Beave, Author at La Colina Project

A beautiful lotus growing in our pool

Currently more of a pond…

Jungle Journal

Grand Slam …

April 2, 2018April 2, 2018
by Beave

It’s a huge source of satisfaction that I am accompanied along the way by my friends and my son. The scrutiny of strangers is a fascinating process but the eyes of close friends can cause some performance anxiety. Seems we are passing the approval tests. Many more ahead mind…

Our full to burst compliment of folk are all enthusiastic to contribute & work but also have fun in their minds. Plans are afoot. There is much talk of whales who are passing by our shore daily at this time of year. There is the need to catch fish. Fish to take home and cook on an open fire all macho like. There is the need to explore the Pacific more. Coral is requested. We book us all on a day trip where a boat will take us to see whales , catch fish and drop us on an Island to snorkel over the coral. Success.

There is much excited whale spotting with some of these huge beasts getting very close. We catch a small tuna type fish (Ceviched later ) and tested out our ability to walk into the ocean in flippers without falling over and hold our breath long enough to follow the fish through the coral. Much sun , sea and sand and some sea sickness (or hidden hangovers) by the end of the day. It was a fairly dry event as the night before accidentally turned naughty. No one could face much beer after that.

There is a push now to get our bar built and the outdoor tables ready. We have invited many friends from the local community who have helped us out or just curious to visit us for a “soft opening” of La Colina Project on Tuesday this week. There is a lot of work to be done before then but there is great motivation and enthusiasm from everyone to make this a memorable event. I have all the faith it will be. Not entirely sure why yet. I’m not worried.

The leaps and limps to action are impressive. There is enough of us to make it fun and photographed. Monday night we apply the last coat of varnish to the tables bare foot in the dark with headlamps. My feet get a coating of marine varnish that lasts for many days. The other results are magical. We have a bar. A real one. The display of stunningly polished parota in the form of huge tables and a the bar top give a touch of class. Even the cow heads have lights in their eyes. A very cool addition. I am tasked with cleaning out a large cooler chest borrowed from behind a local restaurant of all its indescribable muck and grot. There is much of it that a hose pipe efficiently covers me in. We fill it with ice and beer. We have a number of jugs of local tequila, mezcal and rum. The blender has power, the lights are lit. I smell of muck and grot and have mottled brown feet but I’m ready as I’m gonna be.

The coming together of so many new friends and old who have helped us out over the past months is emotional. My strange smell & dappled feet are forgiven and a pretty fantastic afternoon and night evolved. Lots of tours of the property and gifts of booze and good company. At some point my knees again surcome to the effects of Mezcal and I am removed. Probably for the best .

The morning after is brutal. My mezcal knees have recovered but I still have a musty grot odor. There is a full truck of recycling. A large heap of cans, glass, cardboard and half drunk bottles of tequila. Despite valiant attempts to make a significant dent our free bar ends up with more booze than we started with. Result. It is a relief to shower and collapse and consider a job well done.

It is a different world out here now for a number of reasons. Our never ending list of things to do “right now” has reduced somewhat. The list exists but now has endless things to do “sometime soon”. Priorities are shifting. Our first chunks of big money items like solar and construction are spent and so we are now at the point of nurturing and repairing our battered bank account in order to look at phase two. Plans are made to tackle the white house and the Scorpion temple at some point in the future and saving to get a roof on our house that can cope better with the rainy season. We are concentrating now on selling my house in Darlington. When that is done we will have the means to make the next investments. Until then it’s austerity for us while making what we have give us an income. So a diet of tacos and Tecate awaits while we undertake a charm offensive with all the local letting agents.

We also have a lot of power. The solar panels are catching photons at an extraordinary rate and our sexy nano-carbon batteries are storing them all like champions. The past weeks have seen lights appear everywhere and sockets have emerged. Our pool pump has been removed and loved and returned to service with it’s own power line. The pump that pulls the water uphill to the top tinacos has also been wired in. This saves me dragging generators in and out of trucks and up and down hills three times a day. My poor old back is saved !

With power comes much digging. We have trenched 100s of meters of conduit under the stony jungle ground. There is a phenomenon here where a small trench just a few inches deep and a few feet long can create a pile of stones bigger than me. It makes no sense at all. The result is we have created a large number of rockeries next to freshly hidden wires. These now line pathways and make for what turns out to be accidental landscaping. Looks rather good.

Our first wave of paying guests proves to be a surprisingly lovely lot. A proper mix of ages and nationalities. It was worries to me that we would have over entitled people arrive here expecting too much and testing my fabled patience. As it turns out people really love it here and are happy to pay us and are on the whole considerably less irritating than expected. There have been some moments of extreme idiocy. It appears there is a section of the population that are more of a challenge. There are a lot more youngish people than I ever expected who are unable (actually unable) to follow basic directions or signs let alone follow a map. They either use Google-Maps to tell them where they are or they haven’t got a clue….no other option exists to them .. Scary but true…. I have , however, been able to deal with this perfectly thanks to my endless patience, understanding and empathetic disposition.

Our reviews so far have been outstanding. We are doing something right. It’s Easter weeks which are famously the busiest of the year and so we would expect to have some interest over this time. We are currently booked out til April. The test will come after that. See how long we can extend the season for visitors out here. We are contemplating retreats here for birdwatchers, fire fly spotters and/or photographers all with compulsory Yoga and Mezcal tastings (maybe).

Bird watching. Who knew ? We are a touch spoilt to be on “The Road of the Squashes”. People travel from far and wide and Canada to pay a bunch of dollars to walk down the road to our house. There are over 200 species of bird here. Right here. My oldest mate from UK (very old) came over to help with my electrics and give his girlfriend a break. He accidentally got hooked into the bird watching as they were outside his window all the time. Before he left they made a list of 36 new species of bird he has seen since he got here two weeks ago. A 13 year old girl arrived the day after from an Island off Vancouver and takes this as a challenge. She makes a list of over 70 new species she had seen in two days!! There has to be a market for a bird watching retreat for those who appreciate tropical birds. We are working on it ……

Sanitation is a thing. Buckets of unspeakable stuff are required to be added to the compost heap very often. There are a lot of productive bodies here now and the buckets are filling up quick. The buckets need emptying and the contents covered in a pile of compost as soon as they get full. It is a familiar process now and it’s become my job. I get it done usually first thing in the morning. It’s not the best way to start the day but not necessarily the worst. One of my previous jobs that I accidentally agreed to when drinking a bit to much at the wrong time was to be in charge of sanitation at an arts festival in Spain. I had the task of looking after the contents of about 1500 people in extreme heat conditions.

In order to delegate as much as possible I created and recruited a whole team of Shit Ninjas. These extraordinary humans took it upon themselves to educate everyone in the process of healthy sanitation and deal with the aftermath. Could do with a few of them here to help me out. My experience as the aptly named Shit Head has hardened me to dealing with such issues. I’ve seen things I can’t unsee. We thankfully have the services here of experienced carers and nurses who are even more conditioned to the grotty end of things so I’m now not the only one on bucket duty. So far it’s working out well and everyone’s experience of dry toilets is pretty positive. Saves a huge amount of water. The Parota sawdust smells the best.

My hair requires a shear I am reliably told. We have decided on a “no mirror on the wall” strategy and to adopt a rural-shabby-chique look and to only make suggestions on each others appearance when it’s clearly the right thing to do. This does remove any remaining vanity issues we may be harboring. Now is one of those moments. I have found that by wetting my hair and turning upside down and hacking off any misbehaving hairs that I can see in my shaving mirror it does change things a little. Not sure entirely positively… I catch my reflection in the rear view mirror of the truck. Not the worst haircut I ever had, however, I do know that my dear UK hair expert would be un-amused by such antics … she would not approve .

The arty gifts we are receiving here are just amazing and are fully appreciated. We have had deliveries of SD Cards packed with music of every sort. We have had unique art pieces made especially for us. Original paintings from guests, my wife pimped up & now as the bar figure head. There is even hand made mobile of paint pots on a saucepan lid shipped in from UK. It’s a great thing. We have a “leave no trace leave art “ philosophy and the time for art is upon us. It will be an exciting time as we see it evolve. A local mural artist work in the local Cervecaria (pub) . She has offered to paint a wall on the outside of the orange block. Should be a stunning addition.

My son Jake has a long held dream. He has always wanted to visit the town of Tequila and this is his chance. For the first time we agree to leave the land in the hands of others for the night and venture the 4 hours to explore the world of 100% agave. We pass many fields of blue agave of various ages. It takes 8 to 12 years before they can be harvested by a Jimador, roasted, juiced and then made into Tequila. We arrive and Jake is to say the very least excited. Haven’t seen him this excited since “X-box Christmas” 2002.

We start with a basic white tequila. You can taste the agave. Strong pepper after-taste. Delicious. Then we get into an old aged golden coloured version that tastes almost like an old rum. We then take the Jose Cuervo factory tasting tour.

My dear son is in his element. The tour climax is a sit down tasting of 4 of their best. “Always start with the best as by the time you finish your taste buds will be in shock” we are told. The group has about 20 people and we are surprised to see that more than half of them leave the tasting after just a sip or two. This leaves a few dozen untouched full glasses of premium tequila. Well it seemed rude to leave them there ….. the remains of the day from this point are hazy. We are fully conversant in the production of tequila and have developed a great appreciation of this magic stuff.

In the interests of further education there was considerably more sampling . “On average we are told that 4 glasses of average tequila will put the average person to sleep in an hour.” We, however, avoided sleep for some time and managed to raise the averages somewhat before eventually calling it and try to find the hotel. We woke early and limped to the van for the long, quiet and reflective drive back.

March 17^th started early watching Ireland beat England at Twickenham to Grand Slam the 6 nations Rugby on Saint Patrick’s Day. There are two proper Irish folk left here to gloat. That is some start to the day for them. The pubs in Dublin must be pure madness and no further excuses are needed here for a touch of daytime celebrating. Despite being wounded by Tequila they all make a good effort to keep their reputation alive.

This past month has passed quickly. My son and most of his mates have bounced back to Dublin. He went through New York post-Paddy’s Day which was an entirely different adventure. Pictures of him with Guinness smugly in hand prove he got home somehow. I miss the bugger already. My daughter is next. One day soon the stars will align and she will be here.

It’s my Birthday. San Pancho is the home to, amongst others, Gilles Ste-Croix who is the co-founder of Cirque du Soleil. His gift to the community here is to offer his considerable resources to train local children in circus skills. He has founded and supports Circo de los Niños http://circodelosninosdesanpancho.mx/ They have a show once a year. It’s tonight and we have tickets. I arrive carrying the considerable load of my first decent steak in 6 months and far too much of freshly made birthday cake and a steeping in Mezcal. I am in a packed venue to watch what Cirque du Soleil can do with 150 Mexican school kids. It’s truly astonishing.

I am stunned enough to require a reasonable number of pints in the Cerveceria before giving in to my age and heading back to the jungle. Those kids were inspirational.

My son’s girlfriend is going home and she needs a photograph of her surfing to show him to wind him up. Reasonable request even though she has never surfed before. We load the van and head to La Lancha beach where the surf is reliable. We take Jayne’s inflatable paddle board and all my surfboards and prepare for the photoshoot. With very little instruction she catches her second ever wave all the way to the beach. By some miracle we have it captured on a phone camera and her visit here is complete . She leaves for Dublin very happy with the photo to prove it all happened.

The day has started well. The guests are moving out. All of them. All on time and apparently delighted… Which is a good.

Another few buckets of the real stuff to compost. The well pump appears to be bust and we just ran out of propane for tea making/ hot water, we don’t have enough Queen size sheets, need to sand and varnish the new Parota tables in the outside kitchen, need to find 3 more pallets for the third composting area next to our house, we also need to work out how to mend or replace the tree house roof before the rains…. Here we go again. Today is exactly 6 months since we landed here. We are already very busy making a plan for the next 6 months.

There may not be a bunny or chocolate egg within 100 miles but Happy Easter.

Jungle Journal

All the young dudes…

March 12, 2018
by Beave

There are moments here. Many moments and it’s a great thing this blog gets to capture them. Things changing fast and will never be the same again.

The first time we saw the humpback whales leaping out of the the water in front of the beach bar we had to check ourselves. Did that actually happen? The splash from these immense beasts is spectacular. Tails surfacing and slipping back under with a slow wave. They entertained us under the sunset for two nights and then moved on.

Nights recently have not been conducive to sleep. We thought that Maustrappe had developed a bad eating habit as she woke us up crunching on her food loudly at 2 am. I decided to encourage her to shut up by shining a torch right at her head. The possum that actually got flashed in the eyes was startled and unimpressed. At about twice the size of the cat it crashed about loudly and frantically trying to get out of presumably the cat hole in the back door where it got in. It ended up in a cupboard stubbornly refusing all persuasion to move. I very cleverly created a barrier of chairs around the cupboard creating a maze that led to the cat hole. I arm myself with a bathroom plunger and give the brute a prod or two to get it started. Not playing the game at all the plunger is attacked with what turns out to be a rather sharp and large set of possum teeth. No wonder it eats so loudly. It then deftly leapt over my useless barrier and hid in the far corner near the balcony door. Jayne woke briefly to mutter some encouragement. A swing of plunger and loud swearing does the trick and the possum closely followed by a curious cat runs onto the balcony. Seeing an approaching cat and a naked ginger man with a chewed plunger is too much and he leaps over the balcony into the night. I check out the ground below for broken possum and there is none. That is one traumatised but tough little bugger.

My son Jake arrives with his girlfriend and mate… but not before his house mate who we have known for many years. He contacted us and asked to be secreted on our land for a few days before Jake arrived so he could be a surprise addition. Happily we accept and put him to work. The next day we all arrive at the airport to meet them. A ragged bunch arrive with sorry tales of a long and adventure filled journey through NY and Cancun and Havana and Mexico City to here. It’s a minor miracle they made it. There is a dash to the Gentleman’s room to release unspeakable things. Jake’s girlfriend is already at the bar. It’s going to be a long month…. We get to the van and take a predetermined route out of the airport and decide to pick up a hitchhiker. Jake’s house mate jumps in the van to be greeted with much jet lagged excitement.

The final chapter in our solar panel saga plays out. We spend all our money leveling the solar frame with much hardware. I spend a very hot & sunny day bolting & sweating up a ladder with an ex-fire fighter from California. Good news is that according to his experience the fire risk on our land is negligible. A humidity of 4-5% can be a worry but ours rarely drops below 30% so we have one significant thing less to worry about. He is also a ginger man. What are we doing in this sun!!?? Some days are spent pulling endless black and aluminium power cables through hundreds of meters of orange conduit through thick jungle. We get help from our new airBnB guests and an entire family from Oregon. Couldn’t have done it without them. Our batteries arrive. They are the most expensive things we have in our lives by quite a margin. They are introduced to their new house and settle in quickly. The computer, robot, control panel, centre of operations looks like a unit from Star Trek. With a flick and a twist and a few final expletives it fires up and in the distance, in a treehouse far far away, a light goes on. It’s taken 5 months. We have power.

With power comes much responsibility. The first and most important of which is to apparently get Jayne a fridge. This is quickly decided upon. We all head to Las Varas in the van on a fridge hunt. Turns out the news that we are getting paid by our soon to arrive friends to stay in the Selva Vista (yet-to-be-finished) apartment has sent us a touch giddy. We return home with a packed van. Fridge, oven and new sexy Chainsaw. Life is complete.

We are woken by our concrete man who has arrived to collect his tools and clothes and all other bits that were evicted from the battery house when the batteries moved in. He arrives with a bucket of yaka fruit and a huge container of homemade Mezcal. Good trade!

Much business and the cabañas are starting to look pretty excellent. Our good friend in town suggested to us that hanging beds might be a thing. This idea ignited by tequila took hold. It gives us the very best excuse to use up all of our bamboo. Our man sets about designing bamboo hanging beds both single and queen size and a double size hanging sofa/bed for the apartment. We use miles of rope to lash the things together and suspend them. Our bamboo pile is seriously reduced. We are delighted to have finally found a use for the stuff!

We make a trip to buy new mattresses for all our new beds. Limonada the pick up truck is deployed. On the way home we are overtaken by a scooter frantically trying to attract our attention. One of our large mattresses is missing. Much hand signaling suggests it’s not that far away. I jump out of the truck and walk a half a km back up the busy highway to retrieve it. Thankfully its not destroyed and has bounced onto the side railing. I hoist it on my back and head back to the truck dodging the traffic. I get to 20 yards behind Limonada and she moves off and disappears in the distance. Jayne somehow missed the brightly coloured queen size thing moving dangerously towards her swearing loudly and took off to make a U turn and try and rescue me. She eventually finds me on the side of the road covered in muck and sweat sitting on a slightly road damaged mattress.

There is a swing dance festival in town and no room at the inns so our little Jungle cabin has been booked out for days. We have had 4 crops of guests through. It’s not much money but it’s a start and everyone loves being out here so our reviews are great. The boys have taken over one of our new cabañas and Jake and his girlfriend are installed in another. We prepare for our friend from Darlington coming over. She arrives and is installed in her own private cabaña.

The central outdoor kitchen area is looking rather well. We have introduced a palapa shade roof, sink, worktop and an oven. It even has its own working power socket!! We will plumb the solar into lighting and more sockets soon.

The bathroom shower block has been transformed. Our resident bats have been encouraged to move to more suitable accommodation which allows the place to have a coat of paint and remain clean. Continuous falling bat guano is a challenge.

As a final touch we have created a stairway and a platform up to the roof which gives a raised area to eat, sunbathe or relax under the jungle/stars. There is a bannister around this area as it’s small enough for drunks not to be trusted. It’s looking beautiful. We have just listed all the cabañas separately on airBnB and also the whole area as an open-plan 3 bedroom retreat. We have a serious amount of bookings and enquiries already!!!

It’s changed…..

From this………..

To this ……..

We make an early start and head North to get supplies. The time zone change catches us and we arrive very early. We are making great time as a result until we get stuck on the road on the way back due to some accident again. Common theme we know. It’s an hour on the same bit of road and nothing is coming the other way. We hear a helicopter. We are close to a local town and we divert in for some lunch. We hear that a bus has hit a taxi and it’s not a good result. When we return to the road we pass what is left of a car but there is not much left. 30 feet down into the jungle is the bottom of a bus, wheels up. A large full transit bus to Guadalajara packed with families. There are fatalities and many serious injuries. We hear later that the taxi driver who is well known in San Pancho was at the end of a few days of a drink and drugs binge. Another humbling day.

The Six Nations Rugby is happening and I’m suddenly not the only one that cares. It is possible now we have some power to get my laptop functional enough to run a VPN and fool the internet gods that I’m sitting in a bar in UK somewhere and allow me to watch it like every other license paying UK citizen. My Irish mates are also willing to get up at 7 am to drink Mezcal and watch the match. Ireland v Wales …. don’t want to talk about it. They do….. constantly.

More good friends from Darlington are due in a few days and there is a mad rush of wood cutting, window making, chair hanging, safe installation, bloody floor cleaning and sink plumbing to get it ready for them. We create a staircase onto the roof of the orange block which makes for an outside raised lounging area. Fairy lights installed and the place is perfect with a good few hours to spare. How this place has changed….

From this ……….

To this …………..

We do another airport collect run and meet the others on the beach before arriving home. It’s a full moon and the jungle is lit up. No need for torches. A well lubricated crowd all witness our first Selva Vista apartment guests check in. They love it.

That’s a full house for us.

NINE guests !!

Here we go.

Jungle Journal

UK Surf & Stings

February 9, 2018
by Beave

It’s been five months since we first arrived from Manchester airport and only four months since we bought the land and started this project. All things converge and conspire to humble, surprise and delight us in equal measure pretty much every day. We have had, as expected, a hectic January with many comings and some goings. February is bidding fair to be equally mental.

Jayne’s parents arrived middle of January to join her sister and they have all been dutifully deployed ever since. They drove all the way down from Calgary pulling a tent trailer packed with all the stuff Jayne left at their house before she left on her motorbike 4 years ago. Our house now has posh cups and plates. All the notably jankier bits and pieces have been replaced with things from Jayne’s time in her flat in London. Proper upgrade.

For the past few weeks there has been much cleaning and fixing and creating delivered with great enthusiasm and skill. They head on the long road home again next week in time for us to have a couple of precious essential days of space to ourselves to restore our aching sanity and make plans for our next influx.

We get a sudden instant booking for the jungle cabin. She arrives the very next day. We kick out the current tenant (Jayne’s sister). Much busyness cleaning and making good all the things. Gas is plumbed and sheets are laundered and floors are swept. Cushions are sewn and counter tops are lined and lights are hung. We await the arrival of the girl from Bristol. She doesn’t show up. Much confusion until we check and discover the booking is for next month. Not the best start at hosting… Anyway the place is in good shape for our next lot of visitors arriving the next day.

We acquire a number of outdoor tables and chairs from town. They are much needed but are bright red and coca-cola branded . We de-brand them & deploy cans of Copper and a CP3-0 gold spray paint . Works rather acceptably. They are much used.

Jayne’s brother, who she shared her motorbike adventure with, arrives with his girlfriend and insanely cute one-year-old daughter SnakeJaguar. I will leave the story of how she got such a kick arse cool name to Jayne. I’m sure she will get the time and energy to blog soon.

There is a strange legacy that is manifest on our land from an experiment to introduce citrus fruit to this area. In the 70’s the Mexican president who had great affection for San Pancho (and his mistress who lived there) made a deal with a large Japanese company to introduce orange , lime and lemon trees to the area. At the time the local crops were predominantly Mango and Palm Oil. The Japanese built a series of warehouses that still exist (now community centers) and started growing citrus trees. What happened in those warehouses is not fully explained but things got a little mixed up. The result is that we have trees here that bear strange fruit. Oranges that taste and look lemony. Lemons that look like limes. Limes that give lemon juice. There are advantages. A slice of orangey-lemon-lime in a gin and tonic works a treat.

As the Swiss family Davidson contingent here expands further we are also joined by an Aussie couple on the same motorbike journey Jayne took with her brother. Alaska to Argentina via La Colina. Both are engineers. He is a civil engineer and she is clearly an uncivil one. Poor sods park their bikes and are dropped right in the thick of it.

Our solar frame needs concreting in at exactly the right angle of the dangle for the maximum photon catching efficiency. The ground on which it sits is at a different angle in all directions. The frame itself has legs at 3.6M to 2.6M all of which need to be dropped into accurately placed holes of different sizes and secured permanently at an angle of 17 degrees to the sun. All this and leave enough room underneath to hang hammocks in the shade. They agree to take this on and create sums, drawings, formula and numbers, string lines and marks. We bring in our concrete guy who now has the whole plan translated for him. Chances are this might just maybe work out OK. Perhaps.

Our Romanian friend arrives in the night. He lives in Switzerland. We have known him for many years from the Nowhere Festival in Spain. He brings me Slivovitz in a plastic water bottle smuggled from Eastern Europe. This stuff is an extraordinarily efficient plum brandy that has been known to considerably shorten many of my favorite days (in a good way). I’m saving most of it for when there is a smaller more appropriate audience. He delivers Swiss Chocolate to an excited Jayne and pitches his tent. We spend some good days balancing work and sunsets. He and our Aussie bikers are inspired to dig up a mountain of rocks behind the cabin and create an outdoor en-suite toilet area that we designed but hadn’t quite got around to building yet. Looks fab and will make staying there a whole heap easier.

Our concrete guy is still finishing the concrete floor of which we are now unable to speak about without making a bad face. It’s taken a huge amount of time and money and stomach lining to get it this far. It’s level and brownish but we are over it. So very over it. Our man spends 3 days cleaning the thing and sealing it to make the best of what we have. Stairs are reinstalled and we move on.

Concrete man’s wife is very grateful that we have taken her man on. She has a number of his ten or eleven children (he is not sure how many he has) and so any income is greatly appreciated. News is that she has been making cookies and edible Mexican delights for us for days. She arrives with some of the kids and delivers boxes of cream, strawberry, pineapple & chocolate treats. She and the kids stay a few days on the land happily sleeping on the shelves in the battery house (cell). We count 15 people living on our land tonight.

Excitement. We find out that one of my favorite photographers ever has arrived in San Pancho. We have met a few times briefly at Burning Man so I make contact and agree that he and his girlfriend visit us here. He is retired now and looking around for further adventure. We spend a great day inspiring each other and I have a spot of hero worship as he brings out the camera and starts capturing what we see everyday with his unique eye. This blog includes many of his photos. If it’s a good one it’s almost certainly one of his. Going to see a great deal of each other in the future. Good news.

I spoke to my Dad on the phone. Good to talk to him. Afterwards I make a sudden and important decision to take a flight home. The week in the UK was stunning for a number of reasons. The first was the January cold that came as a considerable shock to my now soft and timid constitution. My furriest and warmest of bikinis are no match for January in the UK. My clothes that we put aside to cope with such an eventuality are packed in a hurry and I soon discover they are 50% mould. I do not smell the best.

I am collected from airport in Manchester and after an essential top up of Guinness for breakfast I’m deposited with an especially naughty friend who I have arranged to cut my hair. I have been cutting it myself and I think I’ve done a great job. She does not agree. I am told that I stink and must immediately have a bath and only then will she mend my head. My first bath of the year. Absolute bliss.

I have a few jet lagged happy days in Darlington. I visit my house, which is rented out, to prepare for new tenants and collect essentially important things we did not have space for first time around. These things end up being lots of art, some shoes and a hat. I notice that my love and attachment to my old home in Darlington has faded. It holds all the memories and still a load of our stuff but now is just a house.

Really good catching up with so many proper friends in such a short time. I visit my brother, my nieces and my folks and go to my first ever funeral. I stay with my daughter and more proper friends before heading home. I have two new mould free shirts that were hurriedly bought for me while I was in the pub as the mouldy look apparently just wasn’t cutting it. My poor mother has spent many hours removing every last spore from all my remaining things. I have managed to squeeze in a further two baths and my suitcases are full to burst with my full luggage allowance of art, shoes, a hat, Yorkshire Gold Tea, Marmite, Strong Cheese and HP sauce. I’m sorted.

It is somewhat interesting to note that I do not feel that I have been home for a visit. I feel that I left home on a visit. After only 4 months here that is a surprise.

Home again and straight back to it. I am immediately in a Materiales buying lengths of steel to strengthen the solar frame. I arrive back to see Jayne’s brother carrying a lump of metal across a field onto our land. I have gatecrashed a project to raise the water pump solar panel up high on a gate post. One of the bigger jobs on our list. The old solar frames in the neighbouring land have been taken down, dragged away and recycled into something that will work. Task achieved and tested. We have a functioning water pump and we now don’t fall over the solar panel propped up against a rock.

Jayne’s brother and clan are leaving for a few days down the coast. Back for one day later this week. While I was away the truck broke again and he thankfully fixed it. We now have a hand brake and the gearshift sort of works. Result. The truck is now officially called “Limonada”. When life gives you a lemon ….

Couple of friends arrive from Calgary for a week in the jungle cabin. They are also engineers. They also are dropped right in it as they arrive. The solar panels were concreted in nearly correctly. The nearly bit is costing us a heap of cash in additional leveling bits to fit the panels. The solar panels are now in the battery house (cell) where our concrete guy is no longer. They require a perfectly flat space to land on. Our frame has one leg two inches too high and that is not good enough. Our new engineers and I set about cross bracing what is there and repainting it to look as sexy as we can. We also repurpose some 25 feet lengths of water pipe we found in the jungle and plan to trench through the rocky ground to create conduits linking the frame with the battery house (cell). Solar panels will be launched in just a few days time.

The casitas are coming along really well. The BrickS*House is plumbed in with a shower and sink on it’s way. That whole area is going to be stunning. The casitas are rustico but rather pretty. Their shaggy drying out roof fringes overhang the palm bark walls and large mosquito screen windows. The views are beautiful. A new walkway through the jungle from the BrickS*House area to the front gate has been cut. We will build composting areas here next week. We have met some new friends from Oregon who have just moved down here who get what we do and are keen to help. Not sure they will love us so much after digging rocks out of a composting hole for some hours. There is a phenomenon here that whenever you dig a hole 2 feet deep you get 10 feet of rocks out of it. Magic.

Had a surf this morning in Sayulita with Jayne’s brother. So good for my mind and soul and perfectly timed. I’ve been living at such a pace that taking the time waiting for waves and feeling the ocean again was a real gift. We both caught a few good rides. I arrive home irritatingly self satisfied. That did not last long.

We decide to suit up and burn some cow poo and go collect honey from the hives. We go back to the source of the bees to collect more hive parts, pollen traps and other beekeeping useful things. I am, this time, all in white and armed with cow poo smoke and a real head cage. I approach the hives confidently even after being warned by our man that the bees were feeling “brave” today. Brave indeed they were. Each of the very many tiny black grip-dots on my whitish gloves had a bee on in in full attack mode. I am stung a dozen times on each hand in no time at all. It hurts. I bugger off.

I make it back to the pool and remove my head cage and soak my swelling hands in the water. I take a breath and watch Jayne and her sister both suited up in pro-bee suits walking past me and both covered in bees. The bees are not getting through the suits and decide I am a much easier target and attack. I am instantly surrounded and stung countless times. They are in my hair and my head is getting very sore. I move for the smoke but this just pisses them off and they go for me again. I make it up the hill in a smokey cloud of poo and bees and into the house quickly. Inside I find sanctuary behind the mesh doors. I remove the remaining bees from sleeves and hair. I take an anti-histamine, reach for the Mezcal and declare no further interest in honey. They can keep it.

My son Jake arrives from Dublin with his mighty girlfriend and a grand mate very soon and we are preparing as best we can for that. The diary is getting packed. Our modest little cabin has a number of Airbnb bookings now, and we have a fairly continuous stream of visitors booked through to April. We will be adding three casitas and the apartment onto our Airbnb portfolio very very soon so that will make for extra fun and games juggling friends and paying and non paying guests. This is what we have created so there is no moaning about it that anyone wants to listen to. It’s a touch overwhelming but it will be good moving into the guts of a tourist season to see how we fair. We have a lot to learn .

Jungle Journal

Home

January 25, 2018
by Beave

It’s a surprisingly emotional day. I’m leaving to UK for one week to see my Mum for her Birthday and catch up with house, family and friends. I am leaving Jayne, Mausetrappe and the home we have built here for the first time. Brings up all the feels.

And this is the sunset I leave behind.

Thank you John Curley for this extraordinary filter free, unedited photo.

Jungle Journal

Don’t Fence Me In

January 14, 2018January 16, 2018
by Beave

Stunning start to New Year. Have our first random booking and preparing for life to change as we take on guests and visitors in large numbers over the next weeks and months. We have a facebook page now. Please do all the likey & sharey things which apparently helps us greatly.

We give ourselves permission to stay up and see the New Year in at the beach like proper grown ups. We meet up with friends and eat early to avoid the crowds and head to our favorite bar and settle in. A DJ is playing mellow tunes and it is some hours before we notice that the beach is now home to a mixed crowd of about 1000 highly enthusiastic but ever so well-behaved folk. We have accidentally secured prime spot and allow the year to pass gracefully by making a terrible job at spinning three-foot long sparklers that we bought from an arms/firework dealer at the traffic lights. Amazingly no one is burned. We head for home by moonlight and stop on the way to accept invited tequila slugs from the bottle from our neighbours. Rude not to. My legs somehow are on a different time zone to the rest of me and that makes for some interesting balance issues, which are noticed by all. I am dispatched home.

2018 feels strange. I wake up with my tongue stuck to my eye. It takes a good few hours to get much into focus. Rehydration via buckets of tea helps considerably. It appears I am not the grown up I wanted to be. Guilt is forcing us to be productive. I soon find myself up to my eyes in plumbing and window construction. And so the year begins.

We are stuck in a long line of traffic again. It’s not a good feeling to be crawling along slowly knowing that at some point you will see why. There is so much carnage on these roads that you see things too often you don’t want to. In this case it’s not so bad. A milk truck has overturned and the road is getting decidedly yoghurty. We return home eventually to the news of another crashed milk truck 20 miles up the road the other way. Not a good day for milk.

Our Sayulita work party has arrived. Two guys, keen as can be, prepared to knock off all the jobs we put off last year. They dutifully scrub and seal the wood on the outside shower. They repair and replace stairs all the way up the hill, which will make falling off much less likely. They relocate tinacos and plumb them into the well awaiting pump and power. They move all the bloody useless bamboo to a new storage area out of sight. Much distraction as a small boa constrictor is found to be resident in the bamboo pile. It’s a beautiful thing.

We also have an entirely unsuccessful first attempt at putting up the solar panel holder. The 3.6M legs that need bolting to the top 6M x 4M frame are a challenge. Much buggering about fails to produce any useful progress and breaks two of the legs. We postpone the project. All in all it’s been a very useful few days of work and singing. The older of the Sayulita blokes sings songs that he makes up all day long. He tells stories of the songs he created for lost loves many years ago and serenades Jayne at least once a day. Jayne is very impressed as her own attempts at singing are rarely appreciated.

Music is a missing element from our daily lives, which we are addressing. As part of the gifts we took away from our visit to Chapala was a large box of CDs. They were gifted by some generous senior folk. Our truck (which is now again with Jesus having it’s transmission healed) has practically no reliable parts except a CD player which was hidden and we just found it ! This has allowed us to trawl the box and find out what musical treats we can expect. It’s an eclectic bunch of CDs that I suspect are from releases that are all considerably older than me. Bing Crosby is my current favorite with Frank Sinatra and Lou Armstrong following close behind. I am surprisingly entertained by singing loudly to Bing Crosby-“Don’t fence me in“ while driving a dodgy pick up truck back from Jesus’s place.

Our ability to power up our house and charge up devices with magic boxes attached to our truck (or generator) has allowed the introduction of playlists through phones/laptops to add to the mix. I spend a rather pleasant sunny afternoon painting the gypsy cabin listening to Frank Zappa, John Otway, Captain Hot-knifes and Ella Fitzgerald.

We have made a move to promote ourselves and put a bit of extra pressure on. We have listed the gypsy cabin on Airbnb . We are offering a rustic and unique outside shower (which is not quite finished and has no water), a toilet block for sink and composting loo (with no floor, water or power), and a kitchen area (with no kitchen in it yet). This is designed to incentivise us into getting things done. It’s working. We get our first enquiry and shoot into action trying to get all the stuff not done done. We have our first booking. Two Americans for 11 days in March. It’s a start.

Composting loos and buckets of sawdust have now arrived in the orange toilet block, the bodega apartment (Selva Vista), and our treehouse. Three porcelain potties are relegated as planters. Design of loos is pretty much perfected and the composting areas to dump the results are allocated and ready to accept incoming buckets of “the good stuff”. This makes Jayne very happy.

We found a rusty metal gate in the middle of the land with no apparent purpose. It must have been a remnant of when the land was separated into sections but it’s not at all clear. We collect it and deposit it with our ironman with the solar frame legs to repair and strengthen. He is tasked to restore the gate to former glory, add a metal mosquito mesh and weld on some bits so we can set it in concrete and make a door for the Bodega apartment (Selva Vista). It works rather well.

The metal door for the battery house is on and finishing touches are in place. That is a solid little prison cell . Our crazy concrete man has done a great job and has actually slept in there the past few nights on one of the concrete battery shelves. If only we can find a way of assembling the solar frame we would be ready for the photon catching equipment delivery. It does not seem to be an issue as the delivery status is currently “in transit”. Takes that pressure off a little.

We are busy building toilets when groups of folk from Montreal pass by. Turns out that one of the girls lived on our land for many months some years ago and that her and her friend who is with her tried to buy it . Turns out they were the girls we were told of who put in an offer that was bettered by an American guy who almost completed on the deal but his boyfriend wouldn’t let him. We arrived a month after he pulled out. Timed it perfectly. We give the girls and their parents a tour of the land. Good to talk French for a while. In fact the girls give us a tour of the land and explain many things. They point out all the bits that are now missing or were planned and never finished. Our confusion as to how the stone cottage area worked is unsurprising. Turns out the building was purpose built as the ceremony area for the Ibogain ceremonies.

The moon is super. A “super moon”. One result is that the surf is lifted an extra few feet and crashed down on the shore with more gusto. It’s a proper noise that we can hear from right out here. Another result is being able to walk around without a torch after sundown between the moonlight shadows cast by the trees. It’s rather stunning. Seeing your own shadow cast down the beach by the moon is also worth seeing. Another one next month we are told. Super moon 2 coming soon.

My mouse catching skills have abandoned me. It’s been over a month since my peanut butter bait has lured a rodent into my trap cage. Maustrappe, however, has now bettered me. Three and half mice in the last few weeks. One of them was twice the size of her head which was a task to persuade her to let go of, under the bed, at 3 am. The last half a mouse was left as a gift next to my side of the bed exactly in the spot where my foot meets floor when I get up for a pee in the dark. I remain ungrateful for such gifts. So Maustrappe is beating me by a head (a bit of torso and two legs). Need to raise my game.

The machine has arrived. Properly and seriously arrived. We were teased by a 20 minute visit a few days ago before it departed in a hurry to where it should have been working. We watch hypnotised as massive chunks of earth are built up, removed, moved around and flattened. We watch as three huge spaces are cut into the hill around the BrickS*House. These will be home to our three new casitas. They will have stunning views from their elevated platforms. Our man and his family have been collecting wood for weeks for them and work starts now! Maquina man finishes off and tries to leave. It has taken months to get him here and so Jayne kidnaps the machine and refuses to let it leave. She agrees to take him home and collect him again in the morning but the machine stays!! He is stunned but surprisingly compliant.

The next morning we collect him and return him to his machine. The machine is then deployed creating us a new road out of the piles of clay that have been unearthed and a retorno on the hill in front of our house. He cleans up our access to the house to makes the hill considerably less treacherous to drive on and creates a new loop at the top of the hill which allows us to get up and down without the usual 5 point turn avoiding trees and roots. This will save us a heap of time. Bonus is that the loop has created a perfect central garden island and a new route to the pool. A couple of lovely flat areas are created for better parking and Jayne releases the machine from captivity and off it goes. We may never see it again but it was a very welcome visit.

Clay. We have uncovered many tons of yellow clay and many more tons of brown clay. This gives us excellent security when the rains come as when it dry’s it’s like concrete and avoids us building retaining walls. This amount of clay is probably why La Colina is still an impressive hill rather than a less impressive mound of mud after the rainy season. The newly cut clay faces will act as back walls in the casitas. We are told the quality of the brown clay is superb for pottery. Jayne is keen on cutting in a bread oven into one of our new clay walls. Endless clay based possibilities in our future.

There has been some swearing and jiggling and fiddling but finally we persuade many meters of electric wire down some old water pipes we found on the path near the remaining bees. We connected one end to our first solar panel that is propped up in the sunniest spot we can find near the old metal gates to the gypsy cabin. The other end forms a collection of wires, pipes and rope that are attached to our well pump which is 25 meters down the well. The water has another 20m to get up to our tinacos . We watch the bubbles move up the clear pipe out of the well which happily confirms the pump is pumping and we take the trek up the hill to see what happens. We have water. Sun beams are pushing water from our well up the hill and are topping up our tinacos for free ! (except the cost of all the bits of course). This is a wonderful moment. One very important mission accomplished.

We plumb in everything we can think of. Outside shower, hand basin in orange block, outside tap above outside sink, gypsy cabin and the Bodega apartment plumbing system all have all the water they need. Excellent.

There is an opportunity we can’t miss. Our man has been tasked to take down a massive parota tree that is above the waterfalls and we are invited to spectate. Parota is protected so only dead trees can be felled. This one must have had a very good life. It’s huge and impressive. Our man with a very large chains saw is entirely dwarfed as he cuts away for best part of an hour before this immense lump of wood hits the ground. It has consumed a number of trees in its time so there is a hole running through it’s center. That ruins it for the big tables the owner wanted to make from the wide trunk. Still a number of truck loads of very excellent wood have just been made available.

We gather ourselves and direct our faith in our resourceful Mexican super heroes to get this bloody solar frame up. By standing on the newly built battery house and leaning a ladder at a stupid angle it is possible to persuade bolts through holes. Two newly strengthened legs are fixed. By a series of death defying circus feats involving a ladder and no fear the remaining legs are on. We tie the structure to two trees and call it a success. We tie a plumb line around the base to show the correct level and agree to concrete the legs in later. It’s hot as hell in that sunny spot. I’m soaked in sweat and a fetching shade of pink. From the top of the hill the shadows cast by the legs makes the structure look huge and broken.

The solar equipment we are told has landed in Mexico. The wrong end of Mexico but it’s getting closer.

Made the very last of our mosquito windows for the Bodega Apartment (Selva Vista) today. It is now an enclosed space with plumbing for two sinks & a shower. We have hot water. We also have a brown & concrete dust floor that is sufficiently dry enough to clean. Concrete man has spent the last 24 hours cleaning it up and sealing it . The wood is cut and treated to enclose the bathroom and we await a single length of gas pipe before we do that. The parota wood for the bathroom and kitchen counters are ready to install and we have Jayne’s sister here who is a cabinet maker who can get them fitted for us. Oh we are close.

We greet the day by the finding of the other half of the mouse this morning.

Delightful.

Jungle Journal

Bromeliads from heaven….

December 31, 2017December 31, 2017
by Beave

The end of another year. Thank you for all your support with donations and adopting trees, bats and bee hives. It’s a considerable help to us and we appreciate it greatly. As do the bees and the trees and the bats.

Strange days continue to happen. It’s Monday and I’m at Oxxo, which is the Mexican 24 hour chain store that appears at every petrol station, and elsewhere. Oxxo do a half decent coffee from a gurgly machine and are useful for milk and ice. The rest of the store seems to be shelf after shelf of biscuits and cookies. It is also where everyone tries to top up their phone on a dodgy touch screen till. It is often a long process followed by disappointment. This makes the queue last enough time for coffee to go cold and ice to melt.

“Juan Juan The Slow Concrete Man“ is not there for his 8am arranged Oxxo pick up. I drink my coffee and wait a while. A guy walks over to me making direct eye contact and talks in a slow drawl of Spanish. I pick up the words for floor and concrete and practically nothing else. I later find out that no one much understands what he says most of the time. We have an odd gesture based conversation and I agree to take him to look at where our concrete floor should have been 3 days ago. I give up on JJTSCM with the idea that maybe he has sent this guy in his place. We arrive and our man is already there and greets this new guy as a good friend. I am confused. They look at me expectantly. I have not a clue what’s going on. I practically drag translator Jayne out of bed to make some sense of it all.

First development is that JJTSCM texts to tell us he is feeling unwell and is hospitalized with chronic apathy. We are thankful we don’t have to fire him. The new guy is a friend of our man’s who we met briefly at a bus stop waiting for our solar frame to arrive. Someone mentioned the floor to him then. He recognised me at the Oxxo while he was on his way to another job for a local dentist. Well the dentist hadn’t paid him so he chanced his arm, sacked off the dentist’s job and jumped in with us. He agrees to return the next day with a crew and skill and enthusiasm and have the floor and tiling done by the end of the week for a fixed price.

We take a breath and recognise that JJTSCM effectively fired himself today and has been replaced with a much better option without us consciously doing a thing. All by 9.30am. We retreat for tea.

Our friend has arrived from Reno and we set out to show him Sayulita and meet up with our favorite Yoga/Pilates instructor who we met on the bamboo course. She meets us and a few tequila based refreshers. Later we go look at the surf. Our Reno friend tried surfing for the first time today and hasn’t quite got the hang of it yet. He blames the board which makes him sound like he’s been at it for years.

We watch too many people not catching waves as the sun sets. It is a glorious evening. I hear my name shouted. It’s definitely my name. I am confronted by an excited guy in hippy pants & sunglasses that I recognise as a friend that I met first in New Zealand, then Israel, then USA, then Spain, then South Africa. He is in Sayulita with his wife who has extended family who have been here since it was a village and own extraordinary seafront property on the hills around us. Sayulita is 10 times the size on San Pancho and packed with tourists so this chance meeting is very random. This day is getting weirder. We arrange to meet him and his wife later for dinner and take an adventure tour around some secret places we are introduced to.

The next morning starts early getting the new concrete crew set up and away. They are strong and fast and have already surpassed JJTSCM’s efforts in the first few hours. Good news.

Today we have a constant stream of visitors. I collect our newly found friends from their stunningly luxurious buildings above the Sayulita sea. We remove them from luxury and add more Rustico. Our favorite friend who smuggled us in shoes and my water pump from Colorado joins us. He brings 5 of his 6 kids, his wife and their St Bernard puppy, which is 9 months old, and the size of me. They bring cocktails and a good touch of disruptive enthusiasm that only a bunch of kids with machetes can do. We manage to remove the machetes from the kids, check them for obvious wounds and off they go exploring. I escape and head to town to capture our Texan friend who owns a restaurant near the beach. She has wanted to come out and see us for months and we have promised her own area of garden to nurture. In the process I collect a very welcome gift of accurate, proper and perfectly simple tequila glasses from dear friends.

We leave for dinner in town as the sun drops to discuss gardens and concrete and friends lost and found. We return to a dark tree house and try out the glasses. They work a treat!

Things calm down a touch but there is a welcome development. We have received our first rent. Our Reno friend has contributed to proceedings in appreciation of the place (and our loveliness clearly). It’s a strange and welcome thing to have a “money in” section in our books. And so it begins.

During the past mad busy few days our man has been noisily attacking our Parota chunks under clouds and mounds of sawdust. What has appeared is very impressive. The wood is now alive with smooth texture & deep colours. Our Parota kitchen counter is ready for the beaten copper bucket/bowl that will be the sink. Our huge round slices of tree/outside tables are ready for setting on logs refined as legs. There is so much beautiful drying Parota we are spoilt for choice. We were in PV stocking up and found similar wood lumps (untreated) for sale at stingingly silly prices. We done good. It’s all going to look epic.

It rained hard again last night. The bouncy splashy wet type for many hours. We are assured this is very very unusual for December. We were caught out and much is wet that shouldn’t be. The vehicles throw films of mud over everything including us. I have a cold. I probably have a touch of ebola mixed in too. I’m being very brave.

Our new concrete man has turned out to be a right character. He is often found a hundred feet up a tree he has climbed just because. He catches huge fresh water shrimp from our streams and juggles scorpions .If he gets stung by one he tells us the cure is to eat it. He has philosophies about pretty much everything and we have a strangely comfortable bond developing. His English is worse that my Spanish and he is, I am told, still fairly incomprehensible anyway. He is a good looking young man, exactly the same age as me, half my weight and twice as strong. It’s a touch depressing.

We are getting regular visits to the land from new people we meet in town and further chance meetings with old friends. We have had South Africans arrive I haven’t seen in years and a friend who I last met ten years ago in New Zealand. She just happened to be staying in town. There seems to be a heap of people from Calgary here too. The waterfalls are becoming a popular destination walk and we are easy to find on the way out so there is a steady stream of folk that happen across us and want to know what we are up to. Our tours of the land are getting practice. It is interesting to see the place through fresh eyes and new perspective. It gives us confidence that we are creating a place and space that others will love like we do.

Plans are afoot. Now the Bodega apartment (Selva Vista) is on it’s way to being finished the BrickSHouse area is our next focus. We can get water there from the top of the hill and revive the shower and install one of our newly built composting loos. We have researched acquiring a number of large glamping style bell tents that can be located on platforms and house queen size beds. There is a contact that has a supplier in China and the budget is not too bad. The idea gains some traction when we realise that our man is offering to build us small casitas with palapa roofs from locally foraged materials for much less and very quickly. We calculate that this gives us the best chance to offer something unique and funky and make decent rent in the shortest time.

We have lost our desire for concrete gate posts and that has moved things along considerably. We now have a gate. It was a tree and now, thanks to chainsaw and skill, it’s a fabulous gate hung between wooden gate posts. This gives us a boundary and entrance to our land for the first time. It’s located at the first entry point to the South side and is a great addition to the mix. Love it.

Our orange toilet block has been bugging us. We have revised our plans to revive the shower and tile the floor. It’s a large space. Too large we think for single loo and a shower. We have, therefore, applied a touch of rethink and have created an outdoor shower on a nearby tree. It’s surrounded by a spiral of palm bark planks from downed trees around our solar array. The remaining blocks of palm will be terraced into the earth to create planting zones. Palm wood does not last long out here and disintegrates quickly into fertile planting goodness. So we will tile the floor and chuck in a few beds and boom! … the orange block becomes another resting area for weary volunteers who need a budget option. The outdoor shower is looking very sexy and set to revive the hot and sweaty by dispensing authentic jungle temperature waterfall.

Xmas eve is spent borrowing an oven to cook pumpkin pies (strange looking squash pies actually) and watching sunset at our favorite beach bar. There was a set from a jazz guitarist & drummer from the town. A professional trombonist happens to be at the bar and joins them. They improvise on John Coltrane tracks. Perfect.

Xmas day comes and goes with minimal fuss. My present is a hand drawn card and I stun Jayne with a parody version of Merry Xmas everyone by Slade on the Ukulele. “And here it is …. our first Xmas in the jungle with a cat. If you’re looking for the perfect life it’s exactly where it’s aaaah-aaaah-aaat !“ …. I’ll save you from the verses. We eat well with friends old and new in town after a particularly lazy morning catching up with family on Skype.

The new bee location has been discovered by at least one Coatis. I saw one on these sticky pawed buggers this morning looking rather pleased with itself. These large raccoon type creatures get into anything and apparently like our honey. They have moved heavy rocks on the beehive roof and taken bites out of the honeycombs. We are repairing and securing them as best we can. The bees are unsettled and one of the smaller hives looks like its been abandoned. We are working on making the place more queen bee friendly and less a honey trap for Coatis.

We have had a very strange and shocking accident. We were in the Polaris returning back to the house from plumbing the apartment. It’s my son’s birthday and he is on face time with me following the journey from our phone. There is a sudden and startling loud crashing noise and something hits my head hard and bounces painfully off my leg. We come to a sudden stop and there are very huge chucks of wood everywhere. We check each other. We are somehow not injured. Jayne runs to a spot less likely to be fatal as I look up and around to assess what has happened. A huge branch has fallen directly onto the Polaris roof directly above my head, which was saved from being crushed by the strength and build quality of the roll cage. The bar above my head has a significant dent in it. The rest of the vehicle is bruised but in pretty good shape considering. The offending log of wood is lying in front of us covered in over a dozen quite stunning Bromeliads. It was probably the weight of them that sent it ground wards. When I’m sure nothing else is coming down at me I haul it from the road. It is very heavy and takes all my strength to move. There are smaller large logs all around us that have broken off the main branch. We look up and see where the branch started from and it’s very very high up. The chances of this happening are probably a fair bit less than being struck by lightening. Our luck being directly under this thing as it landed is questionable. Our considerable luck surviving with no injuries at all is not. We are grateful, humbled and both pretty shaken up.

My son and his friend have watched this happen. They are wondering if it was a set up just for them. We are all delighted that his birthday did not include seeing his Dad squashed flat live from the UK.

We take the rest of the day off. The sunset looks particularly pretty and the margaritas are just that extra bit delicious.

Our plumbing is done and waiting to be connected up to a tinaco and our new hot water shower looks well posh! The concrete battery house is nearly done and there is so much in the pipeline for the next few weeks. We have three new palapa roofed cabins in production and a crew from Sayulita (our first real work party) arriving after New Year to give us a full week’s work on the white house. The apartment is getting there and on track and we will be offering the “gypsy cabin” up for AirBnB as soon as the paint drys . Progress… poco a poco.

San Pancho is full of folk now. It’s in post Xmas full swing. Sayalita is unbearably busy we hear. People enquiring about renting the Polaris stopped us in the street. We are mending the bits that the tree broke and have added a “rent our Polaris” page to the website and are sorting out the web of knotted red ribbons which is Mexican commercial car insurance. It’s looking a lot more likely we will actually get a real live punter soon!

Amongst our discoveries when clearing up all the places here are filthy old note pads, drafts of books and a roll of various architectural plans for septic tanks and buildings. It is fascinating to read lists of costs and materials from 8-10 years ago that are so similar to the ones we are creating today. Amongst the bat guano stained pages are letters to guests/friends who have outstayed their welcome and hospital bills for treating Scorpion bites. This bonds us to the folk who were here before us. It reminds us that others had dreams for this place and some were realized. Locals have told us that when Richard (an ex NFL player) was building the tree house and the pool he made the whole place incredibly beautiful. All to attract his wife down to visit from California. He died here but left a strong legacy, which we greatly respect. His carpentry work that remains is outstanding.

We discovered that five years ago a girl called Mary setup a treatment retreat for recovering drug addicts here. It was based on the premise that taking a locally strong hallucinogenic called Ibogain cured addiction. There is much written in credible scientific journals about the effects of Ibogain C₂₀H₂₆N₂O (originally African in origin) to help heroin addiction. We continue to learn how that all worked out. It was a controversial venture that did not win unanimous local support or sympathy we hear.

We both are looking back at how our own lives have played out these past few days, weeks and months with some incredulity. This year we have been around the world at least once and have had some extraordinary adventures. We returned to UK in July in time for the Glastonbury Festival (my 27th time and Jayne’s first). We then decided to pack up our lives into 11 bags and a surfboard and move into a tree house in a far away jungle. This was not the plan when we woke in San Francisco, USA on New Years Day a year ago planning to build another temple at Burning Man. That feels like two lifetimes away. I have been in Mexico now for coming up to 4 months. This is the longest I have been in one place since I can remember. It’s a very good thing.

Happy New Year.

Jungle Journal

Well pumps and welly boots….

December 10, 2017
by Beave

We have become very used to waking with the sun and collapsing after sunset. At first light we were loading pallets from a corral onto our pick up truck to create composting areas. Our large screen windows at home means that outside and inside are pretty much the same place less a few hundred bugs. This makes us sensitive to the subtle changes in moonlight, humidity and temperature. We wear welly boots far more often than is fashionably acceptable, our finger nails refuse to remain unfilled with muck and we moan to anyone who will listen how skint we are . Have never felt more like farmers.

Our visitor diary is filing up. Soon we will have no time to ourselves till at least March. This is not a bad thing, as we need help and did make this move to share our space. Jayne’s entire family will have come and gone by February and then a load of lovely Irish and Jake. In the meantime we will have friends from many places arriving for a few weeks and some welcome randoms who have contacted us through the website/blog . So many people arriving from afar bearing gifts. All this gives me faith that I will not run out of the essentials to life, the holy trinity of Yorkshire Tea/HP Sauce and Marmite.

With the prospect of paying guests in the near future we will have our work cut out. We appreciate the help from everyone who comes here and warn in advance that due to paying guests taking all the best spots you may end up in a hammock under a mosquito net but that’s not a bad thing here.

All the equipment for the magic sun power is threatened to manifest soon so our “ to do now list “ is expanding. We have to create a secure house for our lovely expensive much desired batteries and a 6m x 4M by at least 3M high rack at precisely 17 degrees to the sun to house our photon catchers. No mean feat. There is much talking to over enthusiastic welders, builders and other keen sorts. As gringos our quotes are usually with the addition of a zero or two. We have had quotes for the racking that differ by a factor of ten (no kidding ). We arrange to meet an iron guy from Bucerias who we know (and more importantly is considerably cheaper than everyone else) at an Oxxo carpark. We do the deal over the truck hood and arrange delivery next week.

So along with everything else we are preparing to power up the near 200M of electrical cable that Jayne’s Dad has managed to wrap our house in . Not bad going considering the house itself is only 6m x 6m . There is an extraordinary little box of tricks that plugs into the truck that powers the entire house from the 12V battery ! Feels like cheating but gives us a taste of what is to come.

We have noted that our “ with nature” farmers life is being eroded with the introduction of such major developments as hot water and power , USBs on the wall and more than anything else light bulbs. When there is light around body and mind stays with it for a lot longer. When it’s dark you shut down pretty fast. Part of me already misses the candle light and an excuse for an embarrassingly early night.

Water remains an issue. 2500L Tinacos and gravity are the answer. Great big wide heavy Tinacos. We have 5 of then now. Tinaco 1 is nearest to the wellhead followed by Tinaco 2 at the start of the new path across the land. The idea is to pump water from well to Tinaco 1 or directly to Tinaco 2 . We then use a bigger pump to get water from there across the land 130M to the top of the hill to Tinacos 3 & 4. These use gravity to feed the brick-shit house and Tinaco 5 above our house that can also feed the pool. A very simple plan except there are no Tinacos at the top of the hill.

We collect the most recently found one (Tinaco 3 ) and decide to add some gravity and drag the thing from its current very low resting place to the top of the hill. We collect it in the truck and deliver it to the tree house and survey the path up the hill. There isn’t one. At least half is at a cliff like angle and the rest completely overgrown. If we scramble from tree to tree it is possible to get up the top. The Tinaco however is a different tale. Blunt force and humour are our only weapons but somehow it works. I am on the ground with feet wedged in the most grippy bits of root I can find heaving on the rope while our man pushes and steers and his son takes the rope behind me and wraps it around a tree so we don’t have the thing disappear down the hill with me attached to it. It is a very dirty, sweaty and grunty affair. Somehow we make it.

Tinaco 4 is above our house. Timing is perfect as it is all but empty. The tree house is switched to Tinaco 5. It’s currently the last of the water on the North side. We attach rope to Tinaco 4 and a tree and launch the thing down the hill to be manhandled slowly across the side of the cliff and then upward ever upwards. Maustrappe has got herself curious and followed us up. She suddenly and hilariously reconsiders her position as the Tinaco swings downwards towards her. She takes off at a speed that suggests she has been shot from a cannon. My eyes can hardly keep up with the blur of cat that has flown past the house and is still going. We may never see her again. How we laughed.

Much more sweat, tick collecting , boy noises and close shaves later Tinaco 4 meets Tinaco 3 up the hill. Now if we can get these buggers filled we are all good for water North side. I retreat to shower myself and remove the first dozen ticks. I meet Maustrappe in the house with wide eyes and half her body weight in jungle stuck to her. I spend some time giggling and removing trees and shrubs from her tail.

My good Catalonian friend has ruined me for Mexican Spanish. I had very few Spanish words in my vocabulary a few short months ago. One of them was Cerveza (beer) surprisingly enough. I have been somewhat discouraged to learn that my perfect Catalonian dialect is considered a speech impediment here. I have had many a sorry look on a number of occasions when boldly and confidently asking for a Th’erveth’a. Wiping spit from their eye they offer a “bless the poor boy smile “. Szervessa?? Is he actually trying to say Szervessa??

The Mexican food here is inevitably accompanied by three options of chili-based condiment. One green and tepid for the tourists, one red and tongue stripingly efficient and finally the local brew which is dark deep purple and is effectively napalm. The locals slosh the stuff down them fearlessly. This has lasting effects on a chaps taste buds and mouth nerve endings. Local oral hygiene products are , therefore, things to be respected I have learned. I made the mistake of taking a modest slug of the local mouthwash and it was an event. The fresh tingle one would expect from a mouthwash is replaced with a turpentine burn . Inhaling the fumes is not recommended. The resultant noise I produced was , I am told, not pretty. I found only a mix of straight tequila followed by a shot of Mescal got the taste out of my nose and allowed me to speak again. I ended up with an industrially cleansed mouth and slightly drunk.

There was a lunch. We are in the midst of crazy day of buying all the things for as little as possible in the searing heat of Bucerias. It’s a tourist town that is the overspill of Puerto Vallarta. The Mexican Government has encouraged and promoted the whole area as the Cancun of the Pacific for years . There is a great beach and lots of restaurants to service the high population of tourists. We come across a French one with a French waitress and a French menu. I am teased with six oysters and then felled by rare beef in exceptional bread with jus. Now jus is just posh gravy but what a gravy !! A 2003 Beaune or an icy Chablis would have made this a perfect moment but I am in Mexico so Dos Equis XX Larger will have to do. Gravy ….I clearly miss gravy.

Strangely my French has improved enormously now I’m trying get Spanish into spaces in my overfilled brain. I often break into French when I’m trying my best to speak confident Spanish. When I search my limited Spanish vocabulary for a word I inevitably remember the French version. Not entirely useful.

The doors are here. Our iron artist from Las Varas and his young son appear early and I help him carry the doors up to our house, as his truck won’t make it. Jayne’s Dad performs electrical field surgery on the generator to allow the welder to work without blowing the fuse. Very impressive skills. This allows a new lock system to be melted onto the Bodega so our stuff in there ( and there is a lot of stuff ) is safe. There are also two strong boxes that have been made for us to secrete our more valuable stuff inside. One for us and one for our apartment. These will be bolted somewhere not-obvious yet to be decided. We return to find the house fringe trimmed and the front door installed. It looks epic. The skull door knocker we were gifted our first week here is integrated into the design. The shower door is also installed with our logo at the centre and there is even a door for Mausetrappe. Previous grotty security curtain is removed and we now have natural light pouring into bathroom. Our house has transformed from open plan “help yourself” to effectively secure. Our first real unique art commissioned and installed.

There is a further delivery today. After some buggering about with officialdom and agreeing to further buggering about in a few days and promise of cash we have taken delivery of Jayne’s Dads Polaris. I’m sure his own blog will more than cover the many hours of drudgery with Mexican officialdom before anyone owns anything and his excitement of driving back and heading into town for lunch then off up the hills afterwards. There is no stopping him now. We have named our newly broken in & muddied machine Pauly. Pauly Polaris.

Another delivery today was all the way from Colorado. New best friend arrives back after thanksgiving in his restaurant and collecting mail for us ! Jayne gets two pairs of new shoes and I get a brand new 24V DC well pump. We both get a gift package from a friend and that is brilliant. We continue to have no mail service here. No Xmas cards in or out this year. Good news.

The last delivery of the day is attempted/ supervised under fading light from a huge tipper truck that skillfully reverses into our parking spot on the South side and dumps a small mountain of sand. It’s destined to be a brown concrete sexy floor next week. We have a “Maestro” booked for two weeks to do all the clever stuff that is beyond the skill set of the rest of us. Took some days of negotiation and the promise of a cement mixer to get him to sign on. I have lugged many 50kg chunks of cement in preparation for his arrival. A slightly larger mountain of gravel is predicted tomorrow. Keep this guy in materials and we should have a battery house , a sexy apartment floor and base groundings for our newly ordered solar frame and posts for a front gate that we intend to up-cycle from the white house floor boards. They need replacing anyway.

Found some bowls in the local market and bought them. First spontaneous art purchase. Couldn’t help it. They got me. Not sure how they will be useful but they make me happy.

Swam today. Forgotten how good it feels to float in the Pacific. San Pancho has some serious shore break waves that have dumped me a number of times. There is an undertow and a drifting current so you have to have your head on when you swim. OK for strong swimmers but not for kids on the main beach. There are good kid friendly spots not far away behind the surf break we are told. Further investigation required. Floating on your back and watching the fish jumping around you and being overflown by pelicans just a few feet from your nose is a great way to relax.

Pressure is on to get an apartment ready to rent. We have put great faith in the Maestro . Too much perhaps. Bugger is that Maestros earn fairly good money and are (in our experience of ours ) a bit precious. We have furnished him with a concrete mixer he refuses to use, two helpers, a lift at 8 am every morning, a lift home and all the time in the world. To be fair in the Polaris we have the trip into town down to a nifty 6 minutes without racing. However, our “two day” job is looking more like 10 days … we are biting our lips as we have an apartment with heaps of concrete in a small amount of places of a brownish colour and nothing in most. We are starting to regret this process more and more as it eats into our funds. The result should be stunning so we are holding back our frustration with the pace of things. We are looking elsewhere for another maestro for the other jobs. Life is too short.

Small changes make a big difference here. The large river rocks that did for my thumb nail and my dignity have been distributed skilfully around the garden. This has created borders and allowed the fruit trees to stand out magnificently. It’s starting to look proper.

Our photon catcher frame arrived today. We take the Polaris to the beginning of our road and lead the unsuspecting iron guys through streams and bush to the path that our man has created at the very back border of our land . With a machete, a 4×4 and mucky bravado we dump 6m x 4m of steel frame with legs and bolts onto our sun trap. If we can get a battery house under way all will be good.

Now I do check pretty much daily the Bodega for mice. There is a humane trap loaded with peanut butter under the workspace. I am distracted for a few days by life and check on the trap that is now obscured by sheets and paint pots. The cage has a dead mouse in it. I missed it, I am responsible and feel terrible.

The pool has a dodgy valve and in order to examine the even dodgier filter pump it needs replacing. This required someone (me) to saw through a fully loaded pipe that will shoot swimming pol at high pressure into my face. While drowning standing up in a small concrete box full of ants and unfeasibly large spiders I am required to attach new pipe and connections with a bolt screw and my glasses pressed onto my eyes with the force of water. I manage this eventually in time to avoid drowning. Meanwhile Jayne’s Dad helpfully takes photos.

I clean out the pool of the worst floating flotsam in anticipation of the filter pump working. I am stunned most days by having to fish out the pool at least one ex-frog. I thought frogs could happily swim for many hours and if not have the sense to hop onto the pool steps. Apparently not. Despite attempts to deploy floating rest areas our ex-frog count is pretty high. There is also the occasional ex-mouse. I see a mouse attached to a plastic outlet on the side of the pool. It’s alive! I reach down with a net to save the thing and it dives in. I follow him as he swims the entire length of the pool under water. I did not know mice could do that. He surfaces into my net and I flick him to the relative safety of the jungle. Makes me feel a touch less guilty about the Bodega ex-mouse.

Jayne’s Dad has returned home. He has left us with extra tools, better knowledge, a fully wired house, guest blogs, a rewired super hero generator, the first ever geocache in San Pancho and a rather lovely Polaris to care for. We are very grateful.

The filter pump is shot. The motor has been living with humidity spiders and ants for too long and is no longer useful. We are told it must be replaced at great cost. By some universal twist of fortune we randomly meet our solar guy with his pump man who directs us to his motor guy who rewinds the motor for a fraction of the cost. We like saving money we haven’t got. We rebuild the pump and connect it up to all the plumbing (eventually without leaks) and set it off with our super hero generator We lose a bunch of water somewhere mysterious and I get a good bolt of hair raising electricity through me when I touch the motor . Our pool is being cleansed at last. The cleaner pool water is , however, noticeably less than when we started. More attention is required to prevent further water loss and electrocution.

Mausetrappe has taken to sleeping on my feet. Not terrible except for the occasional teeth in the toes cry for attention at 3am. My attention was full on when the crazy beggar decides to have a 4 am dikkie fit and flip about the bed until I am awake. My torch uncovers a cat torturing a mouse at my feet. That’s Mausetrappe 3 : Beave 5 . Sometime later I recover the nearly ex-mouse. I dispatched him junglewards and returned to kick the cat. She cleverly avoids me and retires to the balcony.

When I finally get back to sleep and awake too early ( to pick up Maestro,) I find the usual amount of half chewed and totally pawed bug parts. A cat gift apparently, for which I am presumable expected to be grateful. I am not. Amongst the bits we recognise at least one scorpion. Wake up call. The cat is a good weapon but not as good as the spray muck that scared away the ants. We apply it to the bed legs and doorways. Now considering every beast we know dislikes this stuff it is a fair bet it is not good cat food/lick. We shut the cat onto the balcony with water and food and go to work and leave her safe.

We return and she had gone. No sign on the balcony and no sign of any bits of ex-cat on the ground or under the house. The mystery is short lived. There is a cat shaped hole in the mosquito net door. I continue to be sleep deprived and ungrateful for the cat while I set about mending it … again.

We head to town to collect laundry and ice. On the way we take the plastic recycling pile that has accrued over the months. It’s a foul mess of spiders and unspeakable fluids and muck. By the time we have it all sorted into the right piles at the local recycling yard we are covered from head to toe in horrors. I go to the local Pemex petrol station and wreck their bathroom washing myself. I am dirty, damp and tired. Time for tequila or two. We head to collect the block ice that has been in the freezer at our friend’s bar for days waiting for us. We bump into friends and more friends arrive and before we get a chance to eat we are a Canadian down. Tequila, fatigue and no food have done their worse. Somehow, with a little help from our friends, I manage to carry her home and drive the truck at the same time. She is going to be embarrassed and rather unwell tomorrow.

It’s an early start today. We have Mausetrappe booked into the free clinic they have a few days a year in San Pancho to remove breeding bits. One cat/kitten is enough. She is not happy and moans loudly while clinging to me on the journey into town. Reminds me of the journey home last night. We manage to get her into a box at the clinic and Jayne gets to be embarrassed as our friends who helped us last night are helping out there today. Mausetrappe is a grumpy No.41.

Jayne is unwell. There is most sympathy from our man whose birthday it is today. He is 33. Only 33. He used to be a National rodeo rider and fight bulls. He has given it up ( almost) as he has been trampled a few too many times and once spent 11 days in a coma after having a bulls horn thrust in his head. He is a small guy but as strong as two oxen. His Dad is another story. I have not been able to work out how he swings a machete so well or lift rocks like he does at his age. He must be late 60s or early 70s perhaps. He is on his 4^th wife we think. Turns out he is 58. I am staggered. Only 6 six years older than me!! Jayne likes this news very much and reminds me often just in case I forget for a moment. How kind.

We drive down to the river where the remains of the Parota tree still stand. We meet the guy who owns the tree and he tells us to take what we want. What we want is large lumps of wood to make outside tables. Left to us we would have happily made do with the 8 foot x 3 feet lengths left over from a previous wood snatch. We take these, of course, but our man then shows us a whole slice, of tree, which he wants to get into our truck. Now Parota is as heavy as concrete and this looked all but impossible. But we did it. The truck survived and so did we. We rolled it on like a massive tier and rolled it off the other the end (outside the orange shower block). It’s going to be amazing when it’s cleaned up. It will become an outstanding table and the other bits will transform into bathroom and kitchen counters.

We return to town to collect the cat. She is a great deal quieter on the journey home . Anaesthetic still very much in effect. Tripping her little face off. She gets home and staggers around with back legs splayed like a frog and eyes spinning. Another reminder of the night before…

Splitting bamboo is an art form. Ninja like our man and I set about the task. I orientate the bamboo lengths and angle it exactly as our 10 minutes of YouTube training showed us. He takes a machete and smashes it closer and closer to my face with a hammer. When it gets too scary we both take a side and pull as hard as we can and the bamboo cracks in half (ish). We have this process down to about two splits a minute but it is exhausting. We split enough to line the bathroom and shower then I paint them with anti-termite goo.

It has rained all night. Hard. I wake up and employ clothes for the first time in many months. I have long pants and socks and a hoodie on! The Polaris is fun in the mud , the apartment roof has had it’s first test and works amazingly well. We have a dry floor for “ Juan Juan the slow concrete man” to work with. To be fair the concrete mixer has had a workout and there is now a few extra tons of floor. The angle at which the current floor is tilted is requiring huge quantities of leveling. Thankfully the existing roof is well made and fully re-barred (as we found when trying to drill holes through for the plumbing) so will cope.

Friend arrives in a few days from Reno. Big push to get something to rent by Xmas. San Pancho is effectively fully booked January and February. Must take advantage of high season. We are making savings where we can to divert cash to building materials. Jayne has given up tequila apparently so that will help.

There now follows our first ( and probably not our last ) blatant self-promotion bit. In order to encourage a little cash flow to pay for concrete and sweat we are offering a few alternative Xmas present options for sale. Buy your loved one a bat, a bee or a tree. Check out our shop.

Jungle Journal

Journey to Polaris

November 28, 2017
by Beave

Still working towards getting our place ready to rent out. Making it fun. This blog may be a little ranty but it’s cathartic so forgive/ignore as necessary.

Our man wakes us as the light sets in proper about 8 am . He rides his donkey with no name noisily up the hill and delivers milk fresh from the cow. He insists it gives super powers. Few hours chilled and it is amazing stuff. He leaves with the donkey towing a lump of tree which is to be our new gate posts.

Our friend is a white witch healer in the town. She is a gentle and generous soul who only wears white and is seen with her two small rescued dogs that never leave her side. She takes local milk and cream and mixes it with honey from the hills and makes ice cream in jars. I was stabbed with a fork (not in a very healing, generous or gentle way I may add ) because I could not resist taking down the last jar she had.

My phone remains drowned. Our life saving methods including weeks in rice and anti-humidity crystals have failed to revive. I am not missing it at all. I have decided not to replace it for the foreseeable future. Lack of photos/camera is an issue I need to deal with (apologies).

I have progressively become more judgey as I see phones consume people’s lives. When stuck in airports I used to head to a bar and pass time chatting to random strangers. These days a screened device transfixes every single person in the bar. Saying hi or even making eye contact results in anger, suspicion or even fear. I’m not that scary.

It came home hard to me when I was in San Francisco. This city is extraordinary but you need to work 3 jobs for 7 days a week to make rent on a shared broom cupboard. I walked downtown in the middle of the day looking at my own phone following a map. I looked up and noticed that on the other side of the road there was a shantytown of homeless people. My side of the pavement was packed with suited people and tourists. All staring at screens as they walked. All of them. Literally all of them. On one side of the street I could not make eye contact with a single person if I had wanted to. On the other the homeless guys sat quietly and watched over at everyone marching past ghostly unaware. At first I thought people were distracting themselves, a way to ignore the homeless situation right there on display. After a while I realised that it didn’t matter what was around them . They were in a different place. Not here where I was. They were buying things for imaginary farms, or swiping left or right, or putting bunny ears on pictures of their kids they never see.

I recently spoke to a Doctor in Manchester who sees the results of children & young adults living through screens. I-pad attachments for prams and pushchairs are popular these days. She observes that there is a growing population that has lost the ability to emote. They have learned to express happy things with a smiley face and bad things with a thumbs down grumpy face emoji. It apparently extracts them from real emotions and the ability to recognise human feelings. It’s a worry.

Again my own hypocrisy in this matter is under review.

We do use Facebook to keep in touch with real-life friends and family spread far and wide and do find it a useful tool (if I avoid posts about how cute someone thinks their baby is or worse their cat.) We don’t approve at all of the Orwellian overtones of being constantly monitored and “influenced” by managed content but I avoid the like button and use a VPN so if the sneaky buggers want to find out were I am, what shoes I have just broken or how to make me vote for Trump then good luck with that mate .

Google is our friend. As a fact checker it helps and as a “how to do “ oracle of all knowledge its invaluable. Who knew how little I actually knew. Not me. Our website and our blog will be promoting us and so we are unashamed users of the great web of everything. If, however, you see me with my head in my phone when the sun is setting behind me and I’m surrounded by butterflies and birds and sexy people are trying to engage with me please please please give me slap. I see this happening all the time and it drives me nuts.

So we have come to understand the real addiction people have to their phones. We must make a plan to reluctantly service this addiction. We plan to promote our jungle experience as an opportunity to raise ones screen face upwards and engage but also recognise this will reduce our rental potential with those that can afford a few quid. We are told that American tourists here can do without water, food and a bed but not Wi-Fi. It’s an issue as the waiting list for new Wi-Fi connection in San Pancho is currently two years (not joking).

Because of this we have contacted the owner of the only house we can see from our land. Jayne’s Dad and I installed a rope up the treacherous hill behind us to give us better access to our water storage. If you make it up that far without falling too dramatically and squint with your head at a certain angle while hanging onto a tree there is a faint white spot that you may or may not be able to make out at the top of the furthest hill. That’s the place. Our first plan is to find a spot in town ( we have a number of target options) and bounce what internet we can to this white dot and redirect it to us so we can further distribute it around our hill. This is the result of Jayne’s Dad studying satellite imagery of the area and learning about such technical matters for weeks leading up to his visit. Not something we would be attempting on our own.

The alternative is to take our brand new temporary Mexican residence cards to Telcel (who have a tower near us that provides serviceable Wi-Fi at a price ) and get a decent data plan and share that. We are looking at both options for fun.

The recovery of the land is a constant amazement. We found a path ( I use the royal “we” as it appeared after the boys took their machetes out for the afternoon ). This wide perfect path crosses the land from North to South and connects one side to the other. It starts at the highest water Tinaco on the North side near the solar area and end up at our pool. On this path is another water Tinaco we discovered . This is great news as they are not cheap and are immensely useful. When plumbed in will feed the bricksh*t house shower. This is good news as we can set up glamping when we have power and connect water and buy tents and dig terracing and all the other things …..

Now I always had the impression that Canadians were a hardy lot who forged streams and skied mountains and laughed in the face of snow and ice. Well the two from Calgary that are here are letting the side down. I am swimming in the delightfully warm pool while these two shiver and moan about the slight cooling effect of getting in. It is currently minus 16 in Calgary by the way !? They are in cahoots and its not long before they have bought pipe and boxes are emptied and gas is diverted and holes are drilled and before too long there is steaming hot waterfall coming out of the taps. Hot water showers !! Softies. Jayne’s Dad is spoiling her rotten.

The streams and rivers are all running slow and low. The result of this is algae is forming so we drive over green water these days. The seasons bring different gifts of nature. September is fireflies, October is hornets and wasps and November is ticks. We trekked up to the top of the hill and I ended up following a water pipe right through the jungle. I did not take a machete so I had both hands free and I needed them. At one point I was suspended above the ground by vines. An inelegant untangling later I descended through a lot of sharp pointy thorny stuff and ended up on the new pathway at the newly found water Tenaca. A gang of ticks must have had a right laugh following me and jumping on board. At the last count I found seven of them snacking on me. Good job there is no Lyme’s Disease in Mexico. Just well entertained, well fed ticks. I must be delicious . They don’t bother with anyone else.

San Pancho energy is building again. More new places to eat , shop, drink and spend tempt us daily. Many pinky brown tourists spending lots of money on rent. There are still the obligatory stunning sunsets . We have found a sexy bar that serves just about perfect Margaritas while we watch a lot of very thin bronzed and perfectly tattooed floppy haired local youths getting their surfboards wet and slack lining off palm trees.

No escaping the world really. I am in the back of our pick up truck just leaving our very favorite local ladies (who sell us the best cooked chickens) and a helmeted guy on a scooter shouts at me. Do you know “the Poyntons”? … Now much as I never like to admit knowing those crazy buggers I was wrong footed by surprise and confusion. Turns out this bloke from Cape Town knows us all from Afrikaburn and recognised me from there 2 years ago. I had thrown ice at him (we ran ice sales). He jumps in the truck and he gets the tour and lunch and heads back to his new job in PV. We now have our newest volunteer but worryingly more incentive for the Poyntons to turn up!

The past days have been swallowed by designing a battery safe house and solar panel racks. We have also spent ( invested) an age in Ferreterias, electrical and wood shops spending (investing) pesos. We are using Jayne’s Dad skills acquired by building scout camps and his own house . He is currently deployed wiring up our tree house for the arrival of magic sun power. We have gotten used to no power and having no lights and other such luxuries. Candles , head torches and early nights for us. When we test actual light bulbs on the generator it is like coming out of a cave. Seeing things all lit up. We had sort of forgotten the rather significant benefits of seeing things. Our floor needs a mop.

Much swearing and gnashing of teeth from me as both my batteries for my beloved Makita impact driver and drill fail. No charge and no charging. Trips to bloody useless Makita dealer and offers of extortionate priced inferior replacements later I finally clock the obvious. Feelings of both relief and stupidity as I remember we live in a 110v world here. We use the generator 240V outlet to power the 240V charger unit which charges them up as normal. Language and teeth noises improve.

Someone just told me it’s a month till Xmas. How did that happen ! We are not exposed to TV or media hype or advertising so it’s passed us by. By this stage in UK I would be in mild panic mode trying to organise all the things. Not happening here. Not a cracker to be had . I did buy a box of Mi-Julie dates which has made me slightly Xmassy and we picked up a litre of eggnog which we can traditionally ignore for a year or two and throw out when we get around to it. We spotted a sorry looking tinsel tree on a shack today by the side of the road and at the traffic lights someone was selling inflatable penguins alongside the usual lumps of suspicious looking sugar cane and stolen flowers so we are not completely removed from it all.

Surprise turn of events. Jayne’s Dad has become our first investor. We have a number of investment opportunities here (relax this is not a sales pitch) we are working on but he just might have the sexiest. He has just bought a Polaris. Now this Polaris is a 4 seater ATV which is top of the range and very highly sought after by those who know. Amazingly they are advertised for rent at over $250US a day in PV and are ideal for our land and our access road. We can rent our places here with a Polaris at a fair old whack. We need to modify the Bodega to get it through the doors but that should not be too much drama. This is good news. Should get delivery later this week. Want to rent a Polaris mate ?

Jungle Journal

Rustico ! is the new Janky

November 19, 2017
by Beave

Been out in the jungle now for 6 weeks. Seems like a huge amount more time has passed…. in a good way. No regrets and much achieved. Tourists are arriving into San Pancho and beach life there is in full swing. I need to preface this by declaring I am perfectly healthy and at no time has there been serious risk to my being . No need to worry Mum.

There is a lot to do and so we have to prioritise. No real routine has evolved but our current focus is getting the apartment above the Bodega and the area around it ready to rent out. We need an income. Our toilet block is now a delightful orange hue. Plumbing repairs to follow shortly. All the high value brass pipe has been nicked so we have a plan to replace it with low value plastic.

I have recently been spending a great deal of energy mending and replacing many screen windows. I’ve even built my first two from scratch. After a while swearing at the wood, pulling bugs out of the varnish , straightening bent nails, and hammering my multi-coloured thumb, time takes on a different dimension and allows you to think about the bigger things, manage your expectations, appreciate the brief moments of success and not be too attached to the result. It’s very much like supporting Newcastle United. Slightly less emotional perhaps.

The apartment is now bright blanco inside and out. As well as the first of the new beautiful screen windows there has been the addition of a solid staircase to get up there created by splitting a tree in half. It’s just the right side of janky. Rustico! is the design theme. We love it.

There has also been a further creation of a large impressive floating Mezzanine area with an even jankier (Rustico!) stair/ladder. We have decided not to make it feel too safe to get up to it and to leave off any safety railings or handrails. We are not aiming to make this space very child friendly or idiot proof. We are arranging for a jungle contract, which will exonerate us from lawsuits. It’s a jungle. Things happen. Be aware and take reasonable care and all will be well,.

Solar planning is also full on. We have realized that trees and sun make shade. The brick-shithouse area is ginger friendly. Only a few hours of baking sunshine a day. Protons bounce off treetops rather than hit the ground where we intend to make our sun energy magic happen. Change of plan. We have now cleared a huge swathe of jungle on the South face of the hill. What used to be a huge Palapa and deck area still stands on shaky bug eaten legs with no roof and a stolen deck clearly elsewhere. Our plan is to have our proton catchers in this sun trap and rebuild the deck. It’s a beautiful spot tucked away and boarded by the stream running from the falls. Should be water running for the next month we think.

Water is disappearing. The well has dropped a meter or two and the creek has all but dried up. We see some pools in the morning and nothing by the afternoon. So only 4 streams to cross to get to us now.

As the water levels drop there is a steady pilgrimage from San Pancho to the streams to collect rocks. River rocks are used everywhere for building and decorating and gardens. Pick up truck loads are removed. So before our best rocks end up cemented into someone’s bathroom we gather and take the Toyota down to the wide stream to test its suspension.

We park mid stream and load up the truck. These boys are small but immensely strong. Even granddad is picking up boulders half his size. The 15 year old is pushing stuff around twice his weight. There is a macho thing happening and I am getting sucked into it. We wait until the rear springs look stressed enough and return to our newly dug out parking area and start to make a rockery of stored stone.

We go back for another load. We want bigger boulders apparently. Granddad is throwing the largest lumps and so I chose a biggish one, which is testing my strength. I get to the tailgate and make the effort to load the thing onto the growing pile and suddenly see sky. The river is very slippy and I have lost my footing. I heave the boulderaway from me as best I can in mid air and land not entirely elegantly in the river. I sit there examining myself and avoiding fuss. Granddad points out a large rock close to my head that I avoided hitting. It’s far enough away and amongst a large number of similar things I avoided so no drama. My ribs are a touch bruised and my thumb (which successfully caught the boulder on the way down) has a very pretty blue nail. It turns darker as I watch. It might not make it. We collect a further couple of loads and then call our rock store complete.

We greet our iron maker who arrives to survey the house for our new doors. Designs are approved and he leaves to get creative. They will look brilliant and make our house secure and sexy.

We then welcome our solar guy & his wife to survey the new chosen location before it is cleared. We make the trek with a couple of friends who also arrive at the same time and bring us beer & Mezcal . This is by far the most people we have had our here in one day. It’s a nice change of pace. All is well until we head back and the hornets reappear. This time they ignore me as I pass them swinging a machete and hit our solar friends hard and fast. Not good. We get to the hosepipe and apply waterfall as quick as we can. Thankfully they are on their way to surf so their day can only improve. We drink beer and Mezcal with our remaining sting free friends and feel guilty.

The hornets have perished under a cloud of OKO. Our brave crew who cleared the land for the solar took spray cans of this specific noxious stuff which they know to be the best thing to discourage the buggers and distributed it onto every nest they could find. Not a job I would have wanted. I only got hit a few times but it was always sudden and unexpected and very painful. You don’t see them coming.

So we have exterminated the hornets. I also killed two large black torpedo shaped flying noise machines that were making sleep impossible. They sounded like helicopters, old broken noisy ones. I felt guilty afterwards, awaiting my Karma. Now I am no Jainist or vegan and my personal level of hypocrisy when it comes to respecting life and beasts is under constant review. I do try and respect life in all its forms and don’t make a habit of swatting flies or poisoning mice/rats. I save frogs and hopping things from the cat daily. I do, however, smack mosquitos to death regularly. My love affair with termites, scorpions and cutter ants is tenuous to say the least. I admit to ending a number of them. We are avoiding the very many recommended poisons designed to kill everything creepy or crawly. We are a source of food to many things and sorta kinda put up with it. Ticks are, however, killed on site. So far the rooster has survived the cull.

Snakes have appeared. Found a tiny baby one curled up under a block I moved which was cute but I kept my eyes out for its mum. Had a few other larger versions ignore me and cross my path quickly. We heard a loud distressed noise from under the house. it was dark but we traced the noise to a mouse that was looking directly at us and was clearly unhappy. I had my suspicions that this mouse was in trouble which was confirmed when we noticed that it is partly inside a snake. I hope that wasn’t Mortimer.

We are becoming very blasé about sharing our space with nature. I work beside the largest spiders and flick all sorts of bug and beasts from my face and hair regularly. I did, however, have my resolve tested when we arrived home a few days ago.

Still gulping air from the walk up the hill I noticed a trail of black ants on our stairs. Not cutter ants and not red ants so nothing to be worried about. I get to our recycle bin next to our door, which seems to be the ants’ destination and find a swarm of them over some unfortunate ex-beast that is all but consumed. Then my feet (which are in my last remaining unbroken sandals) get bitten. Many times. It hurts a lot. We get into the house quickly. I protect my aching feet with rubber welly -boots and head to the balcony to get a broom to counter attack. As I get to the screen door it appears to move. There are ants all over it. I open the door and shut it behind me very quickly. The decking is completely covered in ants. The screen windows are completely surrounded by ants. I check where they are coming from and the walls are covered in lines of ants. I attack. My broom eventually propels half of them over the side but more replace them. They are coming from everywhere at once. It’s biblical. I am now armed with a kill-everything poison spray bottle that we have avoided using except spraying the door-frames to repel scorpions. The ants thankfully don’t like it at all. With thrusts of broom and mists of gunk they start to retreat. A long few minutes later the deck is ant free. I return to the front door and return the remaining invaders to the jungle. I empty the last of the spray on the stairs. Tripe has vanished. Don’t blame him!

We have arranged a day off to meet up with a couple that are friends of our Chapala mechanic ( who we think is hiding from us or has died.) They are working in a dog rescue place not far away and are from New Zealand (we can forgive them that.) Good to see things here through fresh eyes. Also good to have a map of local surf breaks they have tried out. I must get my board wet soon. After the grand tour we end up in Sayalita indulging in one our favorite local delicacies. It’s a burrito without the tortilla, which is replaced with a sheet of fried cheese packed with whatever you like. Fresh octopus in a fried cheese casing is my idea of heavenly heart attack food. The kiwis are off to buy a van in Chapala and then travel Mexico. Sure we will meet up again.

We are preparing for a VIP. Jayne’s Dad is arriving from Calgary for a 3-week visit. The apartment is far from habitable yet so this involves a lot of very hasty upgrades to the “Gypsy Caravan” or shed as I call it. Holes are mended, locks fitted, paint is applied, waterfall is plumbed in, beds are made. The whole of it is cleaned for the first time in many years. It looks pretty good considering. Finishing touch is the obligatory janky (Rustico!) staircase up to the door. I was told the Queen thinks the world smells of paint because everywhere she goes has just been redecorated. I wonder if he will notice.

Our schedule has been interrupted as we have taken some days off to attend a four-day “Architectural Bamboo “ course. We have a heap of bamboo and an endless supply locally, which we want to use. We have a lot of experience building various temporary structures with bamboo around the world. We want to learn more so have negotiated a significant cheeky discount and off to Sayulita we go.

We now understand that bamboo is not good in the wet, or the sun. We also know that bugs love it and that it can’t touch the ground, ever, or it will rot. We know that it is strong on the outside but weak on the inside and needs a lot of pretreatment before we can use it at all. It is not the flexible friend we thought it was. We also know that failing to build a geodesic dome for two days with lengths of bamboo and string is a terrible idea. Being hit in the head by spring-loaded bamboo is also a terrible idea. Thankfully I have a thick skull and little there to damage so I survived. We have met some very good people and are looking forward to working and playing with them again.

We arrive home late and the van gets stuck up the hill before reaching the house. Our 4×4 is back with Jesus. It’s dark and the back wheels are spinning on the rocks that used to be evenly spread as traction but the rains have now made into sporadic piles of rubble. I get out to survey the situation and encourage another run at it. The wheels spin until there is slow forward motion and then sudden momentum as they catch. The van lurches upward and the tyres fling rocks at great speed towards me. I hear them pass very fast and very close to my head. I won’t be doing that again.

Great news! We are informed of the opening of a pub in San Pancho. The first of its kind. It serves home produced beers on tap. Tap beers are something I miss as its pretty much all bottles here. We arrive with some enthusiasm and are greeted by great people behind a large Parota bar very excited about their first day of business after many months of planning. The craft beers they offer are all IPAs. Now I am not adverse to a hop or two but the trend to make beer taste like perfume, toothpaste, shoe polish and feet is not for me. I am assured that for IPA these beers are great examples but I am clearly not an IPA drinker. Beers that I grew up with from Theakstons have spoilt me maybe. Where are the Leo Sayer ( all day-er ) brews that taste like smooth delicious beer and don’t make you stupid after a neckful of them ? Guinness oh Guinness how I miss you.

It is possible that our mechanic in Chapala is still alive and an outside possibility that the Rug-Rod vehicle we bought a few months ago may be in a state of drivability within a foreseeable amount of time maybe soonish. This is potentially possibly good news. A trip to Chapala is in our future, we suspect, sometime, perhaps.

Jungle Journal

White is the new Orange

November 4, 2017
by Beave

So the effect of no 4×4 truck is to persuade Django (our lovely 2×4 van) to take us further than it wants to go. We compromise and park her at our mans ranch which is a little more than half way home. From there we walk.

The plan is to buy only easy to carry things and arrive home before dark. We are not good at this and arrive at the ranch , in the dark with , amongst many other things , a queen size mattress and 80 litres of paint .

Puerta Vallarta ( PV) is in a separate time zone to us. Or should be. Mexico decided that this was inconvenient as large amounts of hungover Gringos did not factor this in and missed their flights. This was solved in a flurry of official stamps and signatures . San Pancho and Sayalita were declared on the same time zone at Puerta Vallarta by the Mexican government. 30 mins up the road the other way the time changes as per traditional International “guidelines” and geography.

We forgot about the clocks changing and arrived home an hour late in the dark. No excuse for the shopping.

We decide to blag a lift with all our stuff the next day and set off home in the dark being fully aware of snakes . There has been sightings of two large snakes on the road between the ranch and our house. It’s OK as we have protective open toe sandals and the light of our one good iPhone. Snakes are our number one thought for nearly a whole minute. As we leave the light and follow the path fire flies are lighting our way. Not just the odd one or two but thousands of them. By the time we reach the creek+ that borders our land there are swirls and waves of them. It’s dizzying and overwhelming. We sit down and try and take it all in. This is one of the most stunning sights I have ever witnessed.

Did not know how many kids were in San Pancho till today. Halloween brings them all on the streets to impress with their dressing up efforts and fill themselves with sugar. Hundreds of sugar crazed spider-bat-witch-frog-zombies. The town itself is almost fully alive now. Renovations in final stages and new old places opening daily. So much more choice to spend your peso. The tourists are coming.

Day of The Dead is a family affair in San Pancho. The locals spend a few days in the graveyard partying with their departed. If grandad loved cards then there is a poker game. If granny was a dancer then there is dancing. There is a somber candle lit procession of girls all immaculately made up as the iconic Katrina character . It’s a spiritual affair. Almost but not entirely unlike the opening scene of a certain bond movie. We have missed our good friends 50th Birthday in Manchester which was Dia De Los Muertos themed. Photos look epic. Skype failed us or she would have had a Mariachi Band play happy birthday from the beach. It’s the thought that counts right ?

Jobs at home are appearing fast. After moving our house tenaco to the other side ( of the hill ) we use the water from the creek+ to fill it & hose down the shower block and bodega. The effect of this is to reveal what will be a rather funky jungle apartment …. Eventually. Previously an aged artist chap who lives even further out somewhere painted on the entire apartment exterior. It is a 360 degree mural depicting night and day in the jungle with plants and trees and butterflies and birds. Now I am all about the art but this never quite made the good list for me. It took a lot of work I can see that but does look like a stage set of the Jungle Book made for a junior school production. The water had removed sections of bird and plant. Time for a change.

We drive too far and spend far too long buying exactly the right shade and hue of paint . We chose a subtle semi-matt terracotta bloom for our entire exterior and get a ton of boring white for the inside. It’s an early morning start to avoid the sun and I take to the bodega armed with brush and intension.

Jayne would like to help but has been stung many times in many places by flying hornet terrorists. She is not in a good way with crawlingly itchy inflammed wounds and being pretty effectively poisoned. We have anti-scorpion bite strength anti-hystamines and Mezcal. If she makes it through the day she has agreed to see a doctor.

Some more rustic locals use scorpion bites as medicine. When the flu is setting in they deliberately get themselves stung to liven the immune system. Hornet stings are good for arthritis we are informed. Jayne is unconvinced but large areas of her neck and arms do appear arthritis free.

There is now a substantial chunk of semi-matt terracotta bloom on the shower block . A lesser chuck on the bodega apartment. I rehydrate by sitting in the creek+ and review the situation. The shower block looks orange. The bodega apartment has a wall with very distinctive birds and plants covered in a non-opaque orange wash. I decide to cover all depictions of beasts and plants with a white undercoat before deploying the orange… semi-matt terracotta bloom . After too much sun and not enough cold beer I have it all covered. I sit in the reviewing position and accept a delivery of just the right amount of cold beer from my poisoned invalid who is slightly conscious. . We both look at the very orange shower block and the now beautifully clean white Bodega apartment. White it is then…… We now have a disturbingly large supply of orange paint.

+We have had a river that became a stream but it is now certainly a creek. Soon it will be a creek bed.

There is a growing dark patch of what looks like fungus on the trunk of the tree outside the bodega. I am warned away from it so have to go and look. The patch on ill advised close inspection is hundreds of caterpillars that excrete noxious stuff and must be avoided. You can’t tell till you are too close.

“Mackino” is coming . It has been foretold since we arrived but now it is coming. The wise ones have declaerd the rainy season over and our road needs to be fixed. Our van wants to come home. It’s a real beast of a Mackino. It tears up tonnes of earth and shifts rocks from road and river bed and arrives out side our place. It rips us a new road right in front of our eyes. It then drives onto the land making a driveway as it goes. A very large area of brush and sharp things are removed and a brand new area of our land appears. Somehow it has danced around the new lime tree that is uncovered. We now have lime, avocado , papaya, lychee, mango and passion fruit trees all waiting for us to water them enough to fruit . No pressure. Mackino is to return and forge us a roadway & parking for van and truck next to our house. We love Mackino !

The new road is really awful, quite terrible in fact . For us , however, it is a delight. All those lovely janky rocks are in different places and it has taken a good minute off our transit time to town. Better than this is the fact the Django can get to our house. For the first time ! I no longer have to carry too much stuff from the ranch in the dark ( yes that has become a regular thing ).

Truck lives. It has taken a while. Jesus the mechanic performed his miracle despite much faffing about and we now have two vehicles out here. There is more to be fixed and we have arranged a constant supply of parts from USA through a new friend who flys there and back regularly to his restaurant in Colorado with extra luggage space. He’s our new best friend probably. Over time we can get a whole Toyota shipped down in 50 Ib lumps.

Coco-nuts are not what they seem. Coco de Agua is how they call the Bounty Bar ones we all know and have an opinion on. What was new to me was the popularity of Coco Nuts. We have an endless supply out here. They are small and tough and after much work reveal a thin layer of soft orange flesh that tastes unsurprisingly like coconut but with an added exotic flavour I can not yet best describe. Kids love em.

Now there have been some incidents that have been sent to test our resolve. One of which I am still bemused by. Our kitchen space with beautifully fitted new sink just needed a coat of polyurethane to seal the wood surfaces. All kicheny things were temporarily balanced on chairs and tables and a new varnish coat was applied . Now we realise that a humid tree house is not the best environment to dry anything. We really do understand that to be true.. however. It’s been over a week now of sharing our space with kitchen stuff. The surfaces in our kitchen are distinctly sticky. Just sticky enough to glue anything we leave on them in place. We have decide to find it amusing rather than stickily frustrating. We are convinced that if we give the stated 4 hour drying time another week or two all will be well. We will have a worktop with the history of the past few weeks glued to it and we will one day get our chairs and table back.

Good news today is that we will not run out of water. Quite a major thing. There was an issue. The old guy who owned the land above us where the waterfalls are died last year. The current caretaker decided last week to fence off the waterfalls, remove everyones water lines and refuse to provide water or access to the falls unless she is paid. She is the wife of another older guy who died due to a fall at the waterfalls recently. It’s all very strange and a bit of a worry. The waterfalls are gorgeous , a local attraction and are right next to us. They also provide year around water to all of us around here which is especially important during very dry months. Much land in Mexico is actually owned by the Ejido tribe which keeps the land in trust for the people of Mexico. One of the many reasons you need so much legal advice when you buy land here. Lots of folk think they own land here. Thankfully this is such a case. The Ejido tribe have ruled the waterfalls belong to the people and can’t be owned or commercialised. Relief.

Now the most magic sought after wood around here is Parota. Our house is pretty much made of it. It resists all that nature throws at it , brushes off termites and mould and rot. When something is made of Parota it lasts and costs. During the storm a huge old Parota fell in the river closest to town. A local company bought it immediately from the ranchers who owned the land and set about it with chain saws. All the offcuts mysteriously disappear every night. A few mysterious offcuts have appeared in my house this morning with the full family crew. I help carry massively heavy lumps of Parota up all the steps avoiding our new seedling plantation usefully located on them. Add a chainsaw , a hammer and a handful of industrial nails and we have a new four poster Parota bed to house our new mattress. Let it dry out for a month or two and we will stain it to match the house. We promised that we would not compromise on a decent bed. We have achieved no compromise at very little cost. Not one item from Home Depot ++ either. Great result .

++ We have boycotted Home Depot and Walmart in PV who both offer overpriced everything in exchange for “a gringo friendly environment.” We have found them not only expensive but fairly useless and so our mission to support local business is not only a much more human, practical and friendly experience but saves us a load of cash too.

It’s full moon and 3 am and the jungle is lit with a moony glow and my laptop. Insects are singing more softly tonight. Maustrappe is on my shoulder purring like a well fuelled generator. Moonlight picks out the climbing vanilla next to the balcony and a patch of dormant orchids . It’s a peaceful place. I am relaxed and motivated . Good job. I’ve six windows to build today.