations and I wish those still there the best of luck. It was a wild trip at the chocolate factory but it’s time to move on and if there’s anything I learned from this experience, it would be:

Chocolate is pretty sweet, it really is, but surfing is SO much sweeter.

What’s good ocean, i’m back. I would also like to thank all those who were SO supportive of the chocolate company while I was there, your support was imperative to the company’s success and i’m forever grateful. You can now go back to buying any chocolate you want.

End Broadcast.

 

 

Back to the ISLANDS….A Blog Rebranded.

It’s about damn time wouldn’t you agree? Mmmmmmm…warm Hawaiian sun rays, sea salt skin and the worst traffic in the Pacific Ocean, how i’ve missed you. I”m back to the soil from which my lifestyle is rooted. The game has changed it bit however…

Post collegiate Hawaii is a different animal all together, comparable to a freshly tamed tiger cub who tolerates her new surroundings; the food is good and the environment is comfortable but there are still wild threads sewn deep within her fabric. If these threads were to be unravelled there’s no telling if this newly tamed tiger cub would revert right back to her wild nature and devour her captors or live somewhere in limbo of her new and old worlds. 

I think i’ll speak up for this tiger cub and confirm that her liver can’t handle like it used to, so it would be wise to embrace her new surroundings. 

I would also like to point out that I just took on the alter-persona of a female tiger cub…can’t explain why this happened. Moving forward, I would like to say that I will be refocusing this blog to reflect the adventures, events, people and generally random shit that happens here and around these Hawaiian Islands…at least from the perspective of a Nature Junkie like myself. 

Unchanged will be: the usual banter between me and my partner in crime aka “Norma Jean,” adventures on and off the beaten path, wild creations from the fridge, perfect use of profanity and instagram photo journalism. Thanks for tuning back in.

 

…Sunday Bloody Sunday Mary

fuck the Spice Girls…bloody marys spice up my life. mmmmm who knew ketchup’s alcoholic cousin would bring such joy to my life. It all began when I was a wee child, before I even knew what poison was, I would order cans of bloody mary mix on every flight. The combination of spiciness and blended tomato tattooed a taste bud on my tongue and now i’m stuck with it for life. Then the glorious day came when I discovered what a real bloody mary was supposed to be, the hangover cure of urban farmers and vegetarians, a spicy vodka salad smoothie. Wow, who knew I could get all my essential vitamins and a buzz all in one….cheers to my health. The spicier the better, the more bacon the better, pickle me some veggies and give me an oyster back….here’s to you bloody mary, hairiest hair of the dog, you complete me.

 

Oy! This isn’t Earl Gray….

who goes kayaking in the snow….i’ll tell you, the frosty ass eskimos and snowed in hippies with too much Pep Schnapps, Bailey’s and Hot Chocolate. This combination does wonders for your winter confidence. My body….kept telling me NOOO but my Special Hot Chocolate….kept telling me YES.

So with a tummy full of Santa’s REAL helper I dragged my kayak down to the water. Snowpocolypse 2012 and i’m buzzed off hot chocolate shoving off into Eagle Harbor. The headlines read: FERRY FINDS HUMAN ICE CUBE ADRIFT IN PUGET SOUND…

Not really, I had enough layers to keep Kiera Knightly’s scary ass warm in a Minnesota snow drift…don’t cha know. Once on the water, it was a winter wonderland like I had never experienced. The water, which was usually glass, was replaced with a reflective icy titanium…my kayak being the only thing capable of cutting such a formidable surface. Unfazed, I greeted all my animal friends, the Wood Duck family wasn’t as pleased to see me but they’re assholes so I turned my attention to Señor Seagull, who just mean mugged me and took a shit. The wildlife seemed generally unamused by the light white fluff blanketing their environment…or maybe i’m just on my second pint of High Octane Hot Chocolate.

 As I ninja paddled under people’s docks and boats, I realized I really was the only only crazy person out on the water…the harbor was a crap shoot for human life. This is the point in which I put on my fake British accent and begin the self commentary for my next installment of Planet Earth: Small Suburban Arctic Harbors.

“oy, and eer we have da pride of America…da bowld eagle . So majestic dey is…let’s see if we can get a meter or so closer and catch a glimpse o’ these woild birds bumping uglies. I say, whatever is in dis here thermos doesn’t taste like earl gray…it tastes like bloody christmas it does.”

Carrying on….it was a solid episode. Tragedy struck however when my hot chocolate heater ran out and I had to switch over to manual paddle heating…paddling became more than just a means of propulsion but a survival technique. This marked the end of the excursion and I began to paddle my ass back home before I made that human ice cube headline a reality.

Here’s a few more snapshots of the day…big ups to Polar Bears and the frosty bastards up north who do this on the regular without Schnapp assistance….my beanie goes off to you.

I definitely went out the very next day with my snow day partner in crime codename Norma…this of course led to a 4 hour beer sampler at the Harbor Pub where Norma thought that the Bourbon Cask beer was SO good she wanted to put it in her vagina. God dammit Norma…

Live from: Bainbridge Island, Washington

Lo siento para el  hiatos….the blog is making a come back. It’s a bitch trying to find computers on the beach in South America so you have to forgive me for ghosting for the past few months. Keep posted for some highlights but for now i’m just trying to get back into the swing of things.

What We’re Eating…

here’s another installment of “what the hell are we eating????”

the exception however, is this round doesn’t consist of a sketchy back street, mystery meat (goat) and giant women…Ecuador just redeemed itself in the little surf town of Montanita. Picture yourself with a big bowl of Lucky Charms cereal…you’ve eaten through the gauntlet of cat food looking pieces and you’re left with the milk and all the delicious marshmallows. Now…replace the milk with lime juice and the marshmallows with every delicious creature in the sea. YUP! It’s a little mermaid fiesta in your mouth…a towering bowl of fish, shrimp, oysters, clams and octopus all tossed together with some lime juice and finely chopped onions, tomato and dill…it’s called ceviche people or Neptune’s nose candy.  If you’re not sold yet, understand that you’re sitting on the beach chatting up the fisherman who speared all this sealife as he prepares your meal…directing your attention to the point where he picked the oysters that morning and telling stories of how he broke his spear catching your fish. You can’t right this stuff…oh ya and it’s 5 bucks…repeat visits…mandatory.

Spot Check: Lobitos

John Wayne was a bitch…ya he played a tough western badass in Hollywood but he never lived it.

Welcome to Lobitos, Peru.

The surf town where you keep your board on one hip and the six shooter on the other….Lobitos was once the South American destination for the Princesses of Europa, holding bragging rights to the first cinema in South America and land so oil rich it would have the Bushs speaking Spanish. Lobitos was a South American jewel built up by foreign interest, an interest that was soon shared with a military dictatorship and well…sharing and military dictatorship are like oil and water so the foreigners were run out….leaving glorious, thriving Lobitos to the people of Peru…VIVA LA PERU!

Too bad nobody taught the new Peruvian management how to run our little desert oasis… Lobitos slowly saw itself whittled and sanded away due to mal-maintenance, a little el nino and an ingenious economic stimulus package that involved deroofing houses …Obama are you taking notes? Ha well the look of Lobitos today is best described as the bastard child of a post apocalyptic, True Grit smooshing…sorry for the Jersey Shore reference I’ll step away from the computer to kick myself. 

The only reason people still populate this skeletal ghost town is to suck out the last little bit of oil and fish left on this earth (the ceviche is delicious) and oh ya…there are 6 firing beach breaks stuffed into the same 2km stretch of beach. Thanks to the internet, Taylor Steele and every surfer’s natural instinct to find uncrowded surf, Lucho’s secret surf town has now inspired new life in the sands of Lobitos. Over the past 10 years, Lobitos has slowly seen a steady growth in surfers (primarily mean mugging Argentineans) and surf bungalows repopulating and reroofing this town back to life. With spots like Baterias, Los Muelles, Lobitos, El Hueco, Piscenes and more…this town is a Peruvian surf mecca, you can spend all day surfing and searching out spots with the smallest crowd or hollowest wave…I definitely had a few solo sessions that I thought only existed in dreams and ancient surf journal…and maybe a few loathing sessions cursing the Peruvian water treadmill. Lobitos catches swell really well year round, from the heavy chilling Southern swells to the same Northwesterns that smash Hawaii in the summer…our little secret. So, when everywhere else is flat, you can usually count on Lobitos to be rippling …but when it’s big…mamacita los olas son Buenos. There’s crazy tubos all over and a variety of places to stay from hotels to local’s houses…there is even a crazy rasta surf camp feet from a fast hallowing left. We logged 10 days at the casa de Darwin who is the local board repair guy….very handy as I tend to destroy boards like fat kids destroy cupcakes.

A cupcake actually sounds delicious…with peanut butter.

Now with Lobitos under the bet, it’s on to Lima for a little fiesta and big city surf…apparently cause that’s what’s trending these days with competitions in New York and San Francisco on this year’s tour. So as this 16 hour bus ride gladly rumbles to an end, my biggest relief is not at the promise of blood flow to my ass and legs but to the end of the eye fucking I just received at the hand of a bombardment of Spanish dubbed animated movies involving gnomes and owls. I might just get off this bus and head straight to Hollywood in order to personally neuter all those involved with these movies.You will thank me when their genes are not passed on to the next generation of hollywood film makers.

the prequal

ñaldjsfñldsakjfñldskjfdslkjfd words can not describe the feeling of heading out to surf your first wave on a surf trip….the stoke is pumping through your veins like it´s in a battle to push out the adrenaline that´s already replaced your blood.

we got the fuck out of Guayaquil as soon as we could opting for the late bus to Mancora, Peru to save money on a place to sleep…of course we´re placed next to the most annoying snoring human i´ve ever had the discomfort of staring at for 7 hours…imagine a short obese man who saw the wrong end of a shovel, covered in the most generic tattoos (he even had a triple X tattoo on the back of his neck like vin diesel in that movie…donkey status), his trashy girlfriend awkwardly staring at us and a snore that rivals the sound of a tyrannosaurus fart after a grand meal of triceratops and beans o frijoles. fuck this guy…
when we get to Mancora we wake up to a bombardment of people yelling for us to get off the bus, grab our shit, buy our shit , check out our shit, mierda mierda mierda, i´m looking for dylan and he´s fighting off even more people.
so we run
we grab our shit and run to the nearest bench and just sit down and eat some bread while little Peruvians attempt to convince us to hop in their moto taxis and go to their hostels…..we sit most of them out and settle with Miguel, definitely a hustler but he seemed personable. After a quick drive around Mancora, checking a couple hostels, pulling out some soles we ask the locals where the fuck the surf is because there was none in Mancora… we learn we are to head to Lobitos.

Lobitos…

Lobitos we ve heard of…apparently it has surf all the time but Lobitos is another hour and half away via a taxi to Talara and another mini taxi to the little surf town of Lobitos….the traveling…continues.

After a good hour of watching Dylan keep our taxi driver awake on the drive to Talara we cram into a small bus like car with some locals heading into Lobitos…i{m the biggest human in this country so i end up sitting in the back of course and put my arms around a senora with a few kids…she smiles and i make faces with her kids. The coast of Peru is a desert….rolling hills of dirt and sand with tiny fishing towns and shacks strewn about like polka dots on a sand leopard…sustenance living.

We speed over a washed out road built over a dried river bed…sand and oil pumps are the only landmarks as we approach our surf mecca. We dont have a place to stay in Lobitos, only a few names of people who take in surfers…i welcome the uncertainty  because it is just what i had been dreaming of for so long. The hills part and Lobitos rumbles into view…our anxious surfboards sensing the waves to come…sensing their freedom from the board bag prison on the top of the car.

Game time

hola amigos…it´s time for a little game called
¿what the hell did we just eat…?
haha but really, we were walking back to our hotel in the ghetto and found los senoras gorditas cooking up some comida on the corner, like the brave youthful travellers we are we decided to try out the local cuisine….well i think dylan´s face describes it all…we still haven´t quite figured out what we just ingested so please…enlighten us and our estomagos por favor…

The day school started!

Dylan Butterbaugh here:

This makes me really happy. Drew and I landed in Guyaquil, Ecuador the day everyone went back to school. I am not sure why this makes me so happy knowing that so many people are receiving first assignments and buying expensive, elephant sized textbooks they will force themselves to read throughout the next 3-4 months. SCHADENFREUDE! The German word for getting pleasure out of other people’s misfortune.  Haha learned that one from a hilarious Broadway show called Avenue Q. Anyway, no need to squeeze lime juice into an already salted wound. Not all has gone swimmingly for us either and we only left 36 hours ago. Drew came way too close to not getting on the plane in Honolulu (read his blog for why), upon arrival in Guyaquil we realized that our boards didn’t fare as well, we were instantly ripped off by an airport taxi who took us to a crappy hotel that took us for even more. All in all we have been able to smile at every turn. I met a guy on the plane that is well connected in Guyaquil, grows cacao, has connections to phytosanitary permits for exporting the beans, and is currently helping the country set up aquaculture to better the agricultural economy. His name is Jesus and might as well be. Always smiling, doing everything he can to help everyone, around 75 years old, and has more life in him than most people I knew in college. He will be helping me find the cacao farming connections that will help supply Manoa Chocolate company for the first few years while farms are established in Hawaii.

Anyway, as Drew and I walk around this city, Drew claims to feel like Yao Ming walking through munchkin land, and i…..finally see eye to eye with people. Haha nah actually most people are indigenous and around 5’3”.

Communication:

Wow this age is amazing! I just realized that in the last half hour I was facebooking James in Ireland, video Skyping Leon in Spain, Skype chatting Rebecca (Drew’s mom) in Seattle, emailing Tammie in Hawaii, and all from the dirty little bustling city of Guyaquil, Ecuador. Pretty cool!