Squatch Men: Pure Drift

Road trips, adventure, surfing, community, and altruism. These are things we value highly at Dr. Squatch Soap Co.. We realized quickly we had met some kindred spirits when we heard about what Andres and Corey where doing with their mission at Pure Drift.

Check out our conversation we had with these Sasquatch Men below and try to tell us you’re not a little bit jealous of this epic journey….

What is the Pure Drift Project and how did this idea originate?

Andres: Pure Drift is an organization that was created to bring water filters to people living on the coastline of the Pacific Ocean that do not have access to clean drinkable water, that’s about 130 million people in South and Central America.

Corey: how did the idea originate? Well, Andres is the man with the plan. I know he wanted to go back to his home town in Ecuador and possibly make a trip out of it. One thing led to another and I get a text message from Andres saying, “What are you up next fall (2015)? I’m planning to drive to Ecuador and what I wanna do is stop as much as I can and surf and provide people and small communities with water filters. The trip will be 3 or 4 months long and I’m starting now because I want to do it right. We can talk more about it over the weekend if you’re interested.” and my response was simply “Hell yeah.”

Why choose this route for the trip?

A: Corey is from California and I’m from Ecuador, it felt right to start and finisher trip in the places we were born at, plus there’s sick waves along the Pacific coastline so we will deliver filters to communities with lack of clean water access and surf our brains out, it’s a win-win situation.

What will be your approach to connecting with the people along the way?

C: We have two ways to connect with people that need some help accessing clean water, one is contacting them before the trip and for that we need help from people that know schools or communities near the coast that can use some help from us. And the second way will be, as we call it “drifting it”, we’ll spend some time in small towns talking to people and looking for people that need the filters.

A: 1 in 6 people don’t have access to clean, drinking water and for kids that means more problems like diarrhea, dengue, malaria, etc. Besides that, we think that nobody should struggle every day to obtain something as basic as water.

What’s the best wave you have ever surfed?

A: That’s a tricky question, there’s always a recent wave that tops your last one but I think I’m going to go with a wave I caught at Topanga, Ca last August during Hurricane Marie. It was the 3rd or 4th wave of the set and everyone fought so hard for those first waves that I found myself in the perfect spot, by myself and just went for it. Super long, clean wall with a little barrel section right in front of the lifeguard building. Epic.

C: Best wave I’ve ever caught was my first wave. Definitely the start of a beautiful thing and if it wasn’t for that first wave, I’d probably be doing something really awkward and boring. Definitely wouldn’t be planning this trip with this dude if it wasn’t for that first wave.