Quality Peoples

The correct title of this post is: Lost at Sea or How I got to hang out with Kings Of Convenience, Feist and Broken Social Scene at Roots in Bucerias.
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This post is rediculously too long. there are two parts to it: Part 1 (the surfing/Lost at Sea part) and Part 2 (the getting to hang out with two of your most favorite musicians part). Somehow, they both tie into each other in a nice little way, but reading long pieces of text on the internet sucks, so you can use the following links to jump to whatever part is more your flavor: Part 1 & Part 2
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My good buddy Michael was down visiting us from Laguna Beach, last weekend. We spent a few days surfing. On Saturday, we went up to Punta Mita to grab a boat and get dropped off at the Cove (La Bahia). The Cove is a great surf break, just around the bend from Anclote in Punta Mita and just outside the large Bay of Banderas, in open sea. Normally I go with Action Sports when I show up with Pato, they charge us 150 pesos each (about 15 bucks). On this day, since we were two gringos, they wanted 250 pesos each (better known as “highway robbery”). I told dude that’s the gringo rate, that I live in Bucerias and I’d be willing to pay 300 pesos total. Dude said no way. A few minutes minutes later dude came back with 400. I didn’t budge and dude wouldn’t either, so we went down the road to some guy named Oscar, another one of the boat operators. Oscar tried to give me the gringo rate as well and we settled on 350 pesos. Still too much, but better than nothing. Oscar’s boat driver dropped us off at the Cove and I asked him to pick us up in two hours.

The Cove was empty, we had the break to ourselves. Solid three and four footers with a high tide, but as the tide lowered, the waves lowered as well. By an hour and a half or so they were tiny. We were ready to go home. Michael is an avid surfer, a close family friend and works in the surfing/clothing industry so we just chatted non-stop about life, work, surfing etc… while waiting to be picked up by our boat. Two hours passed, three hours passed. At about the 3 1/2 hour mark, we both started to get a little suspicious. Michael was smart and wore a hat, I was dumb and did not. By this time, my face was fried and my body was cold from the water. We tried to keep it positive, every time a boat would come out of the bay, we’d assume that it was our guy and each time, we’d be wrong. At the 4 hour mark, we decided that the boat driver had forgotten us and we decided to do something about it. We had three choices:

1. Swim to shore and walk along the rocks, back to Anclote, barefoot (dangerous)
2. Swim to shore and try to get picked up by one of the Four Seasons security guards (trespassing)
3. Swim 2 kilometers out to sea and flag down an incoming boat (boats entering the bay follow a few channels) and hope there are no strong currents that suck us out to sea

We choose swimming to shore. As we got closer to shoreline, we could see the sharp, barnacle-encrusted rocks rising above the water line, the sea urchins below the water and 50 feet of 6 inch water to walk through to make it to the rocky shore. Small waves were threatening to wash us into the rocks. We conferred and chose the 3rd option: paddling out to the channel. It took us about 30 minutes or so to get out towards the channel, missing two boats and finally flagging down the 3rd. A guy from Guadalajara and his two fishing guides, they laughed and handed us cold Pacificos after hearing our story and then radioed in to the port control to let them know what had happened.

After we got back to Anclote and profusely thanked the guys for picking us up, I walked by Oscar, the guy who owned the boat that forgot about us. He immediately launched into some bullshit story about how they had been out to pick us up twice and that we weren’t there. I felt like throttling the jerk-off in the mouth. This is Mexico though and people here have cousins, so my cooler instincts prevailed and so I told him he was full of shit and struck off to file an official complaint with the port captain. My efforts were futile though, as I couldn’t find the captain and I wasn’t about to ask around. As I was walking back to the car, Oscar said that he felt worse about it then I did and I figured that was about as close to an apology as I would get. Oscar is very glad that he didn’t ask me for half the money and I’m glad I didn’t pay up front.

As Michael and I discussed the day’s events, it became clear that we were about as lucky as could be. If we had gone into shore and stepped on an urchin, walking back would have been impossible. If we had swam out to open ocean and the currents had taken us out to sea, we’d be in big trouble. Besides the hour of insecurity of being left out there, the only real damage was a nasty case of sunburn. My face was fried, my nose was literally purple. Jessica hooked me with some aloe and now my face is more tan then red. I can’t complain.

What’s the best way to slough off a potentially bad situation? How bout an impromptu acoustic concert from two of your favorite musicians? Andrew called us at about 8:30pm to tell us that Feist, Kings of Convenience and Broken Social Scene were all down at Roots, eating and that Erlend Oye had brought his guitar and would play if we came down. Andrew was calling everyone he knows to come down and represent our small little “pueblito tipico”. It turns out that they were on a ten day vacation staying in Punta Burros.

Most of the crew conversed amongst themselves, as Erlend grabbed his acoustic guitar and joined our band of onlookers. We ended up being treated to several hushed acoustic songs. The night culminated when I asked Erlend to play “The Build Up” or “know How”, full-well knowing that both are duets with Leslie Feist (who is Marcia’s favorite musician of all time). Erlend started The Build Up and when it came time for Leslie’s verse, we could hear her sweet muffled voice carrying over from the table behind us. Most of the band joined in and we were treated to impromptu versions of several Kings and Feist songs, culminating in a round-the-table over-the-top rendition of “I’d Rather Dance with You” with Leslie Feist on the spoons and glasses. I got most of it down with a little audio grabber thing I have and I’ve been trying to get the tracks off of it for days now (love them Sony products). When I finally figure it out, I’ll post em (I hope they don’t mind). Everyone was taking pictures with their little point-n-shoots and of course I brought along my camera. I did manage to grab a few shots, but honestly I felt really awful sticking this huge camera in their faces when all they were trying to do was grab a bite to eat, so I sat in the background. I get a little weird around people who I perceive to be even slightly celebratory. Must be my time spent in Los Angeles, where going to breakfast involves seeing various levels of celebrity types at any given joint.

It was a great night, the perfect end to a terrible day and even though there wasn’t that much interaction between us, it was great, being in the presence of all these really talented musicians. Especially Kings of Convenience and Feist who are literally the most listened to artists in my iTunes library and have been for years.