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00:03Buenos dias! It's Skate Tales, and we're in Argentina, the city of Mendoza.
00:09I'm here to meet the nomadic skate crew, no hotels.
00:13And we're going on a road trip. Let's go.
00:55They're already skating.
00:58Hey, Chris! Man! It's been a while. Good to see you, too. Wow! It's been a while.
01:10Sick! Yes! Dante! Mendoza!
01:16The No Hotels crew are skateboarding's true road dogs.
01:19These Floridians are on a mission to experience the world through skateboarding in the most rudimentary way.
01:25Living simply, making art, camping where they can, and filming their experiences on cool old cameras along the way.
01:33While some skate teams stay in luxury hotels and travel like rock stars,
01:37the No Hotels approach is a refreshing contrast, with the crew preferring the spontaneity and adventure of the open road.
01:45I had to find out more about what makes these rippers tick.
01:48So I joined them on an 800-kilometer skate mission in Argentina to get a sense of their skateboarding life.
01:55Lived with just a single rule, No Hotels.
02:00So what brings you guys to Argentina?
02:02I was visiting some family. I'm from here. I'm from Mendoza.
02:06And I've been living in the States for 20 years. And yeah, that's pretty much it.
02:10We all have grown up together and we're doing the trip as like the first international No Hotels trip.
02:15And you know, check out Argentina.
02:17We would skate together all the time. And it's just like, dude, you guys have to come to the Promised
02:20Land, my motherland.
02:21Like, he's been so excited for this trip for so long. And yeah, it's extra special to make it happen.
02:35Did you see that?
02:37Power sled, huh?
02:39Back to the ball, back to the ball.
02:51It fell under .
03:09Whoa!
03:11Ah!
03:12Oh!
03:36Catching the last raise of sun, full-pipe session with the boys, go to hotels, skate
03:42with the boys, go to hotels, take 11.
03:58Oh my god!
04:06Oh my god!
04:09Yeah, I'm right!
04:14Oh my god!
04:17Yeah, I'm right!
04:18Oh my god!
04:23Oh my god!
04:24Oh my god!
04:34Oh my god!
04:42That was so good.
04:44Back to back.
04:51So, no hotels, crew of homies in Orlando.
04:55We were filming for the Plus Skate Shop video.
04:57Did a whole year filming in the mountains.
05:01Basically, there was 10 of us.
05:03Half the crew camped the entire trip.
05:06Half the crew stayed in hotels.
05:09So, we had a hotels crew and we had a no hotels crew.
05:11So, we were like, what's the name of the video going to be called?
05:15And no hotels is what we called it.
05:17No hotels is just a crew of guys that keeps getting larger and larger
05:21that we just go on trips and kind of throw away the itinerary.
05:26Just have a point A and point B and make it work with just mostly camping.
05:32But it's also a lot of staying at homies' houses and it's just traveling.
05:35All over though.
05:37Most of the United States.
05:39Yeah.
05:39Skateboard it.
05:40No hotels is basically just a band of brothers, basically.
05:44And we love to travel and skate and we love to do that experience together.
05:48It's like the ideology of how we want to skate and live and express ourselves and explore the world freely.
06:03We got to clean the spot before we skate it.
06:06That's how it goes with the ditches.
06:08Grab a piece of wood, use your skateboard, shovel, hands.
06:11Hands.
06:13Work in a team.
06:161,2,2,3.
06:24Ohhhhhhh!!!!
06:26Yes.
07:04I think Chris's board just hit me in the face, but it's alright.
07:46You can't make it up, you just can't do it.
07:49You know, you gotta have a budget to go on a skate trip, so for us, getting all the homies
07:53together and like going on a trip with basically nothing, making something out of nothing, can't
07:58do it.
07:58Camping made it happen because you gotta have a few hundred dollars together to stay in
08:05a hotel room or stay somewhere, Airbnb, so you cut that out, the budget's wide open.
08:12We were skating the ditch and got carried away a little bit, now it's getting dark and we
08:16gotta find a place to stay.
08:19And you know, it's not gonna be a hotel.
08:24I'd say we have more of like a Bargatron mentality, we kinda just go for it, but we've learned
08:30a lot and we've definitely learned from our mistakes, we're not scared to get in trouble,
08:36but there's definitely been times where we've pushed our luck.
08:39You gotta watch your back because sometimes we camp in somewhere that is way more dangerous
08:44than we realized.
08:46We do a lot of renegade camping which is harder to do outside of America, camping somewhere
08:51and asking for forgiveness instead of permission.
08:59One of our favorite things to do, we all have our own pop-up tents.
09:04You unzip the bag and you throw the tent in the air and…
09:11I would not say we're expert campers.
09:14I think we're a lot better at roughing it than mastering the art of camping itself.
09:20Like, it seems to be more so that we're just down to Bargat.
09:29How many dudes does it take to put together one tent?
09:37Yeah.
09:46Whoa!
09:47It's so big!
09:49I like this spot.
10:12Got to do the morning wash, you know, before we head into the day.
10:19And did I mention it's really hot?
10:23But we're driving cross-country from the west to the east.
10:29We have super, super broad timeline or super broad game plan and we go for it.
10:36And it's one of those things too, it's like, it's a reason to hit up all the people across
10:40the country that you wanted to hit up.
10:42We're gonna go to Cordoba and meet Gianni.
10:46He lives in the countryside, he's a hippie, plays the skate guitar, skates a little stick.
10:53It's gonna be epic, trust me.
10:57Last night when we arrived it was so dark you couldn't see nothing.
11:01Waking up to the beautiful mountains, swimming pool, concrete park.
11:08Gianni's house is epic.
11:15So Gianni.
11:16DÃgame.
11:17What is this place?
11:18A beautiful place in Cordoba, in the mountains.
11:23It's my home now.
11:24Five years I live here.
11:26And why did you choose here, this place?
11:28It's very green, very calm.
11:30I'm from downtown Buenos Aires.
11:32And for five years I wanted to change the panorama and choose this field.
11:38And this is a madness that was born in a pandemic.
11:43I was working on doing the swimming pool.
11:46And sobring some wood.
11:49And I said, well, let's see if we put some tracks.
11:53Inconscientemente, it's a kind of message that, well, that one can go out with desire.
11:57Because many children say, I don't have the good shoes or a good table.
12:03And this is also, if you have the chance, you can go with whatever you want.
12:09And you can progress with whatever you want.
12:11Imagine if I do it at 49 years old.
12:13I imagine that a young man can do it with much more ease than 20.
12:17So it doesn't really matter what you skate, huh?
12:20Yeah.
12:21As long as it's got trucks, wheels, any kind of wood goes.
12:28Music.
12:29Full of music.
12:30All.
12:31Let's skate.
12:57controller.
13:43Oh my God, Johnny was definitely a highlight of this trip because of how unique he is.
13:52And I mean, it's kind of the epitome of like making something out of nothing.
13:58We meet people and have like meaningful long lasting engagements with other people that
14:03like, hey, this guy's down to let you guys all crash at his house.
14:07We went there.
14:08We had the best time and end up baking a friend for life.
14:12We go on these trips.
14:14We meet people.
14:14Like, it's not like, oh yeah, you're going to show us around.
14:17We'll see you in the morning.
14:17It's like, yeah, we're going to be piled out in your backyard, like waking up.
14:21Hopefully you got a swimming pool we can jump in real quick, like, and then let's get
14:25the day started.
14:26Like, you're with us full time if you're showing us around, you know.
14:29But man, all the Asados and just all the people that we met along the way and everything and
14:33just, I just feel very welcomed here.
14:36And it's really been amazing.
14:38Everybody's been so hospitable and there's been so much culture that I really didn't
14:43know that we were going to experience on this trip.
14:49What an incredible place.
14:52The swimming pool, the park, the guitars, the thunderstorm last night.
14:59Did you film that?
15:01It was one hour of thunderstorm last night.
15:05Homies' tents got pushed 100 meters away.
15:09Thank you so much, Johnny, for hosting us.
15:12But now we must go.
15:13Where to?
15:14We don't know.
15:19Being on the road, like, not knowing exactly where you're going to be definitely has the
15:25sense of freedom and adventure.
15:29But it's like, it's controlled chaos.
15:33Just the beauty of exploration, even if it's outside of your own town, is really eye-opening
15:39and good for your brain.
15:42It doesn't get much better than this.
15:45The beauty in the road, you've got to see it to believe it.
15:49If you're not in it, you're not going to win it.
15:52If you're not putting yourself out there, you're just going to be watching it from your computer
15:57screen.
15:57The spirit of the open road, you don't even realize it's there.
16:02You're just having the time of your life with your friends.
16:04And my advice to people that haven't been on, like, a trip like that or anything, or, like,
16:08haven't been on a skate trip or been on a road trip, you don't really need anything.
16:22We made a quick pit stop.
16:24And on that pit stop, we got tipped off about a hill bomb because we had one of the guys
16:28skating, was just warming up, skating flat in traffic.
16:30And the guy was like, oh, I know a spot with no cars, way better for you.
16:33So we hopped in, took his word for it, and showed up here, and led us to a couple good
16:38hill bombs.
16:39And it dumped us right out to a perfect little swimming rock spot.
16:42So can't really beat it on the fly.
16:45Looking for skate spots in the wild.
16:48Should I try to wally up?
16:52Should I try to take it?
16:55I don't know.
16:55I'm sorry.
17:00Let's go.
17:48Let's go.
17:59Let's go.
18:03There's been some phone calls made and turns out Johnny's homie Lucho has got a place for us.
18:09He's got a mini ramp, a countryside house, and it's just outside of Cordoba City.
18:19Got woken up by the sun, had to look for the shade.
18:24Found the shade next to the ramp.
18:26Here, look at this.
18:30Before you go on a skate trip, you do that mental checklist in your head.
18:33You're like, do I have this?
18:34Do I have this?
18:35Do I have this?
18:36And Evan was one person in our crew that was really good about just kind of being like, nothing matters.
18:42Just go for it.
18:43Like, pack light.
18:45Pack light is a huge piece of advice.
18:48Get away from people.
18:50Like, try and get far enough away to where you're comfortable and you have your own zone.
18:54Find soft ground.
18:55Find soft ground and don't sleep next to the homie that snores super gnarly.
19:01That is the best tip I can give.
19:05Bring some type of, like, soap or something to wash your hands with because you may not see a bathroom
19:11for several days sometimes.
19:15My tip to give you would to be keep your stuff locked up.
19:19Watch your back.
19:20Make sure everybody else is watching your back.
19:23Safety in the renegade camp style is more important than, like, anything.
19:35Skateboarders dive into cities harder than any other group of people on planet Earth.
19:40I genuinely believe that.
19:42Like, we go into cities without an itinerary.
19:44We go in and we just barge it.
19:46We end up talking to the locals.
19:49Maybe the locals tell us somewhere to stay.
19:51We end up on some crazy cliffside.
19:53But had we looked it up two weeks in advance online, we would have stayed at some campsite you would
19:57have had to pay for or stayed at a hotel like most people.
20:05I know it looks like Germany, but it's actually outside of Lucho's house in Argentina.
20:11First spot of the day, straight to jump in, and they're running up from the inside.
20:19Good morning, Wes.
20:20Good morning, Wes.
20:22Good morning.
20:42IUNT UNTERTAILS
20:45Yeah.
21:04That's my friend Wes. 2014 Skater of the Year Wespring.
21:11Boring. Boring.
21:13Thanks for your good memory.
21:42Boring.
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