Day two - Time share owners?

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Our day began with an unsolicited, pushy "wake up call" from our time share lady friend making sure we were up and getting ready for our time share "presentation breakfast." might as well call it a manipulation breakfast, as Lindsay so begrudgingly pointed out. We were up, and the call kind of pissed kemper off. Not a promising start for the time share people. Lindsay reminded kemper that she was just doing her job, and it was only going to get worse from here. Kemper assured Lindsay this was going to be quick, only 90 minutes of our day and a 300 dollar pay off. We get in, we eat, we get out.

Interior Pueblo Bonito Sunset sales office. Limper enters the building. "Hello ladies! Mark Weber will be taking care of you ladies". A goofy Caucasian male enters scene. Now we were expecting a local suave smooth talker. Our friend Jeanine had warned us of the sexy Mexican sales men that we would encounter. She prepped us on choosing false personas with low income jobs to lower their expectations. Lindsay, the starving sketch artist, and Kemper, the passionate broke musician, were ready for the pitch. It was all about the free breakfast and holding strong. Cut to ten minutes in, a little bit of small talk, and a bite of pancakes... Lindsay looked over and Kemper was in. Mark was good. He didn't let our alias jobs and constant reminders of being broke get in his way. After our hearty breakfast and the beginning of a sales pitch, we excused ourselves to the bathroom before the next portion of the presentation. We were alone and Kemper's eyes were big with excitement. "Maybe we should do this, Linz?!" Now this is exactly what Lindsay was afraid of. She knows her friend well, and she knows it doesn't take much for Kemper to get excited. At this point, Lindsay was unsure if kemper was really interested in purchasing a time share or just really wanted to help out our new friend, Mark, from Santa Monica. Regardless, we had to go on the tour of the property and the real pitch was yet to come. A Cadillac ride to the Governor's suite, the Monte Cristo suites, the Presidential suite, and a junior suite later... Shit starts to get real. Mark starts at $20,000, then lowers to $13,000, then lowers to $10,000... He's throwing in a lifetime golf membership, a lifetime yearly $2000 travel credit, a membership to RCI, and the discounts keep rolling in. Every 5 minutes Mark is sweetening the deal and Kemper's eyes keep getting bigger. She's a goner and Lindsay is scared. Time for another bathroom break. Kemper can't wait for a minute alone because she is sure Lindsay is on the same page. It's a no brainer! Cut to bathroom...Kemper: "so obviously were doing this Linz! Right?! Deal of the century!" Lindsay: "what? No! No way!" Kemper is in shock. How do we walk away from such greatness? We live to travel... Together. Isn't this the sign of a bright traveling future? Lindsay crushes Kemper's dreams by telling her she can do it alone. Lindsay is out. Reality sinks in for 5 minutes. And we are back at the table. But wait, Mark has breaking news. The deal just got even sweeter. Kemper's back in it. She's wheeling and dealing, and Mark has quickly forgotten Lindsay is even at the table. Until, Lindsay starts questioning this "sweet" deal. She's really handing it to him and at one point he's got nothing. And that is all it took to pull Kemper out of the fog and back into the light. Deal is off. The second bloody Mary did not work. Came close. And if anyone could close on us, it would have been big hands Mark. Two and a half hours later, we gracefully made our exit...time share free. Success!

On the road to Todos Santos, Kemper is now feeling strong and confident in her decision. It was clearly the right time for Lindsay to confide in her about her true feelings. She was in. She thought it was the deal of a lifetime. She knew one of them had to stay strong but if Kemper would have broke... She would have co-signed. This did not sit well with Kemper. On to our next adventure... Todos Santos. With Lindsay behind the wheel and Kemper navigating the map...we took a detoured route out of town. We failed to mention Gringa, our tiny compact car, had encountered a bit of a fender bender on the way in from the airport. Maybe it was already there or maybe Lindsay hit a speed bump at 50 mph? Jury is out. Either way, a piece of the front fender was dangling and scraping the assfault as we made our way down the road... The whole way. A slight detour, a Mexi freeway, some solid tunes, and many laughs later we arrived at our destination. First stop... Pura Vida, an organic juice stop that Kemper discovered via a travel brochure. Best way to sum up this spot is thru photo. See photo. Hard to miss.

We continue to tour the town. Shopping, communicating with the locals (in true Kemper fashion), a stop by the original Hotel California and a stop for a delightful cappuccino later.... We were ready to set sail for Cerritos Beach.

Lindsay had been to Cerritos Beach once before.. By mistake. Kemper was now manning the wheel and it was Lindsay's turn to navigate. The only directions she could remember was that it was a dirt road turn off the main highway and there were no signs. Well that really narrowed it down. Dirt roads and no signage was the norm around these parts. Nevertheless we were on a mission. Cerritos Beach here we come.

A couple u turns later, we made it onto a dirt road. Was it "the" dirt road to Cerritos? Eh. Minor details. We were feeling good. Taylor Swift was on repeat... Don't judge, she has the voice of an angel and you can't help but sing along. The road was dirt, and the possibilities were endless. We passed a farmer in his tractor, a field of basil plants, a closed organic market (it's opened everyday except Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday)... Wherever we were heading felt right. Getting lost safely, check!
Right turn, left turn, u- turn, right turn, and suddenly the clouds parted and a sign revealed "mini super munchies." perfecto!
We parked our little Gringa and were met by the sweetest little hippie with ginormous hands, who owned this lovely little hut in the middle of nowhere. Her hands were huge. I mean we thought Mark had something to talk about, but his hands have nothing on her. Is there something in the water here? Those beefy hands served up the best blueberry empanada two girls could ask for! She told us tales of locally made soap (Kemper loved this) and the history behind her little organic hut. We weren't sure when the last time she showered was, but it didn't matter. This place was special. With Cerritos on our minds, we got back in little "Gringa" and took to the bumpy dirt roads. We were really throwing caution to the wind and Taylor swift to our ears, with no map in use it was all instinct from here out... Dead end.

Back on the highway, with a slight twinkle of defeat under feet, we were headed back to our home front. Just then, clouds parted again or actually the sun was pretty damn bright, regardless another dirt road revealed itself. Kemper made a swift right turn (derecha, for those that speak the language) towards a Mayan village. Cerritos? Can it be? Just as the sun began its gloaming process, we found the ever sought after Cerritos beach. Victory. We soaked in the the beauty of Cerritos. It is here where we broke our first rule... It didn't feel right peeing openly next to the hurricane demolished hut of the Mayan village. Homeward bound.

A couple things to know about our rules to the road... Always try to make it home before dark, never look anyone in the eye on the road, and try to pass as butch Mexican lesbians. We felt like our baseball cap and sunglasses were the perfect disguise for this. Who's going to mess with a couple butch mexican lesbian?

Test 1- a sketchy local standing on a post on the side of the highway. Kemper spotted this uninformed riffle bearing man and brought him to Lindsay's attention. We both bottlenecked and made unwavering eye contact. Rule broken! High alert was in full effect. Kemper spent the next 10 minutes spewing her conspiracy theories of how this hooligan had radioed his comrades in the Cartel of our whereabouts. Never a dull moment.

Once the fear of the Cartel had passed, and calm was restored, we approached test #2... An armed federale road block. As we pulled up to the officer, Lindsay coached Kemper through the protocol. "just give a wave, smile, and keep driving." Kemper confidently assured Lindsay she's got this.

As we slowly approached the large Mexican federale standing at the check point... Kemper froze. Her hand that was supposed to do a confident wave hardly looked like a wave and hardly made it above the steering wheel. It was more of a awkward twitch. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was open. The look on the federales face was pure confusion. Kemper stumped him. Lindsay, in stock to what she was witnessing, still managed to give a wave and smile. With that confident wave and reassurance that the driver (kemper) wasn't haven't a seizure, the confused federale waved us through. Another close call.

As the night rapidly approached, we quickly made our way through town In search of our lovely resort. The map we were using was not exactly detailed, so we struggled a bit with finding the correct road back. In fact, I'm pretty sure we were about a mile away from the hotel but nothing looked familiar. And that's because it wasn't. We were definitely lost and by now we were breaking another one of our road rules... it was pitch black out.

We were in a part of town where not another tourist was in sight. We talked about just playing it cool, put down the map, and try to blend in. We weren't sure if the sound of half of our fender scraping on the ground made us stand out or truly blend in. This wasn't really the nice part of town,so fancy cars were nowhere to be found. A couple left turns, right turns, and driving purely on gut instinct we found a familiar looking hill. We were pretty sure this hill was the only thing standing between us and our final destination. So we scraped our way up the hill and low and behold, we made it! Well we made it to the employee entrance... But we made it! We pulled up to the gate feeling so proud and amped from our little adventure, not expecting the response we received.

Again, we managed to thoroughly confuse a local hard working Mexican. The guard at the gate did not believe we were guests at the hotel. Maybe we had really nailed this local butch lesbian alias, or maybe the condition of the car threw him off. Or maybe it was the loud Mexican hip hop that so conveniently started playing from Lindsay's i-phone set up. Either way, the guard was not letting us through. Instead he sent us all the way down to the front entrance, where the "normal" guests check in and enter.

Two confused security guards later and we were back on track. We were heading down the curvy road with our resort in sight. As we made our way "home" we spotted a young employee walking the long and bumpy road. In the spirit of feeling like a local, Lindsay suggested we give the guy a lift. After all, it looked like he was headed to where we were going. Kemper slams on the breaks and throws "Gringa" in reverse. Excellent idea Lindsay! The next thing ya know, the young employee was in our back seat (insert name we could not pronounce, much less understand). He directed us past the turn off for our resort and up an unfamiliar road. We were still on resort property, so neither of us were terribly alarmed. But our bleeding hearts couldn't kick the guy out of our car at this point. So yet again, "Gringa" was headed towards making another appearance at an employee gate. Before security could see us, we pulled over and let our thick accented employee friend out of the car. We were feeling good! We just shaved 45 minutes off this young guy's commute home.
A quick shower and we were at the lobby bar enjoying live music and happy hour. In hopes of having a mellow night, we wrapped up drinks at the lobby bar and made our way over to the Bistro for a quick bite to eat before heading home for some ample pj and movie time. At least that was the plan. And when does anything on our adventures go according to plan? Down at the bistro, we shared a pizza and a glass of wine and asked for "la cuenta" (that's Spanish for the check). A new server, who we will call Felix in this blog, just arrived for his late shift. While asking for the check, we asked Felix for a little top off. No big deal. Just a little night cap for the road. Felix had other plans. Looking beck, neither of us are quite sure how we ended up staying out so late. But one thing we are certain of... Our little night cap consisted of Felix rolling out 3 of his finest bottles of red (on the house) and pulling up a chair. 3am, lights out. Thank you Felix.

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Comments

[Big Brother]

Crazy kids!
Love it, LOL! Another great adventure from the KempZ bunch. ; )