Beave, Author at La Colina Project

A beautiful lotus growing in our pool

Currently more of a pond…

Jungle Journal

More Heat, Most Humidity & all the Water

October 16, 2021October 16, 2021
by Beave

Jayne has finally reached the age of forty. It seems to have taken her a long time to get here. There is need to celebrate. This may be more difficult than we expect. Many of our friends have escaped the sticky air and are elsewhere in the world. Many of our more regular haunts are closed down till the rains stop. It’s a bit risky to arrange anything at an outdoor venue as it’s still raining just about every day. The sun drops over the ocean and the sky sucks in the clouds and the rain and thunder play off each other all night.

Thankfully this is not a problem unique to us. For some reason, I don’t fully understand my life is awash with Virgoans. Astrology is not necessarily my thing but I know without doubt that those born between August 23rd and September 22^nd follow me around. A number of them have got together and a joint celebration of getting older is arranged initially on the deck of a beach bar our friends are building but is yet to be completed. We invite folk to join us the weekend before her birthday and bring gin. Our local Mezcaleria is one of the only remaining bars open and agrees to host the after party and hire our favorite local DJ. Should be fun, weather permitting.

It has taken some weeks but the hurricane damage has been sorted enough to get the sub up the road to the treehouse. We have to take it ridiculously slowly and carefully. This is a huge success as walking from town with fuel and water is a ridiculous chore. The big tree that blocked our way has been cut up and dispatched into the jungle. There is enough earth clinging to the rocks to make the roads passable. Just. The many fallen branches are macheted into fire wood. We struggle through the deep layers of crunchingly painful dried spike vines that cover the jungle floor. The hurricane literally blew them out of the trees.

Jayne has booked her flight North and if all goes to plan will spend the entire hot sweaty month of October catching up with family in cold fresh Canada. She has faith that somehow, she can be double vaccinated in time. If not she will have to rebook her flights to a later date.

The luck dragons appear to be on our side and we get news that second vaccines are to be available in another gymnasium in the city. When we get there, we are advised that it is impossible to get a second dose unless we are over 40, had the first vaccination at that location at least a month previously. Jayne is under 40, has never been to this particular gymnasium and was initially vaccinated only a few weeks before. Somehow, maybe due to my stunning good looks and blinding charm we are invited in and are fast tracked to the front of the queue. It’s most likely due to Jaynes command of Spanish, a few tall tales and the undeniable, if sometimes embarrassing, privilege that being a white gringo still holds. She and her family are delighted. I get to look forward to a month in the jungle solo. It’s been a while.

The lightening has become quite dramatic. Flashes light up the jungle like daylight. The big Copomo trees around us have avoided getting direct hits but attract the bolts to land very close to our treehouse. Often the thunder is instant, deafening and travels straight through the timbers. It focuses the mind when suspended four meters above the ground. It is lightening like this that scared off all our bees a couple of years ago. I decide to check next time I’m passing.

Its that time when the golden orb spiders present themselves. If you don’t keep your eyes open you can be clothes lined across the face or neck by a strong wire like thread. Hanging to the end of this thread is a spider that is way too large and irritable that is thrust into your face. It’s not recommended.

If you look closely you can see the tiny male that follows his massive girlfriend around until she’s hungry enough to eat him.

I’m on my way carefully to the Bodega with a handful of tools carrying my machete when I see a shaft of sunlight hit our hives and make my way down through the overgrowth to check things out. The jungle has taken over so I have to cut my way in and spend some-time tidying the area, clearing vines and hacking down rapidly growing palms. At my last visit, there were thousands of bees clinging to the outside of the hives avoiding the suffocating heat inside. It’s a bit of a worry that right now, despite all my commotion, I can see no bees at all. The first hive I check by tapping my machete on the side. No response. I remove the security rocks from the lid and lift the upper section. The hive is entirely empty. Bugger.

I am disappointed we have lost a hive. It distracts me from my overconfidence playing with bee houses without any protection at all. Still no signs of life so a little too eagerly I remove the top section of the next hive. What happens next appeared to be in slow motion. From complete silence, I hear the roar of countless pissed off bees being disturbed non-consensually. The hive protecting warrior bees immediately and very efficiently set about discouraging me . I get some very painful stings but take the time to replace the lid before running away as fast as I could. To better piss them off I’m wearing a black T shirt and black socks. I’m quickly hundreds of yards away pointlessly flailing my machete and swearing loudly. They are not letting me off. My chest head, back and ankles are properly attacked. I’m fully at the other side of the land before I rid myself of the last of the tenacious little gits. I’m an idiot who has confirmed beyond doubt that we still have at least one active hive. Good for them.

It’s some days before the aching stings fade and I can concentrate on the important task of creating a pop up gin bar on the beach. It didn’t take long and for the first time in a week the rains held off. We had food delivered and someone made a cake that had a life expectancy of about 15 minutes in the heat. It was somehow devoured before it melted. We had about fifty people turn up which was just about everyone we know at this time of year. At sunset we cleaned up and moved the party successfully to the Mescaleria bar where there was much dancing till very late. We ended up in a friend’s pool and still the rains held off. Jayne was very happy with the start of her birthday week.

After a very slow late breakfast we limped home the following afternoon with more gin that we started with . The day was spent in low pace recovery watching the rains come down hard. We timed our party perfectly as the rains didn’t really stop after that.

Its Thursday 16^th September which is Mexican Independence Day. This is the day of Jaynes birth so we decide to mark the occasion with a trip to the big city, a hotel with a bath and a table at a great restaurant. It’s been a while since we got away. It’s raining but the roads and rivers are still passable. Just.

The journey to the city is slow. The rains are getting stronger. We arrive at our hotel to find the entire street is under more than a foot of fast flowing water. We park opposite the hotel and wade across. Its chucking it down. Our planned walk along the seafront is canceled. An hour later we are in a taxi which makes it to our posh restaurant despite the rain coming down even harder. Drainpipes are pouring wide streams of water like waterfalls from every roof onto the roads. We watch the lightening and the constant rain rapidly deepening the flooded street from our window table.

It’s a memorable meal. We are spoilt and grateful as we again realise that walking anywhere is just not possible. We taxi back to the hotel to sit out the storm, over stuffed and suitably refreshed. Jayne has forty short video messages from friends and family all over the world which my mates schooled me in compiling for her. She watches them on the laptop from her bath as lightning flashes fill the room through the window. Nice and dramatic

The morning is deceptively calm. Blue skies and an unnecessary but delicious breakfast. We arrange a late check out. Jayne disappears into the city to get a massage and pampering. I abuse the bath as long as I am able before checking out and setting off to meet her. The blue of the sky has been replaced by dark bruised clouds pouring down the surrounding mountains towards us. I find an old man’s bar directly opposite the salon where she has been reclining while for some hours now as a team of patient girls in white coats have dedicatedly buffed and polished her. She meets me in the bar with all her new gleaming bits. It starts to rain. Proper rain.

Having seen a whole heap of rain for many weeks now it takes something special to impress us. This is indeed special. In no time at all the roads double up as fully functioning rivers. The chances of us getting home are looking very slim. We have a few drinks with the old men who tell us tales of old Puerto Vallarta forty years ago when Jayne was born. It becomes obvious we are not going anywhere, anytime soon, so we recheck into the hotel and head out for another over indulgent feed. The very impressive rains keep coming. I have been in monsoon rains in India, Africa and South-East Asia. These rains match those in their intensity but have the added trick of not stopping. It is official that the road North is closed and that the river in San Pancho has burst its banks. The water level has gone from about 6 inches to over 6 meters (20 feet) in an hour. The water is up to the bridges. Large areas have been washed away. Local old boys tell us it’s more rain than has been seen here for 30 years.

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/633821562

San Pancho river in full flood

The following morning is again calm. We attempt to eat breakfast but fail. We have both eaten more food in the past few days than we have for a month. The only road North is now clear of landslides and mud again, so after a compulsory last bath we stock up on cake, cigars and pies and make the journey home.

We arrive in San Pancho early Saturday afternoon. The river levels have dropped considerably from the night before but we notice straight away the speed and volume of the water. We take a different route off the highway as our usual exit immediately appears damaged. We reach the river and can see that things have changed. The whole river is much wider as the banks have been flattened. The bushes and hedgerows and small trees that lined the river are gone. The usual road from the highway is entirely destroyed. Replaced with deep pits and pointy rocks. The first river is fast flowing and on both sides are steep drops making it impossible to cross even if you could get to it.

We somehow avoid the dips and crevices in front of us and using our most aggressive 4×4 driving get to the second river crossing. A tree and downed power lines block the road so access is only on foot from here. We leave the car and attempt to cross. Pretty much as soon as we take a few strides the water is above our knees and strongly trying to push us under. We abandon that idea and try to circumvent this and the next crossing by hiking through a local neighbourhood which a local lady showed us the last time we tried this. We head in that direction and find more downed power lines and a cement electrical pole fully across the road. We climb over the pole and are met with a cliff like drop off to the river. The road is gone. Not washed out or damaged or replaced with holes and rocks. It’s gone. A road that has been there for decades and only a month previously had dump trucks up and down it all day is no more. The river burst its banks and took it away.

We head for town and persuade friends to take us into their air conditioned world. It’s days before we can contemplate getting home. Even by foot. We are resigned to the fact that all our repair work will be undone. The worry is what else we will find. If one of the big Copomos has fallen next to the treehouse it could be devastating. We are effectively refugees until the rivers calm down enough to give getting home another go.

Jayne is still in town borrowing an office and Wi-Fi . As she works I take on the mission to get home. By navigating downed power lines and finding new safer ways to cross the rivers I eventually get to the road leading to our place. It’s buggered. There are sections of road which are no more. Most of the rest is crater filled with massive rocks at all angles. It’s hard enough to hike over. No chance of driving anything. I get to our gate and things look surprisingly well. The rocks are piled high so access is impossible. Looking up the river to the road up to the treehouse is a worry. The corner of our land has been washed out taking down five of our biggest palm trees. They are all well over a hundred-foot-high and their root stacks are vast. There is a huge tangle of fence posts, palm trees, root stacks and barbed wire making it impossible to pass.

I make my way across the land. The crunching of the dry spike vines underfoot is loud, large broken limbs hang precariously from the trees or stick out of the jungle floor awkwardly where they fell. I’m passing the place where I am avoiding the bees and hear an unusual flow of water. Somehow a small stream is now crossing my path heading down the hill. I am a long way from the water pipes so it’s no leak. The river is behind me and a good few meters lower than where I am. The well which I checked on the way over is many meters below me and the water table a few meters down. Where is this water coming from? A separate water source has appeared that is coming out of the ground above our treehouse which we know to be 80 M above sea-level. It’s a strong flow of water cutting a new channel. It’s all rather odd.

It’s a relief to see our treehouse has not moved or been damaged. Every building we have still has a roof and we have no trees down on the land. We are lucky. The road, however, remains impassable for the next ten days. All the machines we need are fully employed rescuing folk with bigger problems than ours. Eventually we get a machine to work a solid 8 hours to give us access. The fallen trees are shifted around and the river access restored. Large amounts of dirt are poured on top of the rock beds to fashion a road of sorts. It is now possible to deliver water, food and fuel to the land without exhausting ourselves. It’s been a pretty tough time but others had it much worse. The river took a lot of land and property that will never be seen again.

This is the fourth October I have spent here. October is brutally beautiful. The jungle is every colour of green, the vines overtake everything as you watch, fire flies light up the night . The rains have all but stopped for a while but are now replaced with thick warm cloaks of humidity. The air we breathe delivers thick soupy warmth in our lungs which is no comfort. It takes but a few steps to induce profuse dripping sweats. Clothes stick to skin annoyingly so are discarded. Good job I’m so isolated. Lying motionless on dampening towels in front of a fan is the only rest bite. It’s exhausting.

So October is here. Jayne is not. She’s breathing in fresh dry Vancouver air and cooking pies for Canadian Thanksgiving. Our Thanksgiving was cancelled as our Canadian hosts are without power and water because someone decided to dig them up. Pinche Mexico Te Amo. It’s now possible to get to town but the motivation to do anything at all in this heat is sadly lacking. It’s going to be a slow month but with great luck we won’t get smashed by weather again. There is a heap of post rain maintenance to do. The entire jungle needs some taming. Our water pump needs replacing. Vehicles need repair. Large sections of our fences need rebuilding. Little by little it will all get done. In its own time and space. Eventually. No pressure.

Jungle Journal

Nature, Idiots and Bloody Nora.

September 1, 2021September 1, 2021
by Beave

Summer in the tropics. The colours are vivid, the sun is hot, the sea is warm and the beers are cold. Fruit is falling from the trees attracting clouds of butterflies that surround us as we walk. The fast-growing jungle is alive with fast-moving lizards and slow-moving snakes. The birds are loud, the bugs are louder and the frogs are loudest. The cats sleep 23 hours a day. Living with this amount of nature is extraordinary but ultimately humbling. It’s been a mad month.

Again, the rains come and kick our arse. With absolutely no notice, we are treated to a solid 12 hours of hard rain. There was little wind to interfere with the falling water so we got the full benefit. We are stuck for a number of good reasons. The river that has settled in front of our gate meanders towards where the road to our treehouse begins. The strength of the water carves the place where the road and river meet into a small impassable cliff.

By wading through the water, we discover that a new flood path has temporarily formed overnight. The river to our North overflowed and re-purposed our roads as temporary water ways in order to entirely destroy the road heading to the jungle above us and remove all the earth from the road that we use to get to town. It’s a mass of deep holes and large rocks positioned in such a way as to take the undercarriage off anything that attempts to traverse it. We hear the town is flooded so we stay put,

We manage to get a large machine in to help rescue us. Within 24 hours we have invested seven hours of machine time and repaired our roads and moved many tones of earth and rock to divert the river so it can’t bugger up our access. We are impressed by our efforts and look forward to many easier days gliding down our new roads beside our much better behaved river. We are idiots.

Jake makes it back to the UK and is immediately tested positive for Covid. It is very likely he caught it here and it didn’t have time to show up on his pre-flight test. He is symptom free which is good news but entirely frustrating. He quarantines in a small room at his mate’s place In Darlington. He is very lucky in many ways. If he had tested positive before he left here and had to stay for a further few weeks he would have been stuck here. Mexico for the first time has been declared a red zone country by the UK. If we want to visit family we will now have to pay £2250 quid each for the joy of staying in a government prison/hotel for 11 days. This has effectively ended all travel to Mexico from UK. It also meant that with just a few days’ notice many thousands of panicked visitors from the UK have to get back before the deadline. Our friend spent many stressful hours trying to re-book flights or be stuck here indefinitely. It was chaos.

Again, the rains come and kick our arse. With absolutely no notice we listen to the downfall noisily try and pierce our roof. It’s impossible to listen to music or podcasts or movies because the rain is so loud. Lightening hits within feet of the treehouse and the subsequent thunder shakes our bones. We appear from a long sleepless night to find everything we did undone. Not only is the river back to where it likes to be but its toying with us. The massive rocks we moved to protect our road are gone. A new steeper and wider cliff has replaced them. As suspected all our lovely roads have vanished, replaced with larger rocks and deeper holes. We are very stuck.

There are rumors that we will be hit by a hurricane in the next week or so but it’s really hard to tell if this will actually happen. Hurricanes are forever coming up our coast but mostly make landfall in Baja or much further South. The cool air coming off our jungle discourages them getting too close and tends to protect us. This area hasn’t been smashed by a hurricane since 2012. We make the decision to repair our way to freedom one more time. We are idiots.

For the first time this year the town and beach are getting noticeably quieter. Finally.

In previous years the volumes of bodies on our beloved pristine sands reflected clear seasons. After Thanksgiving in Canada and USA there was an exodus of RVs and snow birds packing our shores to “winter” in Mexico. This marked the beginning of our traditional high season. Most of these folks are retirees avoiding the cold weather and needy grown up kids. This had the effect of raising the average age considerably. They stay warm and well fed for the length of their 6-month visa and head back North at Semana Santa to be replaced by hordes of low budget Mexican tourists making camp on the beach for two weeks. After Easter, there was notably less folk and everything slowed down. Shops and restaurants closed. We had a full 6 months before it got nuts again.

But, as we know, the world as we know it has changed. Last year the Canadian-USA border closed holding back the swell of RVs trying to escape the winter. A mass of well-aged Covid vulnerable travelers decide to stay put and spend time with grandchildren rather than bake on a beach getting fatter. RV parks that have had full occupancy for years with long waiting lists for spots are now completely empty. Bars and restaurants which had evolved to service Canadians and Americans of a certain age are empty. Semana Santa was effectively cancelled so all our season markers vanished.

The most surprising and unforeseen result of our new world order is that huge amounts of middle class Mexican tourists have descended on us throughout the year. Guadalajara and Mexico City have a large population of fairly well-off families that have been hard hit by Covid and restrictions have been brutal. Lockdown means lockdown. Soldiers on the streets. Life stopped. The traditional holiday around Semana Santa may have been shut down again this year but it just spread things out. Towns such as Sayulita that are used to mass tourism have been packed out into August. Our beaches have been filled with large loud Mexican families camped under umbrellas surrounded by coolers of Corona light. They have been joined by a fleet of shiny new cars carrying new luggage and well-dressed families that are filling all the rentals and hotel rooms. They eat at restaurants and buy stuff from shops. Like proper tourists. It does mean that we have a lot more imported Covid cases but it has helped the local economy survive and in many cases, thrive.

September is somehow here already, the schools are back up and running and the rains, heat and humidity is getting challenging so, thankfully, our little town is pretty much ours again. There is a solid group of lunatics who stay here all year around. We spend time together dealing with all the stuff that nature and life throws at us. A group of hardy souls agree to take a hike across swollen rivers to find deep swimming holes surrounded by high rocks to dive from. It’s good to get away, even locally.

We have been here for four years now. It’s hard to get into our heads that it was four years ago we naïvely turned up at Manchester airport with eleven bags and a surf board. We remember very clearly the hours and days of torment we have suffered getting our immigration stuff sorted. We have been official temporary residents here for a full four years which is the most we are allowed. It’s time to revisit the immigration office again and see what fresh hell they can inflict upon us before granting us permanent residency.

We make the journey over our re-repaired roads to the big city to see what awaits us. It’s a Friday and the office is open until 3 pm so we confidently arrive at 10.45 prepared to sit in silence for many hours while being stared at by security guards that shout at you if you get your phone out or look anything other than bored and miserable. Nothing so predictable. We are told that the office is too busy to see us and we are to return the following week. Ideally arriving at 7 am (two hours before they open) so we can secure a spot sometime later that day. Unless they get too busy again. We leave with the familiar feeling of being stunned by incompetence. We find a good lunch and leave for home. With luck, we may be able to get out of our jungle on Monday and see what happens then. We have no choice but to deal with these very special people as our deadline to get our residency is running out. If we miss it then years of torturous buggering about will be for naught!

Our friend is having a birthday in town. There is a plan to celebrate by having a “lady’s night” at the Cerveceria which is a flimsy excuse for boys to dress as girls. There is a worrying amount of enthusiasm for this plan. There is also a number of worrying radar images being circulated that suggest that Tropical Storm Nora is heading straight for us and gaining strength. It is forecast to hit us Saturday night as a fully formed hurricane. The thought of getting stuck in the jungle again is not something we look forward to. There is also the issue that we will likely have to get to the immigration office and potentially live there for days. We make a call to lock down the treehouse, pack a few bags, head to town and see what happens.

We meet up at the beach for a few early drinks. The hurricane is coming. It’s already raining and remarkably the waves are huge, the swell massive and moving almost horizontal to the beach North to South. We haven’t seen the sea like this. Neither has anyone else. A couple of clearly insane surfers take their boards to the beach and study the water. They soon re-gather sanity, think better of it and retreat to town without drowning. The rain gets heavier and all the bars shutdown and so we also wade through the already flooded streets and retreat to town. It’s highly unlikely we will be able to get home tonight.

There was a good amount of distraction at what turns out to be essentially a birthday drag party as the rains come in and the winds start taking down trees. There are at least three cars and two houses under branches by midnight. The streets are under water and gusts of 120 km/h whip rain at all angles into everything. We camp out at a friend’s house and awake to more rain. News from Puerto Vallarta is that it’s been hit hard. Main highway bridges are destroyed and houses have partially collapsed. We walk through the river/streets in the rain to the beach. The waves are again heading straight towards the beach which is how it should be but the lagoon has breached into the ocean. There are unspeakable human waste type things in that lagoon so we won’t be going in the sea for some time. We have a slow breakfast and decide to try and get home. We are not confident.

It’s soon clear we are in for some fun. We are unable to reach our first river. The road has concrete lumps sticking up from a deep crack filled with water. It’s not possible to drive over or past it. We park up and grab our bags and start the hike in. The water is fast and strong and it takes all our attention not to get tipped over. There are branches all over the roads.

We reach the second river and again struggle across. We meet a local lady who we help to cross back the other way. She tells us the next river ahead is way too dangerous to cross. We believe her and follow across her land to where there is access to our road through a hedge that bypasses this crossing.

The next thing we find is that the organic farm close to us has been badly hit again. Palm trees have blocked the road up to the highway and trees are leaning again their gate. One of the new massive concrete electric poles has come down and is leaning on their house fence dramatically. It is blocking any access by any vehicle. We avoid the downed power lines that sit in large puddles of water.

The next river is the one we respect the most. We know that people have drowned trying to cross. Thankfully one of the big machines that had been moving earth did some work in this spot and moved a island of rocks which divided the water and caused deep channels. The water is strong but not higher than our knees so we both make it. We meet our neighbor who comes out to greet us. He was at our place the previous night checking in on us. The winds were unprecedented and exposed any weakness in any tree. There are lots of branches and vines on the floor but also a huge tree that has entirely blocked the road 100 meters from our gate. Its impressively huge and not quite fully on the ground so full of tension. It will dangerous to use a chainsaw so we need to get a gigantic machine in to move it. We just manage to climb over it and cross the last river. We are home. It starts to rain again. We can see no obvious bad damage. The 150-foot-high Capomo trees are still upright. The treehouse still standing. We are thankful.

Morning arrives and it’s finally stopped raining. The sun is just coming up as we pack up every document we have and wade out to find our car. We arrive at the immigration office sometime before 10am. It is empty. No one there except staff. We learn that Puerto Vallarta has been effectively closed down as they recover from Nora. It appears the perfect time to arrive at immigration is the Monday morning after a devastating hurricane. Who knew?! We sign in and are immediately directed to a window where an inscrutable young lady who we recognise from previous visits takes our thoroughly prepared stack of documents and endless copies of everything. She sends us off to the bank next door and requests we return with further receipts and copies. Our mission is to keep her happy. Maybe even get her to smile a bit, so we comply.

Half an hour later we are again in front of our window. Happy-pants seems pleased enough with our progress but still no smile. We sit for an hour in front of the grumpy guards that are obviously even more bored than we are. They force me to wear my soaked shoes. Bare feet are unacceptable. We are then asked back to the window to sign a document. We then sit for another hour. We are the only people there. They have nothing else to do. It’s remarkable how they are dragging all this out.

And then it happens. A flood of activity. We are fingerprinted with their new electronic scanner machine. Our digital signatures are taken. A white board is rolled up behind us as our tired faces and wild hair filled with bits of tree are photographed from all angles. A further hour of sitting and we are presented with two plastic cards. Happy-pants gives us a small, tiny, slightly sarcastic smile. Each card has a photograph that looks nothing like us but have the words Residente Permanente written in bold type above. Our way home is strewn with power lines, power poles, downed trees and crazy rivers. We won’t have internet for a week and we are exhausted…. but… we never, never, never have to come to this immigration office ever ever ever again! It’s a great day.

Jungle Journal

Poo Bags & Time Out

August 3, 2021August 3, 2021
by Beave

My radiant immortality is in question. It has been decided that because we are of a certain age (just me actually) it would be wise to indulge ourselves (me) in full medical screens. I’m more tempted by a delusional Peter Pan existence where such things are reserved for the very, very old (clearly not me). The best health clinic in Puerto Vallarta we can find is located and booked. We must present ourselves at 9 am, in the city, with a selection of recently harvested body fluids and samples. We are required to fast for 8 hours before my arrival. Not even a cup of tea is allowed. Not ideal.

The day arrives. After a few unusual morning contortions to collect samples (and no tea) we head to the big city with bags of unmentionable things in hand. The day does not go according to plan. There has been very heavy rain overnight. It is later confirmed that over 11 inches of rain fell in just over 5 hours. The mountains have disgorged massive amounts into our valley. The trickles of water carving patterns in the ground outside our gate have transformed into a 30-foot-wide, fierce, rock filled raging torrent. We look at each other and decide very quickly that it’s not worth risking ending up in the ocean.

We turn back just as the internet packs in. For the first time this year we are trapped and entirely out of touch. We return to the treehouse to wait it out and find that I had forgotten to take my technically challenging stool sample with me. I almost dislocated myself successfully getting what I needed into the undersized ziplock bag that now sits on our kitchen table. Jayne is unimpressed.

Our rainy season is transformative. Hot beautiful days are concluded with showers of fireflies and deep, bone shaking thunder. As the sun dips, clouds of many varieties and colours of butterflies precede blinding sheet lightening. The sounds of the jungle have moved on from the screaming cicadas and squawking chachalacas to the more melodic changing symphonies of endless bugs, frogs and beasties. The rivers are running and our roads are again slowly turning to rock pits as the water invades everything. It is now entirely possible to sit quietly and watch the jungle plants grow. Life surrounds us.

The rescheduled medical is upon us and we find ourselves in the big city with poo bags in hand. We undergo a series of prods and xrays and scans while parts of us are taken away for further research. We are told to return for the results in a week.

Our friend is trying to take advantage of an over stay visa amnesty where it is possible to get temporary residence without income checks and an annual visit to immigration offices. Immigration offices are famously horrendous pits of pedantic administrative hell. So it’s worth a shot. We spend a torturous hour or so waiting outside an immigration office, in the sun, with a ticket to eventually go into the office to be told by incompetent administrators to come back with further endless copies of pointless documents. We are eventually asked to return the following week. Jayne and I are required to be witnesses to our friend’s good standing. Not sure how that will play out. She’s a bit dodgy.

Jayne has an absolutely understandable desire to see her family in Canada. She hasn’t seen her parents in years now and hasn’t even met her nephew in Vancouver and he’s nearly 18 months old. Due to Canada’s tight border policy, if you are not vaccinated, you spend a silly amount of money being the guest of the Canadian government approved hotel/jailhouse for 10 days before you are allowed to mingle. The UK has also announced that unvaccinated folk must quarantine on arrival. This makes visiting our families effectively impractical unless we are vaccinated. For this reason, despite our low risk lifestyles, we decide to take up the opportunity to get jabbed.

27 000 AstraZeneca vaccines have been released to be distributed over a 48 hour window in Puerto Vallarta. We find ourselves in the city, on the final day of the program and head to the naval base very close by where a long line follows the contours of the vast building and way beyond. The thought of queuing for hours in the heat is too much for us. We head for a second location at a nearby gymnasium. 20 minutes away we are told. After 45 minutes of traffic we arrive to find a mass of people swamping the entire area forming loose queues and looser mobs. We can’t even see the building. The place closes at 3 pm and there is not a chance we would be anywhere near the front of the line by then. We head back to the naval base as fast as we can. We arrive to see a lot fewer people, manage to park and get in line. The queue is moving fast and we are soon at the gate. This is explained when we meet two armed guards who advise us to go back to the gymnasium as they have run out of doses. Our hopes are dashed.

There is no forecast re-release of vaccines in the city expected for some time. The vaccines distributed outside the city are most often Chinese or Russian version that are not accepted by the Canadian government. This makes Jayne very sad. We find a restaurant and take down a few huge plates of restorative sushi before heading for home after a tough day.

Jake has decided that now is the time to reintroduce himself to “real-life”. He has a flight booked back to the UK where he has arranged to quarantine at a mate’s house and pay for a series of Covid test on his arrival. All seems well until we realise that Spain will not allow anyone in who does not have two approved vaccines. He is way too young to get vaccinated here in Mexico and privately funded vaccines are not available. Second vaccines are months away so he is stuffed. We arrange to reroute his return flight via Amsterdam. Apparently, even though Brexit Britains are not welcome in the Netherlands they will allow him and his bags to pass through quickly if he brings a recent negative antigen test result with him. We will miss the bugger but it’s time for him get moving and earning again. There’s only a finite amount of paradise a bloke can handle.

A good mate arrives from California to stay with us for a few days. She is travelling with her husband and 4-year-old son. They have rented a very posh condo-apartment in the city but want to rough it with us for a few days. They are here to take advantage of the dental tourism industry that has popped up in Puerto Vallarta. Dental care options are excellent in PV. Incredibly they were quoted $22k US dollars to get one single tooth fixed in San Francisco. They have come down on holiday, rented a cool place and paid for all sorts of dental work for a tiny fraction of that cost. To make things even stranger they have rented out their place in San Francisco while they are away and are actually turning a profit on the trip!

It’s odd, in a good way, to have guests again. They are here for a very short time and our weekend is packed. We spend another splendid day on the sailboat and eating way too well at the fancy restaurants near the marina. Sunday is a Birria breakfast then a long painful football match against some overachieving Italians that I don’t want to talk about. Solace is taken by swimming in the sea outside Tomatina’s bar in Lo De Marcos as the sun comes down in its spectacular way. It’s always immensely satisfying seeing our life through new eyes. Especially friends and especially a crazy four-year-old. We are lucky.

The next morning, we are up early, cram into the Sub and head to the city. We drop off our guests and Jake at their higher-class world of room service, pools and flushing loos where we arrange to meet up later. We head out to do our stuff. Our immigration interview is on time. As official temporary residents, we sign a few photocopies of our ID and this is apparently enough to allow our friend to be officialised and many steps closer to her residency. At no time are we asked any questions at all about our friend’s good standing or our relationship with her. It is not clear that we even know her! This does not seem to be an issue. We leave in good time and head to the clinic for our medical results.

We meet our assigned doctor who carefully goes through reams of results and data with us both. Jayne goes first and after 20 minutes it becomes obvious that she is both irritatingly young and unbelievably healthy. Then it’s my turn. My heart, lungs, prostate, ziplock bag and most surprisingly my liver are all in pretty good shape… “for my age”. After the usual nagging about cholesterol and blood pressure I am advised to eat more good things and maybe drink less beer but certainly increase my intake of Tequila and Raicilla. Our wise doctor has a grandmother who makes Raicilla. He absolutely advised me in his capacity as my medical advisor that tequila is life. I respect his advice. We will all meet again in a few months to see how we (me) are going. Could have been a lot worse so I consider it a win. Jayne remains silently young and smug.

My lovely friend rings me from her posh condo-apartment to tell us that her dentist had told her that there was an extra batch of vaccines arriving at the gymnasium now. “No one” knows and there are no queues. We make it there in 15 minutes flat and before we have had time to think are directed to sit on chairs with about 50 other people. A trolley follows a guy with a clip board. When clip board guy has all the details he needs then a large lady with nice eyes and a syringe drops the needle into my arm and moves on. We are required to sit still for 10 minutes to check we have a fair chance of surviving and are then released. That was it! They have it all very professionally dialled in. No wonder they can get so many thousands of vaccines done in such a short time. The group of 50 who have just arrived are told they have run out of doses. We are lucky.

We spend the rest of the day congratulating ourselves on a far more successful and productive day by meeting up with Jake and abusing our friend’s hospitality by leaping noisily from pool to pool in their oversized and under occupied super resort. We are feeling absolutely fine. Maybe all the talk of post vaccine symptoms have been exaggerated.

They have not. The day after we both wake up and are shocked by how crap we feel. The dull ache from the jab has somehow travelled to every muscle and joint. Neither of us has a spark of energy. It takes most of the morning to simply get tea into us both. It’s a pretty horrible day of moaning and self-pity. We get through a sleepless night and thankfully begin to feel more human and functional again.

A friend of ours is having a few medical issues and has been admitted to hospital in San Pancho. We undertake to go and see him. We are both aware that trying to get in and out of San Pancho hospital is a chore as they have a ward with Covid cases and they keep everything pretty much inaccessible. Jayne is starting to feel like she has a sore throat and maybe the start of a cough. The vaccines are not effective for a while yet so she wants to get tested before she inflicts herself on anyone. She heads into the hospital and asks for a checkup.

It takes a few hours but Jayne appears with a handful of prescriptions for a mild chest infection. They refused to give her a Covid test. The test site in close-by Sayulita is open and so we head there and pay our money and get her tested. It’s a quick process and within 10 minutes we meet up again and plan to head into town for lunch as we await her results. As we return to the car we notice a doctor in full PPE dramatically running out of the hospital down the street towards us waving his hands in the air. He shouts at us, through his mask ,that Jayne has tested positive and needs to go home immediately and await symptoms. We make a quick stop at the pharmacy and do just that.

Jake somehow manages to stay healthy and is allowed to leave Mexico. It is with great relief his Covid test, like my own, comes back negative. This avoids him being stuck in quarantine in the jungle for another few weeks. We make it to the airport early and in no time, he is on his way. I’m very sad to see him go but I am grateful we got to spend so much time together. We are very lucky to have had that. I now need to prepare for my daughter who is due here in just over 6 months, three weeks and four days. Not that I’m counting or anything.

I also, somehow, remain virus free. It could be that the crushing heat was not entirely to blame for my few weeks of lethargy and uselessness last year. We are both entirely thankful for that. Jayne is proper sick and needs care. If we were both this bad we would have been stuffed. She has no energy and absolutely no appetite. I can’t persuade her to eat anything. She has a high temperature. Her throat is very sore and she can’t talk. Despite this, nurse Beave postpones taking any joy from the situation. She has a persistent cough whenever she is awake. When she is awake, no one sleeps. Thankfully when she does sleep, which is often, she is peaceful and her breathing remains good. It’s a worrying time that lasts over 12 days before she starts to improve. Covid is shit. It’s easy to see how, if you add age, existing health conditions and breathing problems, it can kill you. Jayne is continuing her recovery. Slowly to avoid any post-viral fatigue issues. We are lucky. Our very good mate in South Africa has just lost his amazingly beautiful wife to Covid. They were inseparable. It’s so very sad.

In a few months’ time, maybe, we will find a second vaccine and, maybe, fulfil all the travel criteria necessary to visit family again. That will be a good option to have.