Enjoy!
Marge
We're in Santa Cruz and have been for several days. We landed here after Jose the friendly semi driver from Mexico gave us a ride. We realized quickly that camping on the beach would have been out of the question as almost every bit of beach real estate here is being used and cops were quite frequent. We found a 24 hour donut shop with wi-fi and got on couchsurfing.org right quick to find a place. The guy behind the counter asked us if we knew about that website and after he said he was on there I asked him if he could put us up...he reacted less than enthusiastic, but what did he expect? We were homeless and the only contact we had was the donut shop worker...needless to say he got off and slipped out of the shop without inviting us over. Luckily a guy named Vee heeded our call and invited us to stay at his house. It was about a mile and half walk from where we were and with huge loaded packs it got a bit taxing. Fortunately we found it and were pleasantly surprised (and a smidge overwhelmed) to find out that this was a co-op house with 28 twenty somethings living within. It's CRAAAAAAAAAAAAZY...it's like an urban, young, student anarchist intentional community. So we've been here for 3 days now and I LOVE Santa Cruz. It's a cool, smaller town, but with young progressive people. Most of the young people around here go to UC-Santa Cruz which is an amazing campus up on the hill, buried in the redwoods. I have a feeling I'll be back once the travel bug leaves my system, which is probably no time soon. Since we've been here we've part taken in the communal dinners that the house has 6 nights a week, becoming apart of the co-op means you all buy food together and have free reign over the fridge. Basically the rent is all inclusive, so far 5 or 6 of the people living here have asked us to stay and move in. I'd seriously consider it....maybe...30 roommates is intense...but they are all really fucking cool. We also got to partake in the weekly dumpster diving run that happens. Basically they hit up a few of the local grocery stores and retrieve discarded goods that are still perfectly ok to eat. We got about 200 pounds of bread. It's no surprise that the house motto is "Toast is the most". A bit of butter, toast and nutritional yeast...or NOOCH as the cool kids say...and you have a complete meal. They are all fucking ga ga for the Nooch...it's pretty B.A. We were also invited as guests on their pirate radio station...I may have rapped Salt 'n' Pepa's "Shoop" in it's entirety on-air...it was epic. We also got custom screen printed shirts from DJ Bry Bry...an image of a cat with the words "No Dogs, No Masters" There are roughly 10 cats living in or around the Chavez co-op...and ironically 1 dog. Toast Cats...Toast Cats...Vee actually has a tattoo of that for the house. In-ter-esting...
Sadly I think me and Tamara will be leaving tomorrow to head for Carmel to wwoof for a bit and then head to explore Big Sur...Santa Cruz is in my heart now and I will no doubt be back to explore living here. Halloween will soon be upon us and we have yet to make plans, but Tamara is working hard on her costume...details to unfold later.
OOOOOOH!! And we ran into the Dutch boys, Jelle and Pim in downtown Santa Cruz, isn't that so exciting...and they are staying at the hostel right across the street from the house that we had no idea was there. They only have 1 month left in the U.S. before they head back to Holland. They only going to L.A. so they are going to take it REALLY slow and steady for the next month. Perhaps we'll run into them again and I won't forget to ask for their e-mail addresses...which of course I still don't have.
Anyways...I'm off to sleep in the huge lofted nook for another night in this magical house of people.
From the road,
Maggie
Anyways...I'm off to sleep in the huge lofted nook for another night in this magical house of people.
From the road,
Maggie
