Jungle Journal Archives - La Colina Project

A beautiful lotus growing in our pool

Currently more of a pond…

Jungle Journal

All Good Things

February 27, 2025February 27, 2025
by Beave

On my eventual return to Mexico we were informed that despite our outstanding idea and quite masterfully prepared proposal Burning Man are not going to support our Temple for Peace for 2025. This in retrospect was good news. The application process was extraordinary and we have no regrets. It saves me 8 months of intense stress and as things have turned out it would not have been the best use of my time. It is nice to know we have a quite amazing project already planned and costed up our sleeves should we ever need one.

And now the news.

It is with a very heavy and somewhat broken heart that I must advise that our La Colina Project is having a time out. After a long time coming Jayne and I have decided to move on with our lives separately. It’s been an extraordinary ten years . Few regrets except all the things that failed to bring us closer.

The purpose of this blog has always been to document our time in Mexico together. That time has very sadly come to an end so we will both be moving on somehow yet to be understood. The blog as we know it, is therefore, taking a hiatus.

I am taking some much needed time out to heal from what is a huge decision and all its implications. I write this from the UK on my way to Ethiopia and South Africa. Back to UK to celebrate my sixtieth birthday ( 60 th !!!) in March then onto Bali , Afrikaburn then Ireland in May. I hope to meet you on this journey or somewhere else . We are forever grateful that you have followed our adventures.

The only truly consistent thing is change.

So be it.

During my time in Mexico I learned a lot. One of those things is that there is an opinion that I can write a little so I have been making time to do so. When my good mate John had his stroke a few years ago it reminded all of us about the impermanence of things including memories.

I have been known to tell a few stories now and again and have been blessed with an extraordinary life. The thought of losing my memories and endless stories scares me. John has inspired me to write down a number of tales about my life entirely separate from my day to day blog.

At the last count I have over 30 of them with another 20 to complete. They are unrefined accounts of a selected few of my previous adventures around the world. I have been encouraged to find a platform to either publish them or create a podcast where I read a few . Endless possibilities. I shall keep everyone in the loop. In the meantime as a coda I have an example here which outlines my time in Berlin 1989. Comments welcome.

Berlin 1989

The world was changing again and the most significant political happening of my life, so far, was happening in Germany. The Berlin Wall was coming down.

In 1961 the Berlin Wall was built by the German Democratic Republic during the Cold War to prevent its population from escaping Soviet-controlled East Berlin to West Berlin. For 28 years the wall divided Berlin.

East Germany militarized the entire border with the West, laying more than one million land mines and deploying around 3,000 attack dogs. The wall was nearly 12 feet high and approximately 27 miles long, with 302 guard towers and 55,000 anti-personnel explosive devices.

Between 1961 and 1989, at least 140 people were killed or died at the Wall in connection with the GDR border regime: 101 people who tried to flee through the border fortifications did not make it.

For reasons, I don’t fully understand the GDR has advised its citizens that they are now able to cross the border into West Germany without getting shot in the head. People are pouring across the new border and taking bits of the wall with them.

I am, somehow, compelled to join in and see this for myself.

At the time, I’m a fledgling 24-year-old CEO based in Northern England building a number of engineering companies around the world. The businesses are in their infancy and money has yet to appear so I’m living on a tiny budget waiting for future riches. It’s a lot of work but offers me endless opportunities to travel.

It is the odd time just after Xmas but despite that I have managed to create a business trip to Germany centered around a visit to meet a client in Lyon, France and a strategic partner in Nuremburg, Germany followed by a few days to get to Berlin to arrive on New Year’s Eve. Despite having little or no spare cash at all, it feels that this will be the place I need to be.

This is a rare opportunity to travel with my younger brother David. We haven’t spent much time together since I left the bosom of my family at the age of 17. We leave on a cheap flight to Lyon with a plan to take trains onwards the 500 miles through Switzerland to Nuremburg and then the 300 miles onwards to Berlin.

Our travels start well and I managed to do my business in Lyon quickly. After some saucy pike dumplings we head for the first of many trains North. Trains in mainland Europe were notably cleaner, more comfortable and eminently more punctual than their British counterparts. We cross the Swiss border and eventually arrive in Zurich. It was late and the train stopped for the night. No trains to Nuremberg till the morning. This is an unplanned stop and Zurich is an expensive city. We find no hotel rooms within our meagre budget.

There were underpasses which were warmer than over ground but full of proper dodgy gangs of well-established street punks who were less than welcoming. We were threatened in a number of languages before we found the Rolex store. To welcome well-heeled customers the front of the entrance door leading into the shop was covered in posh textured rubber which was many times more comfortable than freezing pavement. We drank whisky from the bottle and huddled in the doorway until the sun rose and warmed us up a few degrees. We dragged ourselves exhausted back to the train station.

The adventure becomes a bit too real when we find ourselves hitching over a mountain in a proper freezing snow storm. Visibility was only a few yards and our travelling attire entirely unsuitable for the conditions. We had worked out that the journey to Nuremberg by train involved a huge 10-hour loop through Frankfurt but the road only took 4 hours. Our sleep deprived minds decided it’s a better idea to hitch a ride.

Getting a lift out of the city was easy but by some miscommunication we didn’t end up in Stuttgart but were left on a cold mountain road with snow hitting us painfully and horizontally. We were absolutely bitter cold. Luck saved us as just before we both froze solid a French guy stopped and rescued us into his delightfully warm car. We thaw out slowly and arrive at Stuttgart station where we regain our senses and take a train to Nuremberg through Munich.

We arrive gratefully in Nuremberg after grabbing a few hours’ sleep. My brother throws our bags off the train . There is distinctive noise of breaking glass then my suit carrier with all my poshest clothes within starts leaking red wine onto the platform.

After demolishing a heap of steaming Bavarian roast pork (Schweinebraten) and local gingerbread (Lebkuchen) we spend a glorious night in an actual bed. The following morning, we spend some hours sponging wine out if my suit and buying a fresh shirt. My meeting is at the outskirts of town. I end up at a vast old German factory that dated back almost a hundred years.

It’s clear where the red brick walls were patched up after long past bombings. Nuremberg was severely damaged in Allied strategic bombing from 1943-45. On January 2, 1945, Nuremberg was systematically bombed by the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Forces and about ninety percent of it was destroyed in only one hour, with 1,800 residents killed. Somehow this place was spared.

It’s a good meeting despite my slightly dishevelled look and having a distinct odour of cheap red wine and soap. I’m relieved and excited to pack my now redundant stinky suit into the bottom of our bags and prepare for our journey to Berlin. We have nowhere to stay and no plan but it should be an adventure.

We arrive in Berlin at around 5 pm on New Years Eve. It’s December so it’s already quite dark. People are running around wildly and drunkenly throwing fireworks. The station echoes with explosions and shrieking. The atmosphere is one of enthusiastic highly chaotic energy.

We know there are no hotel rooms available in Berlin that night but have a plan. We find a reasonable looking hotel and we approach the desk confidently and ask for our reserved room. When the girls behind the desk finally confirms that there is no such reservation we look outraged at their mistake but also crestfallen and desperate enough for them to take pity on us and allow us to leave all our bags in their hotel lockup until we find another hotel. It works like a charm. We head out into the packed city.

We buy vodka and become part of a vast crowd heading toward the Brandenburg Gate which sits on the collapsing border of East and West as part of the wall itself. It has come to symbolise the new emerging Berlin. It’s early days and East German soldiers are still stationed next to the wall and the famous Checkpoint Charlie (the only crossing point for allied forces and foreigners.) They look scared and bemused and completely confused by what they are supposed to be doing. This is not helped by pretty girls approaching them to offer kisses and push flowers into the barrels of their guns.

The wall is still standing but large chunks are now missing. It is covered in graffiti and hundreds of folks with hammers bash off pieces to carry away. The Brandenburg Gate is impressively huge and surrounded by an aluminium frame of lighting rigging. The world media is installed underneath protected by police from the West and soldiers from the East. There are a few brave souls dodging the lines of security and managing to climb the scaffolding. David has vanished in the massive crowds and so I store my vodka under my oversize woollen jumper and plan my next move.

It took all my height and weight and both elbows to get through the crowds to the outside perimeter of the gate. The security appeared so overwhelmed that it took very little effort to watch until a gap appeared and I walked up to the scaffold and instantly climbed up. My timing is perfect. Others have had the same idea but I head up the 26M ahead of everyone. About a dozen others attempt to follow me. The top section is not connected and is difficult to get to. A leather gloved hand reaches down and grabs my arm.

I’m hoisted to the top of the gate where stands a huge statue. Quadriga– a chariot drawn by four horses and driven by Victoria the goddess of victory. My helper is a German guy dressed in leather. He is older than me. We sit together for a long time drinking vodka and smoking cigarettes looking out on the people gathering below. He has tears in his eyes. “How many borders have you crossed this year” he asks me in slow broken English. It’s a good question. I have been travelling a lot in the past few years. I can’t honestly answer him. It’s too many to remember. He looks at me and softly tells me that this is the first border he has ever crossed in his life; and it’s in his own country.

The view from the chariot is hard to take in. As far as we can see are people heading towards the gate. Hundreds of thousands of them. From the East and from the West it appears that everyone who is able are congregating at our feet. We are the focus of the world.

One of the few of us that have made it to the top shouts out that it’s approaching 1 am. Midnight had passed us by. Its 1990. We wish each other the best and embrace. We all recognise that we are in a very special place at a very special time. It occurs to me that midnight in the UK is a few minutes away. I climb up to the highest point I can. Victoria is holding a staff with a wreath on the top. The centre of the wreath has a cold metal cross within and on top of that is an eagle with wings extended. I manoeuvre myself so my legs are wrapped around the wreath and my body rises above the eagle. It’s the stroke of midnight in the UK. Any image taken at that moment in time will show me in my baggy white jumper, hands above my head, throwing peace signs to the watching media and the millions of people below.

It is unlikely I will find David again until the morning but I decide to head down and sit on the wall while I still can. The decent is hampered by now dozens of others determined to be where I have just come from. Don’t blame them but there is very little room up there. I climb down over the climbing bodies going up. Security has all but given up. There are just way too many people. I scramble to the wall and find a place where I can stand. It’s not a secure spot, easy to fall from and again getting overrun with drunkenly enthusiastic revellers.

I climb down and head back to the gate. If I can get up to the top of the scaffold my new mates will no doubt help me back up. Seems an extraordinary place to spend the night.

The whole of the gate is overrun. Hundreds of bodies are swinging from the aluminium frame trying to get to the top but unable to make the last few meters. Those on the top already have stopped helping others up as there is no room left. Despite the obvious futility I leap onto a cross member and monkey swing my way to an upright where I can join many others trying to ascend. It’s three swings in when I’m propelled at speed downwards. The cross member has broken lose from the frame. I hit the ground hard on my back and am temporarily winded. I lie there and watch as the aluminium struts buckle and snap around me. People fall. More people fall onto them. Where the most people are the frame collapses in on itself taking everyone with it. It’s carnage.

I’m on my feet and the formerly East German soldiers in their shiny polished helmets are shouting at me aggressively. Was that my fault ?? Was I getting arrested ?? It’s clear that there are casualties. I try and help one guy who seems to have crush injuries. He is not breathing well and can’t move. His lips are blue. His wife is next to him screaming. I try to help but she beats me away. There is a young lad with his leg at a strange angle in a lot of pain. He is English and very happy to hear my more familiar voice. I gather some boards that are lying close by and use them as a stretcher to get him out of the way. It’s not long before ambulances arrive. How they have gotten through the crowds is a mystery. I load my new friend into one. He is a Tottenham supporter but I let that go.

When I arrive back in the chaos there are two bodies lined up next to one another. One is the guy whose wife has not left his side and is now howling with grief. The other is a man, older than me, dressed in leather. My chariot companion. I never knew his name but I will never forget him.

The injured have been whisked away somewhere. The dead remain as a reminder to the tragedy. I wander slowly away towards our luggage. I am exhausted, cold and a little drunk. It’s a surreal journey. There are people passed out on benches stone drunk. Some have pissed themselves creating impressive and dramatic clouds of steam around them in the freezing night air. No more fireworks. A grey cold early morning trudge back home.

I drink coffee and smoke endlessly until David turns up at the hotel.

We retrieve our luggage and agree to leave Berlin as soon as we can. He spent all night with a girl. She took him across the border and showed him her city and then returned him in the morning. Something that was unheard of only weeks before. We sit on the train and watch Berlin pass by as we swap stories. My grubby white oversize jumper has traces of blood on the sleeve. Was that my fault ??? That question haunts me to this day.

Jungle Journal

Death of a cone, birth of a Temple and…

November 4, 2024November 4, 2024
by Beave

The Friday morning after burning Coney Mc Coneface is brutal. We are at Burning Man , deep in the black rock desert. It’s hot and dry and we are all feeling decidedly average after a long night of emotional release & celebration. We have one more job to do. Clean up the burn site.

I drag my sorry self from my trailer armed with boots and gloves and cold beer. I drive towards where I think there used to be 60 foot cone. It’s hard to spot. It takes a while before I come across two of our hardiest souls with shovels. They are patiently watching the still burning pile of ash and metal. I grab a tangle of wire and realise that I am being way too keen. It is still very very hot. It becomes clear that the boys are wise, we clearly have to wait for the fire to burn itself out for a lot more hours before we can dive in and remove ground anchors and fill our buckets with the blackened bolts and less hot rigging.

I gratefully and selfishly leave the chaps out in the sun to watch the ashes cool down and return to my bunk. I slip into delicious and much required unconsciousness.

When I emerge again I discover the crew have rallied and cleared the burn site and are now resting up and looking ahead to actually going to the event. The population of the city has grown in anticipation of the weekend. Saturday the man burns. Sunday the Temple.

We all somehow dig deep and muster our energy. Further dust storms come to bugger up our day but we make it through. We meet our friends who have brought Pulpo Magnifico to the circle of art cars behind the masses waiting for the man to burn. Pulpo is in great form and gathers huge numbers of new and old fans as it lights up the crowd and the sky with its flame.

In previous years the man burn has taken a lot longer than planned It is common for more stubborn parts of the structure resisting the flames for a long time. This takes some of the spontaneity from the experience as everyone waits a little too long for the last posts to fall. This year there was no such issues. After a truly world class pyrotechnic display there was a blinding fireball that somehow takes the entire structure down in what seems like no time at all. Perfect.

Sunday is far from a day of rest. From first light our strike crew are preparing to take down the no longer required Media Mecca and I am required to be all over the process. By late morning much has been packed away . The main strike happens Monday morning but we have made a good start.

As the evening comes we are treated to home cooked food and we congregate onto our deck from where we have a good view of the temple. The Temple of Togetherness is an impressive structure. We have watched it rise slowly and majestically from the desert over the past weeks. Quite stunning and large. The temple holds a special place in many hearts. It’s a unique temporary non-denominational sacred space. Thousands of tributes , memorials to honour the dead and the chance to let go of emotions that are no longer useful. It is burned in silence as a symbol of release and forgiveness. We were the crew that built the largest Temple of all time ( so far) in 2011. The Temple of Transition was one of our proudest achievements. Just as we see the orange light of the flames the dust appears. A wall of dust . We watch the surreal glow of a burning temple through this veil. It adds a ghostly element . It is quite beautiful if not quite the plan of those who created it.

Monday morning arrives. I can hear frantic activity outside from inside my trailer . It’s about 8 am so that confuses me. Since first light the strike boys have been awake and working. The main area bar, the walls and the floor have already been dismantled and stacked in the container. The deck is down. It’s amazing the progress. We are lucky to be all over it as we see the mountains disappear behind a dark & huge rolling cloud that just keeps on coming. Our trailer “The Growler” is a basic trailer from the 1970s that I love. It’s simple protection from what the Playa throws at you. It might leak a little in the rain but we don’t expect much of that. This year we finally found an aircon unit that works so now it is fully upgraded. Jayne is far less impressed and is forever trying to break us apart. She wants a new clean posher version. I am not persuaded.

As the thick dust fills the air and it becomes impossible to survive outside we all find safe air to breathe inside. Inside the Growler. Our two person trailer now has a dozen people squashed inside. We bring all our remaining refreshments and make the best of it,…. for a full seven hours.

We reappear into the comparative dust free air and resolve to get the hell out of this place as fast as we can. Thankfully we are not one of the many thousands of folk who left for Reno this morning and were hit by the storm. No one can move in storms like that. They close the gates for safety reasons. We hear tales of poor buggers who took over 10 hours ( instead of the usual 4 ) to get to Reno.

It takes some effort to pack up and prepare for opening the trailer and container again in a year’s time without too many surprises. It’s Tuesday morning when we head out. It takes no time to get to the road and we are in Reno within a few slow and silent extra hours. We sleep and bathe and shower and bathe and shower until our bodies are finally revealed from under the layers of sweat and filth. A large group of freshly scrubbed survivors meet up and consume industrial volumes of Sushi before failing pathetically to stay awake past 10 pm.

The rest of the week its taken up with meeting up with what is left of our crew. We don’t need to say much, we all have thousand yard stares and occasionally shake our heads in disbelief at what we have all been through. Amazingly we are still all good mates, we have paid our bills and no one died. We consider this a complete success. There is even talk of future projects. This is my time to leave. Quickly.

Mexico embraces us home. Our Mate has kept our home from falling down and Mausetrappe has not starved. The rivers are still worrying dry but the jungle has overtaken all our space. Two casitas roofs and one kitchen roof have collapsed but that was inevitable and overdue. It’s rainy season and we can actually watch the fully refreshed jungle grow. A slowly increasing quantity of Fire flies seductively flash and blink as the sun drops below the canopy. It’s good to be back.

Our artist friend Leanne has been here the whole time. She has devoted herself to completing the mural she started many months previously. After only a couple of weeks work what she produced was remarkable. It started as a simple mural project and somehow morphed into an absolute mission to capture the beautiful vast chaos of her creative vison. It’s hard to explain what six months of her time can manifest. Best to just look. You can stare mesmerically at this kaleidoscope of images for a very long time and still miss some jewels.

It is not long before my mind is invaded by stupid ideas again. I keep them to myself. I’m hiding out in the jungle in a fabulous period of intentional antisocial behavior. I have no compulsion to talk to anyone. It’s tough enough to explain my life to others when I feel like it. When I don’t it’s impossible.

The rain arrives. I have seen a lot of rain here and when it comes we know it really comes. The volume is stunning even by Mexico standards. Late at night I venture outside and it’s like walking into a waterfall. The rivers fill up and restart flowing strongly again for the first time in a couple of years. This is great news . Our aquifer will be full and so we are a lot less likely to run out of well water in May again. The jungle loves it and makes extra effort to overgrow everything. It takes a great deal of machete work to get our space back.

After a few weeks I cannot contain my stupidity any longer. Kiwi and I have been chatting a little. In 2017 we had an over ambitious idea for a temple and pitched it to Burning Man. We spent a good amount of time in New Zealand trashing out specifications and budgets and designs. The concept was to create a Temple 4 Peace. This temple would feature within its design all the words for peace in every language along with symbols of peace from around the world . We would offer every regional burn event the opportunity to contribute artwork showing their representation of peace in their culture. Collaborative artwork from iconic Burning Man artists would be featured. The extraordinary Earth Harp would be strung from the structure to a purpose built raised performance stage. It was an unique and ambitious collaborative project.

At that time the ridiculous scale of what we were proposing and our ambitious budget scared them off and our offer was declined. We have now decided to offer a much paired down version. We will remove the 150 foot tower and lower the huge arches 20 feet. It is very possible that our more humble version will be accepted . We believe that the time for a collaborative temple for peace is perfect. The only way this will happen is if I go to New Zealand and spend at least 10 days thrashing it all out again.

Sad news. My good friend Munk has died. He was a memorable DJ and bloody good bloke. He was way too young and full of potential but his and his many friends hard and real attempts to exorcise the alcohol from his life ended tragically . We shall miss you ya magnificent bugger.

So I arrange to leave a much wetter Mexico behind .. Jayne will stay in Mexico and further recover. It’s been an overwhelming year so far. She will appreciate the space to restore and rest. I also need time and space to reset. I will get to see family and friends in the UK on the way there and back. I prepare myself for a lot of travelling and get my head in the game to construct an irresistible temple proposal. Here we go again.

I arrive in London late afternoon and hire a car which I drive as far North as I can before I can’t anymore. I check into a cheap hotel just South of Leeds and remarkably find it impossible to collapse for the night. Despite my absolute bone aching exhaustion after 50 minutes solid sleep I am awake and unable to sleep again. At 6 am I am still wide awake and outside the nearest Greggs Bakery to order a bacon butty and a steak bake. I have been fantasising about both since I left the UK many moons ago..

I collect my daughter Suzy from Leeds and we drive to Lincolnshire to see my Mum for the first time in many years. It’s good to catch up. A pub lunch of my first proper fish & chips for years is paired with a few pints of Guinness. This empowers me to drive Suzy back home and head North to Darlington. I haven’t slept properly in days and it’s a struggle. I eventually land late and meet the usual suspects in my mates bar. It’s been about three years but it feels like last week. Same faces, same beer same craic.

Compulsory Sunday lunch is arranged. More than a dozen of my mates turn up. First time they have been together for a while. Its good to be the catalyst. A perfectly acceptable lamb dinner is also paired with a number of pints of Guinness. A few post lunch pints in the pub and this near perfect Sunday ends perfectly. A bath with candles,. A glass of Chardonnay and a pile of Sunday papers. Pretty much my favorite place to be. Life can be splendid sometimes.

Before my flight to Shanghai and onwards to Auckland I am treated to the wonder that is a Weatherspoon’s chain pub in Rochester Kent, many times . Another day of driving but worth it. My mate takes me with her girlie pals to imbibe of more Guinness and sample the cultural delights of Medway. She is keen to point out that they have castle ,a 600 year old cathedral and the second oldest school in the world. Also quite a lot of pubs and Guinness so I am very content.

By the time Shanghai happens to me I am pretty done in. On the flight I manage to sleep for 12 minutes 12 times in 12 hours. About an hour into the flight my body collapses and gives way to a good old fashioned British flu. My joints ache, my nose is streaming and when I finally stop coughing it’s replaced with sneezing. I have a towel over my head to keep the germs in. It’s not pretty.

It was in fact brutal. On arrival I discover that it is not possible to get to the airport hotel I booked to recover in as I am in transit for 9 hours . This is bad news. On my way to the transit terminal I am marched past a line of judgmental uniformed women with resting twat faces. Not a flicker of joy from any of them. They are the medical security team and looking for diseased people. I suppress coughing and sneezing but they collar me. They shout at me about having a fever and at one point I realise that I’m being detained. They don’t speak English which helps. They are very distracted and don’t seem to know what to do with me. I help them out. At the first chance I get I walk confidently away and don’t look back. Somehow this works . I am not on my way to some Chinese clinic for the diseased.

There is no WIFI to speak of at the airport so I can’t encourage any sympathy from anyone, The Chinese government has shut down all social media so WhatsApp and Facebook are out. The though of my nine hours layover nursing my man-flu ( the worst kind of course) in this very clean but deserted and soulless terminal is frightening. I still have my now unspeakably grotty towel to soak up the endless stuff that is now falling out of my face uncontrollably.

I wander the empty terminal in snotty despair . After a while I pass the executive lounges. The staff are arguing with some German blokes who are trying to show them evidence that they are allowed through their doors to access all the nice free stuff. Curiously none of the airport staff seems to speak English well enough to be understood so German is absolutely beyond them. I take advantage of this chaos and walk straight past them into the lounge and sit down like I own the place.. They are too nervous to approach the big sweaty bloke with a disgusting towel so I stay there. For nine hours.

I manage to nap a little bit and take full advantage of free food and Chardonnay. My flu is getting worse and I am coughing and sneezing enough to be scary to others. The endless Chardonnay helps. Another bonus is that there is a noodle chef on duty. There are practically no other passengers in the lounge so she is my personal noodle chef . By the time my flight to Auckland is called I’m stuffed with noodles and Chardonnay and flu. Could be worse.

After a torturous twelve hours of thick soupy samey time our wheels hit the tarmac at Auckland. I rent an oversize truck at the airport head North a few hours to Dargaville. A colloquial farming town that seems to be from another time. I will come to love it. The journey is interesting as the sun sets over the thousand shades of green that is the New Zealand country side. I am knackered but feel that this is the place I need to be. I have been in the country over an hour and haven’t had a cheese and steak pie yet. I resolve myself to mend this discrepancy. First fuel stop I find I pull in, and of course, find a bakery section with a pile of pies. There are a dozen varieties to choose from but its late in the day so the steak and cheese are all sold. I start my pie journey with one pepper steak and a further mince & cheese version . It is fabulous but I still hanker for a classic steak & cheese. That is an important mission for tomorrow.

I arrive at Kiwis place late and find he has sorted a very acceptable space for me at the end of his modest cabin house. He has cleverly stuck a caravan to the other side and that is his bedroom. It’s very functional for a bloke or two. The middle bit is a kitchen and an “office” where we will spend a great deal of time. We open a bottle of chardonnay and get straight into it. Shall we build a temple ? Would it kill us to build a temple ? Why would anyone build a temple? We have to find how much money ? Are we actually insane ? These are recurring questions we ask ourselves daily.

It’s a few days of research and a many more bottles of chardonnay before we get into the actual application process. We call all the architects and engineers we know to persuade them to knock us up some technical drawings to demonstrate we are not just making this up. We are actually offering to build a real and large real life building. If we were doing this commercially it would take us many months. We are grateful we put so much work into this in 2017 . If we had to start from scratch it would not be possible. We have to press the button and send this application out on November 15^th. That is no time. Only three weeks away.

Dargaville has a number of pie shops. I have done my research and have my favorites but feel compelled to give all pies a chance. I am averaging three pies a day. Mostly steak and cheese but occasionally I will go wild and have a seafood or kidney . I always revert back the old classic. So I am fortified with pie and wine and spend hours thrashing out a lot or words and numbers. We are in a continual loop of design and budget and explanation. I am sort of waiting to find out the very good reason why we should not be doing this. Worryingly I haven’t found that reason yet.

This is the propsed monster from 2017 we are pairing down to a more humble challenge.

It has taken a day or two but both Kiwi and Tony, the only two people I have interacted with so far , are also now down with the lurgy. The three of us are wheezing and coughing like dying possums. We all take negative Covid tests and resign ourselves to the horrors of a good old fashioned British flu. It’s ugly. We have named it Tourette’s flu. We take it in turns to cough and spit and sneeze interspaced with loud filthy swearing. Swearing is a big part of it. It makes the misery just about bearable. I should be feeling guilty for infecting everyone but am too full of self-pity and pies.

After a week of work while continually whining & whinging about our health we are getting somewhere. The story sounds good, our concept is well explained. The final design has appeared and our collaborators are lined up to join us. The challenge is to produce five sexy and informative pictures to go along with the application. We are a bunch of old traditional buggers and entirely out of touch with the modern ways of the world. We are relying on others to transform our pencil drawn designs into CAD images that can be rendered into sexy pictures. Our equipment budget extends to pencils and rubbers and pencil sharpeners.

So our next step is a frustrating one. We are waiting on others in faraway places like Vancouver and Reno to send us CAD drawing and then we need to find those clever buggers with rendering skills to transform them. My work here is done for the time being. Time to move onwards. Need some precious space to mediate, fall off the world entirely for a while and catch up on some much overdue writing. Seems like good timing for that.

Jungle Journal

A little madness now and then …..

October 26, 2024November 3, 2024
by Beave

This blog is very late and there has been a lot going on these past five months. I am currently in New Zealand but that is a tale for another day. There is more to tell than I can possibly capture here but have done my best. It’s taken a lot more words than is usual for me so I have produced this offering in three parts to make it an easier read. Chance to grab a cuppa or a kip in between chapters.

PART ONE

Preparing ourselves to Build Coney Mc Coneface

It seems like forever and a day since I had some time alone to reflect and perchance write about a few of the many strange occurrences that have featured in the last few months. Our return from Africa in May gave us a short but delicious rest-bite from what had already been a hectic year. Our attempts at reducing our pace and reconnecting with the more sustainable rhythms of nature were wise and overdue but not entirely successful.

Our remarkable friend Catherine who has been living with cancer for a long time finally and peacefully died. Her complete acceptance of her impending death was extraordinary and inspiring. Thankfully her pain levels were managable but her constant discomfort and vanishing body and energy were tough to witness. She was a legend. Universally loved. Always dressed in white and surrounded by animals that she rescued and cared for. We were with her to the very end. It was humbling and somehow rather beautiful. We all have this in our future. May we all face the inevitable with such poise and grace and gratitude. We will forever miss and love her.

Our relationship with a future sixty foot traffic cone (that we have agreed to build and burn at the Burning man event in Nevada in August) has become somewhat overwhelming. There is so much to pre-arrange months before we have to even cut wood. The days of turning up and throwing something together have gone. It’s a real and involved process. We have to deal with huge volumes of people and rules months in advance. Lots and lots of dos and donts. It’s a full time unpaid job .

We have to imagine how we will support, feed and keep alive up to thirty cone-struction volunteers in the potentially extreme harsh environments of Reno Nevada (where we will build the thing) and The Black Rock desert (where we place it and burn it) . Our architects have drawn up the highly detailed plans to create what is actually a rather awkward shape . If this thing is going to look like an actual traffic cone rather than a bunch of wood in the rough shape of a traffic cone it will require good skills and adherence to fairly tight tolerances. It takes some thinking about and a whole heap of time.

Our core crew are not new to this and include some of the most experienced folk there are. But we are getting old. We need to attract a younger more enthusiastic crew who are keen and reliable and have knees and backs that don’t hurt as much as ours. Our search begins with contacting all the dozens of previous deluded lunatics that have gone through this with us in the past. They then talk to their lunatic friends who in turn talk to others. Through websites and fundraisers and general gossip we have over a hundred serious applications from all over the world to work with us for no pay & terrible conditions, indefinitely, to build and burn a traffic cone. Many lunatics from the past and an encouraging amount of new lunatic wannabees appear. We spend what seems like every moment trawling through and considering all our offers and coming up with a chosen few. We invite the lucky buggers to join us in Reno and also in the desert for the event. We announce the Coney Mc Face Crew. It’s happening.

Our first serious set back is that finding a work space in Reno where you can make noise and vast quantities of sawdust with space to cone-struct a 60 foot behemoth of a traffic cone is an almost impossible task. With a lot of help we consider a dozen options but non of them have the access or shade or facilities we need. We have to start building soon and all the folk that claim to know all about industrial space in Reno are drawing blanks. After a huge amount of begging and schmoozing and pretty much at the last minute we have an offer to take up 2000 square feet of newly created space in The Generator in Reno. This is an excellent worker space with tools and air-conditioning and bathrooms and a kitchen. Despite having to take a worrying chunk of rent from our meagre budget we have no choice. The Coney Mc Coneface project finally has a home.

John is a mighty bloke in his 70s living in a van in the Coromandel in New Zealands North Island. He has agreed to be the first on the ground and fly to the US to prepare our work space and order us up some wood. This is his first time in Reno and his first Nevada Burning Man. He is met in Reno by old friends who show him around. We have our first US fundraiser in Reno to which he attends as guest of honour. It is a burlesque show where all the proceeds go to help us with build costs. John is a well travelled and a generally wise old soul but for some reason had no idea what a burlesque show was. He assumed it was a sort of circus event. He was both delighted and surprised at how the evening progressed. A good time was had by all and we raised a not insignificant amount of cash. Good start.

Over the following weeks further crew arrive from New Zealand and Australia and various US States . Its time so I book my flight to Reno for the next ten weeks. We will fly up to Oregon and drive to a friends place on a lake in Washington for 4th July then to Vancouver. From there I will fly to Reno and Jayne will spend a month in Canada with family before joining me. This will be the longest time we have been away from the jungle. Our artist friend will stay and continue with her mural and is joined by a very capable mate from California who is in need of escaping the USA for while. He moves into our place to wallow in the delights of jungle isolation and feeding Mausetrappe until we return. Timing is perfect.

Our first stop is Bend Oregan. Our good friend has a house there which is full of boy toys. One of which is a large converted bus called Cerberus. It has had many adventures over the years and is going to carry us North to an iconic and now quite infamous party on a lake to celebrate something. We load up and head out. It’s a relaxed and comfortable five hours of cruising in an very cool bus. We stop to acquire oysters and sample local brews on the way.

We arrive at a camp ground next to a huge lake in Washington State. This weekend many hundreds of folk are expected to arrive to celebrate something. We are hosted in an extraordinarily beautiful house overlooking a lake/fjord. No camping for us ! A large number of lunatics have arranged to meet up here, which they do every year, to celebrate their independence from my adopted motherland. This party is much spoken of and we are exited to be here. I’m delighted we removed ourselves from these colonial lands at the time so no hard feelings. We will happily celebrate with them.

It is a hectic few days of playing on the lake and hanging out with strange and wonderful folk. The day of the 4th arrives. During the day we have all been to the Indian reservation down the lake where it is possible to buy strangely branded boxes of preloaded fireworks. We all got a bit carried away and have all accumulated an insane amount of them. A larger throng of mates have now arrived. They all camp in the site next to us around the bus. Most are crew from Burning man so there are enough skills between us to rig all the massive pile of boxes , morters and rockets. They are secured to a 30 foot long old battered wooden dock on the beach in front of the house.

When this now vast setup is lit there follows on overwhelming amount of explosions and colours reflected in the water for what seemed like an eternity. It was stunning but seemingly endless. Ther are competing displays up and down the lake as far as we can see. . After what seemed like forever the bangs and crackles and lights became slightly less frequent. When they finally pause we retreat to the big house for further refreshment till late. We have just watched enough dollars to run a medium size country go up in smoke. Quite something. My first ever July 4th in the USA. Sometime after midnight we are surprised to hear more fireworks exploding close by from the beach . Probably kids. We look out and see a 20 foot flame coming from the deck. Its setting off the straggler explosives that didn’t go up first time which are in turn helping to set the deck further alight. We race down to extinguish the flames with buckets of water from the lake. The deck survives.

After a day of recovery and clean up we head by ferry to Seattle for a night wher we meet some mates from Mexico. We head to our other mexi-mates trendy and sexy restaurant and have a great feed and catch up. The next morning we wake up in our hotel in full panic. Our alarms have not gone off !! Neither of them. It’s not the expected 7.15 . It is now 8.02 am and our train to Vancouver is leaving in 26 minutes. We still have no idea how this happened but by 8.15 we are in a cab on the way to the train station. Our cabby is aware of the challenge and excitedly ignores all traffic lights and cones and speed limits. Somehow he proudly deposits us at the train station by 8.24. We drag our bags at top speed and wave ourselves through the ticket booth onto the platform just as the staff are walking away. We dance forward and throw ourselves onto the train as the doors are closing. We made it by less than a second. Remarkable performance. We are very proud of ourselves and mighty relieved.

The train journey up that coast is gorgeous. It’s a number of hours of relaxing and imbibing the view. We arrive in Vancouver and head to Jaynes brothers house. Everyone is at work so we do washing and prepare ourselves for what is ahead of us. I’m taking a 6 .30 am flight to California in the morning. Jayne is staying in Canada with her family for a month and meeting me in Reno for the end of the build and our transition to the desert. We get organised then cross the street and head to one of the many Vietnamese restaurants around us. A Vancouver treat.

We meet up with Phil and Kelly and kids as they all return from work and school. We take bicycles to the local park and spectate a few of Phil’s ultimate frisbee matches . It’s a weary ride back and a welcome few hours rest before I’m in a taxi and on my way to San Francisco. It’s somewhat of a hectic start but I need to get used to the pace of things to come.

PART TWO

How to Build a 60 foot traffic cone

I sleep on the flight until I touch down at SFO and get a bus from the airport to across the city and the bridge into the Northern suburbs . The bus deposits me in some random industrial estate where i call an uber to take me to a friends house where it has been arranged I collect a my mates truck which I get to use till he arrives in Reno in six weeks time. I set off on the 4 hour 20 min ( sat nav estimate) drive to Reno. Seven hours later I am still on the I-80 outside of Tahoe exhausted but committed. I roll into Reno in the dark a few hours later and finally get to meet the first of the crew. It’s emotional. Haven’t seen a bunch of these idiots for years. I have shared a lot of unique and somewhat extraordinary history with these buggers. Kiwi ( lead artist) has finally left New Zealand after Covid. We met in a dust storm 14 years ago and life was never the same again. I’m absolutely knackered but we stay up late refreshing ourselves and talking shite. A much needed start. I have a good feeling about this lot.

We are perhaps one of the poorest projects to be at burning man this year. No big funders or angel investors. We have faith we can make it work but absolutely no assurances. Because the majority of our crew are from overseas our costs are high. We are housing most of them at our great friend Thundercats family house in town where we have staged tents and hammocks in the yard and mattresses on the floor. He is a crazy bugger having us all but is a splendid chap and taking it all in his stride. Its like a respectful student squat house but very cheap. We have scoured out the cheapest food and alcohol stores and do our very best to stretch every dollar. The fridge is stocked with Chardonnay and ribs. All good.

With the build now underway we have regular wood and materials orders arriving daily . Our pot of cash is not looking encouraging. The project, it has to said, is creating waves and interest from all over the world. The humble traffic cone has a place in the hearts of many more souls than I ever though possible. Social media is buzzing with images and cone related cone-tent. Our intensions by choosing a traffic cone to build have been open to a great deal of speculation. There have been long and protracted philosophical stories created. There have been dozens of AI images, poems and songs. There is a great deal of traction building but so far this is not translating into cash. Raising money for art is hard. Raising money for a large traffic cone we are going to burn is almost impossible. If we run out of money we have a half built cone and a hungry crew in Reno (all very far away from home) to deal with. No pressure.

The very good news is that we have the right crew at the right spot at the right time. That doesn’t just happen. We are working smart and hard . The universe is certainly conspiring with us at the moment. The build is coming along remarkably well. Local boys turn up to help us out and keep things moving along. Large sections of recognisable cone are emerging . Long may that continue. A couple of Australian mad men Jai & Ben have arrived and are all over it. Young , strong, high energy with a bunch of smarts and skills. A rare combination, but we are lucky enough to have them. So the start is encouraging and no one is in the mood to kill anyone yet so that’s good.

Every day starts the same. I wake up in a hammock or on a mattress somewhere and consider , after imbibing the correct amount of Yorkshire Gold Tea, how we are going to get through the day spending the least amount of money. Some days are considerably better than others. In days gone by we were able to support crew with endless treats. Reno is now not the cheap run down place it used to be. Reno is now a bloody expensive run down place. Since the pandemic, casinos and restaurants charge a fortune and close early. It used to be possible to stay in a cheap 24 hour casino hotel for $25 and live off KFC and PBR for a few dollars a day. Things have moved on. You are lucky to get any sort of grotty hotel room under $150 and to my great astonishment the local KFC tried to charge me $48 for a single bucket of chicken !! I can amazingly and fortunately get a dozen bottles of cheap Chardonnay from Trader Joes for that. Downtown bars are charging over 5$ for a PBR in a glass. WTF. The world has gone mad.

Reno life settles down. More Crew arrive from Mexico and slot in well. Scott is the skilled carpenter that built our jungle house. We intend to absolutely abuse his skills. Josh arrives. This year he is blessed with two good arms (He buggered himself up last year on a one-wheel). His missus has now has banned him from even looking at any vehicle with less than 4 wheels. The tent city in the yard is looking like a refugee camp. Extraordinary sounds are being produced. Audio skills are delivered in the form of a talented cheesemaker from Vermont. Ross correctly specifies the optimum equipment within out budget. We acquire it all. Our mate from Seattle has worked with her mate (Chat GBT) and we now have a couple of dozen multi-genre unique songs all about cones. They are surprisingly catchy. A raging irish pub ditty followed by a rap track , country classic and a choir anthem. All AI generated. It’s sadly impressive.

The soundtrack to our build has so far been the soulfully haunting drone of the didgeredoo-cone. Our antipodean contingent have skillfully attached a large traffic cone to a pipe to create a functional didgeridoo. We find bee wax in the local market to make a mouthpiece and the Cone-didge came to life. The acoustics from a well played didgeridoo inside a 60 foot cone can only be imagined. Exciting potential when we get out on the Playa.

We have been given a space in down town Reno to help with our fundraising efforts. We need all the help we can get so gratefully accept. There is a retail space in Reno Public Market (RPM) where we can place a few of our cone sub structures and promote the project. We decide to run a raffle and have crew on site every day. There is a big screen where we can play video and AI animation cone-tent to further raise our profile. We transport huge sections of cone down to the RPM and guilt parents into donating cash while their kids paint them for us. Ours is not an easy story to tell but we make enough of a fuss and just enough cash to make it worth it. It took some work but we are now somewhat infamous if not entirely understood. We are building a huge traffic cone in a desert. It’s not obvious why.

As the days turn into weeks more of our piles of wood turn into more round solid structures. Huge and very heavy sections of cone. We have a lot of restrictions about the paint we can use as it has potential to pollute when burnt. Thankfully the paint we find that is closest to the hue of a traffic cone is not expensive, VOC free and on the shelf at Home Depot. Who knew that traffic cones were a “Hot Tomato” colour.

Fundraising is not going perfectly. It is a difficult ask to encourage people to give you hard earned cash for us to build a traffic cone !! There are so many other draws on funds these days. Rent and food and over expensive KFCs are all considered much more important than a burning traffic cone. Fair enough. Every day I get to stare at the budget praying for money in and watching the inevitable drain of money out. We are making huge economies everywhere and that is making it work. Just.

To add to the fun our trailer is broken into overnight and all our audio equipment is stolen. Long day follows of communing with the many homeless folk around us and in the local park offering a reward for the safe return of our missing kit. This brilliant plan does not work. A late donation saves us and we are able to replace everything we lost. Irritating but not fatal.

The Generator work space has its annual fundraising night and we are invited to also shake a bucket and see if we can raise a few more beans. Our lead artist Kiwi makes a speech about what a great idea Coney Mc Coneface is and pleading poverty. I then conduct a a quickly composed rap sing-along encouraging folk to support the cone. It was very silly and probably repelled more donors than it attracted. Maybe being a rap star is not my future.

All the cone parts are assembled and we load up the cone parts into our rented 48 foot trailer . We also have a big refrigeration semi trailer box that we are gifted for the next few weeks. We fill it to the brim with all our crap, They are heading to the Playa slightly before the first dozen of us load up and say farewell to Reno and hello to the dust and heat of the Black Rock Desert. Here we go.

Pyramid Lake stop off on the way to the Playa

They crew land and head out deep into the desert to find their assigned spot and start the survey and make camp. The cone parts will be arriving anytime and they need a home. We arrive in the heat and find our Playa home and our trailer that has been delivered to the bare piece of playa onto which Media Mecca ( the Burning Man communication centre) will be constructed. This is our Burning Man day job. I am confusingly Project Lead for the cone and Build Lead for Media Mecca. Our job for the past few years has been to create a reception building for journalists, a deck to entertain journalist and a back bar and lounge for the crew to avoid journalists. The boys from Mexico join us and we open up the container full of wood and tools and spend the next few days getting all this done while also supporting the Coney crew that are camped out next the build site.

There is a unique and much loved event every year that we look forward to . On the Saturday night a week before the event begins all the artists and builders and those creating and running the event are invited to offer a small creation to burn. Early Burn allows everyone who has been out in this crazy environment for weeks to have a blow-out. There is a line-up of effigies and structures that are all burnt together. We get to see all our mates who we never do at the event because they are too busy. Scott has knocked up a small cone to represent our project and our pyro lead had filled it with interesting stuff. Mini Coneface is ready to burn.

Our night is put on hold. The weather has arrived. An intense dust storm is battering us. Visibility is down to a few yards and its impossible to breathe outside. Lungs fill up with the talc like dust. Burning anything looks highly unlikely.

And then it happens. Unexpectedly the sky clears and the stars come out and a beautiful night appears from nowhere. We all rush to get our shit together and get ourselves out to the assigned spot in front of the man. Our early crew assembles and we watch in delight as all the line of funky art is burnt. The pyro in the our mini cone explodes in flame. It’s a fabulous sight. We are all inspired to go forward and make Coney Mc Coneface a reality. We all dive into a much needed night of strange connections and spontaneous nonsense

The sections have been unloaded and as we are distracted by Media Mecca building the crew bolt together the parts into what is clearly slices of traffic cone . We await a crane to put them on top of each other. We haven’t had the equipment or space to test if this will work so we pray hard that we have built each of these pre-assemblies absolutely perfectly. There are tight tolerances building a sixty foot cone shape in bits.

Then another of the dust storms appears. It comes unannounced. Visibility is gone and there is no way that any productive work is possible. Scarves are wrapped around faces to keep the fine stuff from filling lungs and goggles prevent blindness. We are at the build site when it hits. We all hunker down in a large tent and open a few bottles to keep us company. The refrigeration semi trailer is between the tent and the wind and saves us from being blown away. It lasts for many hours.

The lift day is upon us. It’s an really significant event for all of us. It’s the time when our sub structures of wood which have been formed and painted and nurtured bond with each other and perfectly form into a traffic cone. Coney Mc Coneface is born today. This is not a simple process. Each of our sections need to match exactly. We need to have built every one perfectly round and dimensionally identical to its matching partner. This is where we find out how smart we are. The potential for a shit show is vast. The chances of us having all our many tolerances correct are slim. It doesn’t take much for things to be so very wrong. It’s a tense time.

The burning man crane crew are some of the very best there are. They have experience of building the craziest stuff in the harshest conditions. No one else gets to do what they do. Today they are going to try and align four great big heavy lumps of wood perfectly. The wind is not helping. We attach guide ropes but that is not what makes it work. The amazingly talented crane operator will gauge the wind shear and at the precise moment plop one bit on top of the other. The first pick goes remarkably well. The second and the third. When the final chunk of cone lands perfectly and completes the job its emotional. So much gratitude to our crane crew and our crew. We have fucking done this thing. Amazingly well. Coney Mc Coneface stands before us in all his/her magnificence. Its good. Really really good.

There is the need to ensure that the now perfectly aligned lumps of wood stay where they have been expertly put. A good strong wind will not be good at this point. We are prepared. Because of the small entrance and diminishing cone structure we don’t have room for a cherry picker or scissor lift to get up to where we need to be to bolt all the sections together. Our search for a 45 foot ladder have not gone well and our budget won’t let us buy or rent anything appropriate. But we have a secret weapon.

Scott is my Thai Chi Master mate who is also the master carpenter that has built a load of good stuff in our jungle house. He lives in our treehouse in the jungle and has been persuaded to donate his skills to us and live in a tent for a month in Reno. He is also a world class professional climber and mountain guide. He has devoted much of his life to ascend terrifying cliff faces. He has had a long and impressive relationship with El Capitan . Rigging himself to the inside of a massive wooden cone is not an issue for him. Up he goes with an impact driver in hand and in no time the sections are secured. Coney Mc Coneface is going nowhere. Until we are ready. Impressive stuff.

Coney Mc Coneface exists. You can see this from miles away. There are not so many people here yet and due to the dust storms few projects have been completed so we stand out. We really strand out. If the dust calms down and the air is clear you can see our massive orange traffic cone from everywhere. There is already a buzz in the city. What the fuck is that traffic cone doing here ? Why would anyone one spend the vast amount of effort and money to do something as ridiculous as that ? Good questions.

The weather has up to this point been dodgy. We have lost a lot of time due to dust storms. But nothing too dramatic. The winds made our crane pick challenging but what follows reminds us of where we are. The dust particles all get together and decide to hold hands and get some wind behind them. The result is that we vanish for many hours. You could be standing almost close enough to touch but our 60 foot (ish) cone is invisible behind the dust storm. The wind also rips up our build crew tent and steals everything that is not tied down. It’s brutal. But predictable. This is the joy of building in the Black Rock Desert. It will always remind you that you really don’t belong there. We are but visitors who have to hang on in and suck it up.

We are exhausted but contented. This bizarre mission that we have all dedicated ourselves to is now reality. An impressive enormous traffic cone now exists in time and space. We have added sound and smoke. Inside we install a finger puppet stage which also transforms into a kissing booth or an advice booth. There is an area to remind folk to be careful and respect safety meetings. We have two screens installed to display the growing amount of highly entertaining video cone-tent that we have acquired over the months of social media fundraising. There is a shrine to coney nonsense. We have lost a few incredible people over the years along the way and they are all honoured there. We also create a dedication to the native land on which we exist. Our smoke machines are dispensing glycerine vapour so there is narrative that the cone is protecting us all from a steamy fissure that has broken through the playa. Outside one of our very talented New Zealanders has created brilliant if slightly insane secret dioramas. It’s all rather impressive.

We break camp and head to our event homes . We are at Media Mecca and the crew are mostly hosted by Day Dream which is a well resourced and generous camp who have kindly offered to feed and shelter everyone. It is, however, placed right in the heart of the 24 hour super loud sound district so there will be very little sleep to be had for the next week.

The Burning Man event is about to start. Many tens of thousands of expectant punters will soon flood the place and Coney Mc Coneface will come alive. We are ready.

PART THREE

The Life & Death of Coney Mc Coneface

We really didn’t have an idea about how this would all go down. The reaction of the masses is unpredictable and sometimes can go against you. We need not have worried. The bemused punters in their thousands all made pilgrimages out of the city to find Coney Mc Coneface. To our great relief they loved it.

The advice booth was filled with bad advice. The finger puppets were busy entertaining day and night. There was kissing in the kissing booth. Cone songs were played throughout to much appreciation. The alter filled with respectful if ridiculous offerings. The sound of the didgeridoo add a haunting ambience. People squeal with delight as they discover the dioramas. Day one and its all going rather well.

At night Mr Coneface takes on a very different vibe. He is up lit and magnificent. Jayne has carefully and painfully installed rope lights around the silver stripes that look incredible. The now throngs of folk decend on us and we invite them to gather inside. I welcome them in batchs of about 50 at a time. I have them all look upwards at the structure which is an incredibly beautiful. The levels are lit up to the top where we direct smoke to add a little magic. As the crowd absorb this totally unique space I have them join me in a short ceremony of daft hand gestures and chanting before declaring them all cone-verted. This happens many times. By the end of the week I have at least a thousand extra cone-verts.

A team of folk with the task of promoting Coney Mc Coneface to as many participants as possible have arrived and been preparing themselves for days. They are mostly from New Zealand so far away from home. I have now officially never seen so many kiwis in one place outside of New Zealand. Our crew is full of them. Their moment arrives. Just before sunset every day cone ceremonies are cone-ducted. Chants and dance and nonsense are performed to an expectant crowd who all leave thoroughly cone-verted. It’s starting to look a bit culty but everyone loves a good cult now and again right ? .

Jayne has been working hard on a project of her own. The Coney Mc Coneface QUEST. She has negotiated with a number of artists to hide within their camp or art piece a bespoke red triangle which has a raised section for a crayon rubbing which imparts a unique image onto paper to reveal the next clue. It’s a challenge that involves a lot of work but there are a large number of folk who are absolutely up for it. There are special rolls of parchment with clues directing people to where the triangles are hidden. We distribute them in all public area for people to find and be seduced to take on the challenge. It take to few days to set up. Triangles are placed behind pictures, on art cars , in treasure chests and art structures. An astonishing amount of folk compete every task and turn up at Media Mascca to be rev-erred and inducted into the ways of the cone. They leave very happy with cone prizes and pride. Everyone who completes it loves it . Great success.

A slightly insane couple at Media Mecca have decide to get married. They request their cone-mitment ceremony be cone-ducted at the cone. I agree to be the officiary. The cone-ductor of ceremonies. I have numerous Playa weddings under my belt. This will be fun. The bride looks resplendant with ballons attached to her dress to keep it suitably suspended. The groom is in a version of top hat and tails and stands with me as the bride party approaches Coney Mc Coneface. The cone-gregation is treated to a splendid set of spicy vows. I manage to squeeze 14 cone-references into the announcements. The two kiss and are whisked away on a dusty mattress in the back of a pick up truck to cone-sumate their cone-ection. So very romantic.

At night the cone has become somewhat of a beacon for art cars and punters alike. The extraordinary Pulpo Magnifico flaming Octopus arrives and entertains with sound and flame. That pulls in vast crowds and is a sight to behold. As the flames hit the sky the cone is lit up to the rapturous delight of all. The quite remarkable San Francisco Bridge art car arrives and Rhino and his crew park close and blast perfect sounds. An instant dance party.

The cone-cophony of sound and lights continues until the sun rises and casts huge cone shaped shadows to the mountains. The light of the day reveals a huge traffic cone holding a remarkable space in a remarkable place. We are all flabbergasted by the love that has been generated by a Coney Mc Coneface. The cone-verted appear again and again to give praise and dance and sing and wonder at the nonsense.

The time comes way too fast when we have to consume our creation with fire. It’s Thursday of the event and It’s time for Coney Mc Coneface to be no more . Our pyrotechnic crew goes to work early. We close off the area. With traffic cones. Fuel is loaded. Wood and gasoline. Incredibly technical things are happening in preparation for the 5 Minute pyro show before the flames start to consume the structure. It takes hours of work in the hot baking sun. Also non technical things are afoot. A few of our crew decide to drill a face onto the side of the cone which will light up when it burns. We approve.

The biggest challenge is to find 90 sober people at 7.30 pm to spend 3 hours protecting our perimeter. They are required to be looking at the crowd not the big burning cone behind them. Some years ago some poor bugger was out of his mind enough to run into the fire here and he died. Since then there are many levels of organisation to prevent it happening again. We are trained and have trained all the perimeter crew in techniques to prevent such tragedies happening again. Burning big art is now a serious business .

It is a unique experience walking around a massive flaming cone looking at the mesmerised crowd. You see the fire in their eyes. We are transfixed by the fire and the pyro and the crowd and the sky full of speckled red embers falling slowly like hot rain. We have a surprise for the crowd. The FAA has finally approved a piloted aircraft to launch fireworks while flying. At precisely 9 pm a light aircraft with lasers firing flys over the burning cone. Flames are 100 feet in the air as suddenly an array of white plume fireworks are launched overhead. Hard to know where to look. It’s amazing stuff.

All the cladding his burnt away. What remains is the frame glowing bright yellow with heat and flame. There is a movement then a twist and slowly and gracefully the cone smashes to the ground. No longer a cone. An ex cone. A pile of white hot debris. When we break the perimeter thousands of people decend upon the fire to dance around in celebration and joy. Sorta kinda makes all the effort , pain , sweat and worry worth it.

So over many many months Coney Mc Coneface, with a great deal of help, has transformed from a mad idea, to an extraordinary installation, to a pile of ash. It’s a beautiful process. One that we have facilitated many times now. It’s a lot of work . It’s emotional. It’s transformative . It’s more than anything addictive.

Watch this space.

Jungle Journal

Mostly Different

May 30, 2024May 30, 2024
by Beave

February does indeed arrive with the promise of slower days and the chance to rest up. February is a liar. We have a new set of friends staying in the jungle with us and a significant contingent of current visitors that stubbornly refuse to leave. They come for a week and stay for a few months. Don’t blame them at all. More guests of guests arrive and our community is once again injected with a fresh dose of somewhat exhausting activity and enthusiasm.

My birthday comes around again. Glad to be older. It’s the time of year when the Cirque de Los Ninos put on my birthday show for me (and the town). Again it’s a well-produced and much practiced display of young talented future superstars. Cirque du Soleil has already snapped up a few of these kids. A large contingent of us go to support and be entertained and are, once again, all suitably impressed.

Our place is finally feeling a little more sorted and relaxed than in previous years. We are for the first time in a long time only looking at maintenance projects. We are not building anything new but there are still very many calls on our attention.

We decide to leave town for 48 hours. Bit controversial as we haven’t been away from the jungle at all this year, actually maybe six months or more. LCD Sound System, a UK band from back-in-the-day is playing yet another comeback gig in Guadalajara. A bunch of us, mostly from back-in-the-day, decide to rent a place and go for the night. It’s a big opportunity to dress up, eat food and dress up and go dancing. A lot of dressing up is apparently required. It’s good to be away and celebrate my actual birthday.

We return to our list of things to do in the jungle which remains endless and keeps us busy enough. Keeping the water, power and internet running around the property is almost a full time job. We have roofs that we are repairing too often and need replacing. We have a huge empty pool that we need to transform back into a natural pool to avoid the constant demands of a needy chlorine-hungry version. There is mostly an overwhelming amount to do but we are seriously looking at the possibly of going to places elsewhere for a change. Take a few more jungle breaks. We have earned them.

There is a total eclipse happening and the one spot NASA has suggested is the very best place to experience it, in the world, is Mazatlán. This is only five hours away. The sun will be fully blocked by the moon for over 4 minutes in this one spot. Pretty much everyone we know in San Pancho and a large amount of Jayne’s family and a bunch of extra Canadians decide it’s too good an opportunity to miss and arrange to be there. It’s been planned for many months and there are a number of houses already booked on the beach. After we stage family and friends in the jungle for a day or two over forty of us embark on the long drive North and descend on Mazatlán.

We end up in a large high ceiling party house where everyone from other houses meets up to eat and DJ and swim in the indoor pool. It’s an extraordinary experience.

We are on the beach a few hours before the “totality” and the light changes, the wind changes and the fluffy clouds that scatter the sky takes on mind bending forms, colours and shapes. Right before the moment the moon covered the very last piece of the sun it was pretty much full daylight. A surreal sepia tinged daylight but in no way dark. As the last tiny speck of sunlight is covered by the moon all the light goes. Silence. Dark. The horizon a full 360 degree sunset. Remarkable. Spiritual. Emotional.

We spend the rest of the day adventuring in many varied, profound and ridiculous ways before meeting up for sunset. We have been blessed by sunsets but this sunset somehow took on a mystical significance. The world resets and normal service resumed. On this beach with this unbelievably beautiful sunset we all ground ourselves and moved on. Grateful and renewed.

One of our newest jungle residents is a rather superb artist. Probably my favorite so we try and take full advantage of her skills while she is here. Her ability with oil paints is legendary and her hand poked tattoos are sought after by all those that know about such things. There are a couple of projects that we have wanted her to help us with for years. The first being a mural on our new bodega wall. It is something that we don’t want to show off till it’s ready and there is a lot more finishing to do. but there are already really funky sections of it that look so good that we offer here a few premature sneak peeks. It’s months of work. No real planning. A flow of creative consciousness. Exciting.

Something very unexpected and entirely disruptive appears in our lives. Over the years we have stayed in touch with our great friends in New Zealand. We have created amazing things together over the last dozen years and more. They have had a daft idea to build something strange at Burning Man in Nevada for some time. This year they threw the dice and decided to put in an application to see if by some remote chance their idea would attract some money . By some shift in the force, universal fart or cosmic comedy they were enthusiastically encouraged , supported and ultimately offered an honorarium grant to build a 60 foot traffic cone and burn it.

The main artist is a close friend and has been fundamental in the production of some of the most beautiful projects that we have nurtured together with fabulous success over many years. Now we are committed to creating a massive traffic cone. A traffic cone. A massive one… Coney Mc Coneface ….. WTF???

Despite my absolute amazement that anyone would give “us” any money to do this, we are, by default, all in. We can’t sit in Mexico when our mates in New Zealand are struggling to build in Reno, Nevada and assemble in the desert and blow this thing up. It’s not anything that I would have planned for us but the universe has spoken. We are now project leads with the mission to bring Coney McConeface (a 60 foot traffic cone) to Burning Man 2024. Of course we are. FFS.

Water water bloody water. It’s almost scary to find out the our well is running dry. It’s two months earlier than ever before. The effect of last year’s crap rainy season showing up to bugger us up. Our new house has a massive cistern which we installed in anticipation of this situation. It’s been coming for a while. We keep it filled by “pipa” water trucks but the rest of the places we have must survive without till the rains come.

The San Pancho well is also dry. Town taps are turned off for long periods. There are accusations that the two out of town cement works that are busier than ever have not helped the situation. Rumours are that we are heading into a period of record high temperatures and low rain fall. Not good news.

Coney McConeface is doing my head in. I forgot how much work these projects take. We need to persuade people that giving money to a crazy burning man project is a great idea. We have to persuade dozens of folk to give us their time and skills for the love of it. No one gets paid. We need to find a build space in Reno that doesn’t cost us a fortune and is big enough to birth a massive traffic cone. We have a crew to feed. Having folk starve to death while building for free is not a good look. We need to plan a burn and a week of interaction attracting as many cone fans as possible. We mustn’t forget that it’s a remarkably difficult shape to construct and we have to build all 60 feet of it. Why are we doing this ?

My biggest surprise is how many people are madly enthusiastic about our project. It’s a bloody traffic cone but who knew the global love and affection for a traffic cone. I had no idea. This project has had more traction worldwide than any other project we have done. It’s quite remarkable that the modest traffic cone can muster so much love and support??!! So many cone heads.

Our friends in South Africa are a persuasive bunch. They have invited us to camp with them at Afrikaburn. This would give us the chance to get away from jungles and cones and see many of our old friends. We could sneak in some safaris and even get to see more friends while checking out Mozambique. We have been to Capetown and Afrikaburn a number of times and absolutely love it. Last time was 2017 so it’s been a while.

I was born in Lusaka, Zambia and our revisit there was very special. Africa is part of my childhood and still holds nostalgia and excitement. After some consideration we decide that we will indeed spend a month in South Africa & Mozambique. It doesn’t give us much time to prepare. A number of good mates from San Pancho are going to meet us there. This has the potential to be a proper adventure.

The proper adventure begins with a few hour flight to Atlanta and a 14 hour hop to Capetown. It’s been a long time since I was stuck in one of those seats for that long. I have certain challenges. I have a lot more legs than the area designated for me to fold them into. Also my shoulders are wider than any economy seat. If anyone passes by they invariably nudge me with their hips to check I’m awake or just bloody irritate me. Worse are the service trolleys that clip chunks out of me. I bravely and patiently meditate my way through this ordeal, occasionally swearing loudly at some clumsy twat or trolley.

We have a soft landing at a friend’s house in town and spend the next few days preparing to be out of touch in the deep semi-desert of the Karoo for over a week. There is much biltong and steak pies to buy. There are jobs to be done in prepration at the bustling workshop which is crammed with remarkable art cars and a ten tonne lorry packed with everything we need for a large camp of 190 souls.

We collect our van home and meet up with fabulous mates who lend us a mattresses, coolers and all the things we need. It saves us a heap of time and rand. We drive back to town and end up in a small industrial estate where the art cars are being prepared for travel. Suddenly the vans horn starts blaring and the engine cuts off. The tracker thinks the van is being stolen. Despite calling the rental company many times it is still disturbing us and the neighbourhood an hour later. We disconnect the horn manually and abandon it. We are exhausted and have had enough. We get a cab to meet up with our San Pancho friends who have all now landed. We restore ourselves with a visit to a fabulous Capetown restaurant. And we arrange to do the same the next night too. The Rand is currently similar value to the Mexican peso so we are feeling relatively flush.

We have arranged to arrive early on site to help build the Mad Hatters camp. There are a number of huge stretch tents holding all the people. There is a large separate lounge and DJ area to construct. A bar and coffee station is ready to commission. There is a small painted tent full of cushions to erect. A big ten tonne truck is in need of unpacking then re-worked into a flaming mobile DJ machine. There are a number of the art cars from the workshop for us to use. We are voluntold to tow one of them and a caravan.

The time comes and we load the trailer and prepare to leave. It’s going to be a long journey over notoriously tyre shredding roads. The winds off table mountain are surprisingly strong and we decide, very wisely, to delay our late afternoon departure. We have a convoy of three cars, an art car strapped to a trailer and a long caravan. We agree to set off at around 10am the next morning and head North very slowly. By the afternoon we are on tiny rough arse unpaved tracks taking us through the mountains and down onto the vast Karoo where the site is. The art car trailer keeps snapping ratchet straps so it’s stop start and even when we are at full speed it’s a glacial pace.

As we get within 30 km we are shaken to bits by endless washboard ruts. The suspension diverts the vibrations through the wheels to our our tail bones and right up to our delicate exhausted skulls. It’s unpleasant but eventually over. It’s dark. The sky hold up a bright orange moon to welcome us. We avoid the sand traps, and gratefully park up our van after 10 hours of travel. The van will be our home for the next 10 days. It is kitted out with a mattress in the back, lights and whole heap of wine and snacks. We manoeuvre so the side door is facing the sunset. We sleep the sleep of the travelled.

Our phones have no signal and are effectively cameras only. I turn mine off and hide it in the van. I don’t touch it again till we leave. It’s a remarkably nostalgic feeling to be out of touch and everything be just fine. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t touch my phone for over a week. I recommend it.

Afrikaburn is a extraordinary event with seemingly endless examples of creativity, interaction and art. Our art cars arrive to ferry us around but we spend hours trekking the hard rocky ground finding treats everywhere. Burlesque shows, large art installations, small art installations, slap bars, endless dance floors and an enormous LED flying insect on a scissor lift. We see a lot of and catch a number of large and small scale burns.

Our own camp has themed bar takeovers every day and a quite remarkable Mad Hatters Tea Party where we distributed free hair extensions, finger puppets, hats and pyjamas. Next to the bar a shipping container was converted into a large mirror room to play in. The whole space was monitored by cameras. The image sent into a huge telescope on the dunes where you could watch the mirror room nonsense. Add a bunch of lights, lasers, music, flame effects and projection and it makes for a uniquely surreal playground.

After we had packed up and gathered what was left of our senses we head out to a rather posh and peaceful lodge to recover. It’s located a few hours from site, stuck up towards the mountain with the Karoo spread out in front of us. Two days of doing very little but watch the stars, look out for tortoises, eat, sleep and soak in the wood fired hot tub. Bliss.

We make the hot drive back to Capetown. After a fairly hectic day of unpacking, laundry and dropping off our van-home we jump a flight to Kruger National Park. There is a small group from Afrikaburn who meet us at the airport. They have arranged a series of safaris and a some time supporting an orphanage in the nearby village. After a stop to load up with wine and endless snacks we eventually arrive at a super posh lodge. It’s stunning. We commandeer the entire first floor. To my absolute joy we find a large deep bath in our room.

Before we have a chance to collapse, drink tea or even draw a bath we are whisked off on our first game drive. We are soon surrounded by giraffe and elephants as the sun sets spectacularly.

The next few days we take a few more game drives and see some incredible sights. The animals are numerous and wild. It’s amazing to be so close to them in the park. We have morning coffee at the restaurant watching the massive hippos in the river outside our lodge. We have a team of masseuse on hand and dinners cooked for us by private chefs. I have already taken six long baths. We are so very privileged and we know it.

Our visit to the local village brings this overriding feeling of privilege home; hard. It’s one of many that are populated with a large number of Mozambiquans who walked through Kruger to escape the civil war. Those that were not eaten by lions settled here.

The community has since been devastated by AIDS and the result is a large number of children without parents. We meet them at the local community centre. We kick footballs and listen to them sing to us while delivering colouring books and stick toys that are enthusiastically received. The grounds have a small farm in development where the kids grow staples to add to their diet. For many the food they get here is their only food. Siblings stick together holding hands and the older boys take charge and keep everyone as happy and safe as they are able.

We return a day or two later with individual pizzas for every child. It’s like Christmas for them. Some kids are sitting in a pile of debris on the road and we carry a few pizzas out for them. They immediately race off excitedly to find friends to share with. Just feeding these kids takes a lot of time and commitment from many local ladies. Holding their hands or tackling a football from them is a truly humbling experience. They look on us with huge inquisitive eyes as if we are from an entirely different world. In many ways they are absolutely right.

Our next stop on the way is Mozambique. We have friends from San Pancho there we want to catch up with. There is also a contingent from Afrikaburn that travel with us who intend to have a few beach days and a big party weekend. The border is a challenge. The grumpiest and least helpful immigration folk on the planet. You can’t find advice, a pencil or the correct form anywhere but the walls are filled with condom dispensers. Hundreds of free condoms everywhere (to combat the AIDS epidemic). We eventually arrive in Maputo late and weary and check into a very basic downtown apartment.

Maputo has a level of poverty one might expect from an African capital city but is surprisingly expensive. It’s apparently twice the price of South Africa. It was a thriving country at one point until the Portuguese were kicked out.The Chinese are shipping vast quantities of coal across the border to ship to China and ISIS are at war with the military in the North. It’s complicated.

We try and connect to the internet but are told that this will not be possible as a submarine has knocked out both the countries sub ocean internet cables. Strange but true. We pack up our phones and only use them for photographs. It’s again quite liberating. After failing to find a SIM card that would work and buying some African fabric we collapse into our apartment with overpriced jerk chicken and decide to leave the city as soon as we can.

Our friends lend us their car and we head South to a beach town that has cliffs above that we are told we can jump from attached to paragliders. We meet up with the Afrikaburn bunch who are having a beach day before heading for the hills. We spend two days almost jumping off a cliff overlooking a spectacularly long, beautiful and deserted beach. The wind was never the right flavour or strength so nothing much happened. We are in a cliff resort by ourselves surrounded by all the staff and huge monkeys that crash around on our roof. As it turns out, doing nothing for a few days was exactly what we needed to do.

Coney Mc Coneface is taking on a life of its own. I’m getting pictures of cones sent to me from all over the world all the time. Our crew has launched our first fundraiser while we have been off grid and we are strategizing about how we are going to persuade folk to help us fund this thing. Art support fundraising is a tough gig. We have a lots of offers of help so that’s a good start. www.conecophony.com

We are very generously hosted in Maputo by our old mates and new Afrikaburn friends and are whisked off to the city’s hot spots before peeling off around midnight. To our deep frustration our well planned flight back has been moved from a respectable midday departure to a horrendous up-at-5am spot. This does not start our day well.

On the way to the airport we are stopped by police just to see if they can get some money out of us. At the airport we argue with customs who try and remove batteries from our hand luggage and other stupidness. I spend the last of the local metical money on a cup of tea and then the tea lady makes a fuss and tries to charge me for a splash of milk. It’s all getting a bit much for 6 am. We land in Johannesburg to connect with our flight to Capetown 5 hours too early. Its hundreds of dollars to change to an earlier flights so we wait for check in at an old school Wimpy. As soon as we are able we check into a quiet, clean and posh airport lounge where we can indulge ourselves in soft furnishings and tea, with milk.

When we land in Capetown we have a day to pack and prepare for the journey home. We perhaps did not make the very best decisions and may have extended our farewells a little late into the night. Just before we leave for the airport we are whisked up the mountain, attached to a kite and thrown off to fly over the city and land on the beach. It’s exhilarating even with a near fatal hangover.

We are like white sweaty zombies as we check in for the flight to Atlanta at 9pm. It’s another 22 hours of enduring further twats and trollies before we make it home. To our jungle. Which we miss greatly. And where we eventually get to properly sleep, deep and long, for at least a week.

Mausetrappe has recently decided to lick my head clean whenever she is able

Jungle Journal

New Year New Bananas

February 9, 2024February 9, 2024
by Beave

On our return from Tahoe we recognize our need to entirely embed ourselves in the bliss of jungle solitude. The desire to further socialize is zero. We wallow in delicious antisocial isolation for as long as we are able. It’s not long.

Mausetrappe and I taking a much earned moment

The Scavengers have agreed to ride again. A year ago we took to a pimped up Polaris ATV, dressed appropriately and took part in a very silly scavenger hunt to raise a heap of money for the EntreAmigos community centre children’s library. It’s time to do it all again and defend our winning ways. It’s a well organised and rather insane few hours of racing around the town making absolute twats of ourselves but we do it again. Scavengers take the prize and secure our reputation for super hero excellence. Astonishingly we raise over $20k US dollars between us all for the kids. We hang up our capes for another year. We will be back. But until then return to our jungle hibernation.

It’s not long enough before we are forced to emerge from our indulgently selfish and perfectly satisfying prevarications as we once again begin hosting mates from afar who are landing upon us regularly. It’s that time of year. They arrive from everywhere. Some appear from Calgary and other Canadian cities. More from Alaska and other US states. Others emerge from Europe and Australasia and there is even a Brighton Brum from Scotland.

A friend of Jake’s is looking for a spot for his van for a few months. When we get to see the van we are seduced. Its good looking and a rather well put together thing. It would look sexy anywhere so we agree.

It is, as always, a good thing to have our space filled with new souls experiencing slices of our unreasonably unique lifestyle. Our recent exposure to life in Nevada and California has re-enforced our belief that we are no longer best suited to what allegedly polite society attempts to market as normal living. It gives us a dose of the unashamed smugs to share our own version of reality.

There continues to be a steady flood of both Mexican and International tourist folk arriving in town. The delights of San Pancho are no longer a secret. Mates who deal with hotel spaces and rentals to house them all report the chances of renting anything in town for the next few months are slim to none. It’s good for business as the restaurants and shops are packed but the temptation to cash in is all too much. The costs of just about everything are rising at alarming rates. San Pancho is now notably expensive compared to nearly everywhere else. It’s literally the price we have to pay.

We take motivation from the enthusiasm of visitors as we introduce them to all the good spots and for the lucky ones we inflict upon them our lively, creative and quite bonkers community. There is a rich mix of all kinds of idiot here and we rub along just fine. It’s fascinating the variety of folk all with wildly different stories who have ended up together in this place.

Thankfully we are blessed with a good number of good people. There is a very low amount of entitled or unbearably irritating folk. Surprisingly few. Pretty much everywhere I have spent any time has produced a flush of such nutters that you just need to avoid. Should they appear here, thankfully, as if by magic, they don’t tend to stay around. It’s not the environment for them here. We are grateful for that.

In preparation for further guests and potential get togethers we have work to do. The large parota tables that have been ignored for a number of years are showing signs of neglect. It takes a few days of mucky sanding and pints of varnish but they revive enough to look pretty good again. Not sure how many times we can get away with such resurrections.

The outdoor shower has also been ravaged by humidity and termites. Sweaty termites have eaten all the bits that keep the wood resembling a shower. It is now but a teetering assembly of chewed wood. After doing some brutal but necessary triage on the remains of the existing beams and panels it is clear that the new shower will be a more compact version. I save what I can and add a few new bits. The new shower emerges from the heap of partly digested palm bark . It is then decided to absolutely soak the whole thing in our precious “Boracare” tincture which claims to keep hungry sweaty termites away. It took a great deal of effort to smuggle the stuff down here. Importing unknown potentially lethal termite repellant is apparently frowned upon. We shall soon see if it was worth it.

So we slip back into a whirl of hosting and attending/avoiding the plethora of events and get togethers that lead us to Christmas itself. Again Christmas Day sneaks up on us.

It certainly sneaked up on Jayne. I wake up with her missing, replaced with extraordinary sounds of distress coming from our, thankfully, outside bathroom. For the whole of the morning a quite extraordinary amount of the very worst fluidy stuff from inside Jayne is expelled out at alarming rates. It was quite awful but somehow spectacular. In a few hours about a hundred of our friends will be arriving in considerably more festive mood than us. It’s going to be an interesting day. Jayne is now empty and weak. Her delicate wrung out body is bed bound. Anything we try to put in her decides to immediately escape. Emergency Chinese herb medicine is applied. I leave her to rest and prepare for the inbound hordes.

Despite Jayne’s absence another splendid Christmas was had. All the folk and an insane amount of food laden plates arrive. Everyone successfully imbibes, inhales and indulges in all the things. Our now infamous White Elephant event not only entertained the excitable throng but this year uncovered some real festive gems. Amongst many great prizes there was a much desired slide guitar, highly popular utility knives and an unbelievably epic Approved by Beave stamp I acquired. Due to surprised excitement I may have used it far too often. No one was safe from my approval.

Very late in the day what is left of Jayne is recovered enough to make a welcome but short appearance. Thankfully, after a good night sleep, she recovers further and we can rule out Dengue Fever and all the other more serious possibilities. For Jayne it was a very memorable Christmas Day best forgotten.

On Boxing day a number of folk chose to recover at the café/bar/restaurant that Jake works at in town. He was mighty confused that his customers all appeared to have a picture of his Dad stamped on them.

There continues to be endless back to back excuses to gather until New Year Eve also sneaked up on us. Those that had been absent for Christmas all reappeared full of just arrived back enthusiasm. Town is packed. Our friends were DJ-ing all around town and Freak Baby played on the beach at midnight. It was exhausting but we made it through.

New Year arrives but there are no real signs of life slowing down any. San Pancho has felt like one long after party for weeks. The continuous stream of dinners, DJs, dragshows, events, gatherings, and regular silliness continues. Endless opportunities for meeting, eating, drinking and more bloody dancing. Very occasionally we snatch some time to ourselves. Duvet days with faces stubbornly stuck in some brain sapping device ignoring the world except for occasional trips to the loo or the fridge. If we achieve this for an entire day we are bathed in self-congratulatory satisfaction. Love a good duvet day.

It is time once more for us all to gather on the beach and publicly engage in absolutely unashamed silly nonsense to celebrate Emma Brown surviving another year. This is now the fourth annual Emmalympics. It gets dafter every year. By some twist of injustice, even before we get started, I am accused of cheating and as punishment am forced to participate in every event entirely blindfolded. Bit harsh. It all begins with egg themed races followed by mobile balloon abuse and quite inappropriate spoon thrusting. A banana and buttocks event (which is genuinely hard to watch) is followed by the some fairly dangerous welly chucking and ultimately we complete the competition with the inevitable tug of war fiasco. It’s a splendid afternoon which is embellished further by a spectacular jumping and splashing show from a large number of curious humpbacks leaping out the sea to get a better look at our athletic prowess. Who can blame them?

Despite a load of effort to reattach wheels and replace batteries, bearings, bushings and springs our Polari (Ranger & Razor) have both taken a break from working and being useful. Parts are smuggled to replace the more obviously broken ones. Local mechanics won’t touch them so we wait for someone more useful to appear.

The universe provides. Geoff arrives. Geoff can fix anything. Geoff is here. The poor bugger arrives from Peruvian adventures and within hours is up to his guts in tools busily repairing Polari trauma. We now have three working vehicles and our FJ has a new side light cluster, working air conditioning and the horn restored. Horns are essential equipment in Mexico. Geoff is great.

February we hope will provide the opportunity for many more duvet days but with our dance card already filling up for the next few weeks and months it’s looking less likely. There are worse problems to have. What doesn’t kill you makes you older right?

Jungle Journal

New Sky, All the Megs & Endless Possibilities

November 28, 2023November 28, 2023
by Beave

Our return to Mexico from Burning Man goes pretty much to plan. We spend two blissful weeks being thoroughly anti-social and busy ourselves doing absolutely bugger all. The growing list of jobs, tasks and projects can just wait.

In our absence the rainy season has delivered significantly less rain than expected. A lot less. The jungle is alive and every colour of vibrant green. We can see it growing in front of our eyes but it’s a bit of a worry that the rivers are stubbornly dry. The flashing displays of the fireflies entertain us every night but there are a few million less of them this year. They are attracted by the water that isn’t there. If nothing dramatic happens there is the real possibility that the town well will run dry disruptively early next year.

We notice a very large Copomo has fallen too close to our main solar panels. If it had drifted twenty feet on its way down it would have demolished them. It’s a full size 150 foot tree. It’s a stunningly huge. It has taken out a few fruit trees and now lies on the river border of our land where our fence used to be. It’s an impressive amount of wood. The trunk is too broad for even my extra-long chain saw. Copomo is not useful for construction as it degrades relatively quickly. It does burn well so is mostly used for cooking. We will have to wait for this massive lump of tree to slowly break down or organise an epic cook out.

The first of the significant hurricanes is due. We have had a few good rains but only short lived. Nothing to worry about. The rivers still aren’t flowing for longer than it takes the, still easily passable, roads to dry out and that’s not long. We spend a few days in preparation. We share satellite images of Lidia’s predicted path. The threat is somewhat increased as she moves closer. We are now expecting a full on category 4 with thirty foot waves and hundred and twenty kmph winds.

There is little else to be done. We are as waterproof as we can be and we just have to wait and see what a few decent gusts of wind can do to us.

A great assistance in maintaining my sanity and connection with the world is the Rugby World Cup in France. Time differences are not too disruptive with games at 9 am and 1 pm. Our beach front bar has been nagged and hounded for months to show every match while ignoring the American tourists who turn up insisting on watching their precious “football” games. Many weeks of epic battles ahead. Wales appear to have found their bollocks and are looking well. Springboks and All Blacks are waiting should we progress (so nothing much to worry about!). It is nostalgic to remember my youth when I endured many hours of bleeding in frozen mud and biting winds while buried in scrums and mauls to deliver a ball over a line. It was, and remains, very important.

Slowly our usual suspects start to return to Mexico from their Summer excursions North. The last few months there has been little open in town, so those few of us that have chosen to remain bump into each other all the time. Whenever we meet up we all agree that the damp heat is ridiculous and we crave a cool ocean and the odd breeze. We now prepare for the oncoming season when the town and beach fills with hordes of transient tourists and snowbirds.

The hurricane is upon us. At the last moment the warm jungle air that reaches out to sea has diverted her a little South. At one point it was predicted to hit us fully in the face. We stock up with last minute fuel and supplies and wait. The rain starts at sunset but not as much as we might expect. The issue for us, surrounded by so many huge trees, is the wind gusts. We listen nervously. The canopy is blown around noisily. The Copomos sway ominously and gracefully. It’s dark until our world becomes instantly bright as lightening hits close by followed by earth shaking thunder. And then we hear it.

There are a number of tell tale sounds when a tree is coming down. Often there are loud explosive bursts like gun fire or fireworks as the trunk splinters, followed by a low deep cracking noise and then eventually the crunch as it hits other trees and branches before the ground. What we heard was a highly speeded up version. We hear the crack and crash very quick, loud and close. We instinctively hold on tight and close to the concrete pillars in the house. After a few moments we are confident we are not currently being crushed and look outside. The Bodega is still standing.

I grab a torch (“flashlight” to you North Americans) and head out to survey the situation. I am very enthusiastically discouraged from going outside but I have to check if there is a Copomo with our name on it. The gusts are moving the elegantly tall trees a bit too much to the left and an uncomfortable amount to the right. It becomes obvious quickly that the landscape has changed. The limited light from my torch picks out a number of substantial trunks lying right next to the Bodega. There are now a great deal of new shadows obscuring our view to the arroyo.

The biggest, oldest and tallest Copomo, that we have been using as base for our compost, has finally given up to a gust of wind. It’s fully uprooted and now stretches out all the way to the arroyo. This was another ancient beast previously over 150 feet tall. On the way down it has taken a number of others. They are somehow all neatly piled next to each other. The closest missed the Bodega by inches. By midnight the winds are gone and the rain gentle. We are once again amazingly fortunate.

The following morning is blessed with slightly cooler air with the welcome smells of freshly smashed jungle and petrichor. The rivers are still not flowing. I spend an hour or so clearing the paths but can find no further damage. The roads are somehow better. The empty rivers aren’t cutting trenches and removing dirt so the rain water has helpfully created localized mud that has filled in a few holes. Could have been a heap worse.

We are without internet for the next five days. A new cell tower has been built in town that services the whole area except for us. The old tower on which we still rely on has now been dramatically relegated or often forgotten in the service/repair schedules. We call it the sugar lump. If there is a drop of rain then it’s done for.

We cannot rely on sugar lump anymore. In order to ensure WIFI we need to invest in a satellite system. This is, as always, not simple. We tried one out that was loaned to us. Because of our canopy (lack of sky) it wasn’t able to cope. Our plan is to pick a tree and acquire a long pole and a brave soul who can climb up and install it for us. Our mate turns up with his drone and launches it above the trees. According to the altimeter we will need to get the dish at least 100 feet up to stand a chance.

I am walking over our land to check the water, avoiding the Golden Orb spider webs and macheting the new growth. There is something different that I can’t quite work out till I look up. The huge Copomo that is no longer up has left behind it a massive amount of sky. Brand new gorgeous sky and lots of it. This one single tree accounted for a great deal of shade. The total area of sky above our panels is now about a third bigger. This explains why we are noticing that the solar panels are converting photons surprisingly well. There are loads more of them!

On returning to the house I look above the Bodega where the downed trees were and again find a new large blue patch where once there was none. The sun floods through the windows in the morning for the first time. The big old Copomo that fell we estimate to be over 150 years old. The last time light hit this bit of jungle floor was over a hundred years ago. It will transform the place. We might even get some sun hungry fruit trees going.

We have finally acquired a satellite internet device and a long heavy pole to attach it to. After much research a number of stand-off brackets have been created that we can screw to our chosen tree with lag bolts. This is the considered wisdom to keep our Copomo happy with the procedure. The trunk will accept the lag bolts as new branches and not push them out. Amazingly we have found a bunch of absolute lunatics that have accepted the challenge of installing the thing.

We can’t help but be uncomfortable as the over confident boys rope up and start climbing. We follow their progress nervously until they vanish into the high branches. Eventually the pole assembly is hauled up higher than we can see from the ground. It takes a number of excruciating hours and some very questionable Tarzan moves but somehow the dish is clear of the canopy, the pole is secured and the cable connected.

Internet signal floods downwards. Lots and lots of it. Twenty times more than we have ever had before. Jayne is ecstatic. It means that she no longer has to dash into town to borrow signal when ours drops out in the middle of a meeting. No more will our sugar lump connection be lost for days due to a bit of rain. This is very good news. And more remarkably, no one died.

Halloween and Day of the Dead arrive. We celebrate Halloween with a party to christen a newly constructed pool at our friends’ condo complex and a competitive fancy dress beach party. There is a great deal of effort put into both costume and cocktails. The horse won. Day of the Dead is a marked in Puerto Vallarta by an enormous world record 24 Meter (78 feet) Catrina statue that dominates the Malecon. In San Pancho it’s a quieter affair. We create our own traditional alter in the trees to invite my Dad to join us. It’s emotional as always.

There are strong and tempting rumours of a very discrete gathering of creative nonsense somewhere around the Nevada/California area. Should such an impressively secret event actually exist, consciously outside the pseudo-reality that is social media and unspoken of by participants, then it would certainly tickle our curiosity but be very tough to write about.

If it was a option to be personally invited and sponsored to allow us to learn more then, theoretically, we would have to fly to Reno and stay with friends for a few days and then travel to an unadvertised venue, should such a venue exist. The timing of such a trip would mean we could possibly be in an area where the weather would test our soft warm tender slow cooked Mexican bodies. Should I decide, for reasons unknown, to wear a kilt for three days straight in minus 8 degrees, for example, essential bits of me might go into shock, change shape and texture. Perhaps.

If we were to imagine such a place it may involve many rooms filled with creations from boundless and varied imaginations designed to challenge and delight thousands of possible people. A snarky AI driven Furby Octopus could exist to bitch and argue with you. A room that takes the colour out of your existence would be unlikely but not impossible. There may be talk of bizarrely complex adventures driven by anonymous phone messages. A psychedelic clown cabaret show could be a thing. Entertaining elevator and gate shifts might coexist amongst DJs and extraordinary art. There could be a highly engineered ski lift ride through tantalising and almost unbelievable landscapes existing behind a gentle tea room. There is an outside chance that there could exist rooms of roses, music , bodies, eyes and ice. Or not. This could all be a figment of our delusions or a secret never to be told. I really couldn’t say.

Jungle Journal

Perfectly Natural

October 2, 2023October 2, 2023
by Beave

There are constant reminders of the pecking order in our chosen place in the world. We are often reminded that we are absolutely here at the good grace of mother nature and all her wishes and whims. Should she decide we are no longer welcome we are buggered. It’s a constant challenge where we maintain our gratitude and respect for her and she does as she pleases. So far so good.

We are in that tangibly muggy purgatory period as the dry season changes to wet. The humidity is real and there are occasionally some dramatic thunder, lightning and strong rains for an hour or two. We wait for the big rains to come, the rivers to rise from the dirt, the trees to fall and the roads to wash out. So far is it is a somewhat dry wet season.

Our project to capture more photons to fill our batteries has progressed well. The frame we designed is awkward and heavy and requiring of hours of painting, drilling and further painting. It’s location is very carefully argued. There is only a few hours of morning sun that breaks through the canopy available to us. Holes are dug and concrete mixed and a bunch of mates with muscles summoned for erection day.

It went OK. The half dozen awkward heavy panels are eventually slotted onto the frame and after some fiddling and essential swearing are successfully bolted down in a very sweaty and inelegant process. In order to protect the new structure from any future hurricane conditions safety ropes are installed to trees and planks of wood cut to length to hold up each corner. By adding these props and tie downs we have a fair chance the thing will not blow away.

It’s early days, but by capturing sunlight for those few precious hours in the morning to top up the couple of hours when we are currently collecting in the afternoon our batteries will potentially last twice as long. This gives Brian (our generator) a much needed rest. There is also now the possibility, should the sunbeams align, of turning on our air conditioner. This is a game changer. We have had no air conditioning for six years. It’s an interesting realisation that we have been at this for six years now.

Jayne heads to Canada to spend time with family and enjoy a break from me and our jungle world which is heating up noticeably. When she returns we will have but a few days before heading to Burning Man.

The humidity is brutal. With my new jungle solitude comes an opportunity to submit closer to the new natural pace of life. I make a conscious decision to allow myself a period of doing very little and releasing myself to what may come. This involves a lot of naked sweating, blatant prevarication and delicious guilt free laziness. I even find the time to read an actual book for the first time in an embarrassingly long time. After a couple of weeks I realise that there have been very few things that have persuaded me to leave the land. I have been effectively a surprisingly content hermit. There are a number of essential jobs that I manage to complete, but entirely in my own hot, sweaty and slow, time and space.

It’s been a year since I have left Mexico so the familiar process of preparing for another month dedicated to what Burning Man may bring is a little strange. I finally unpack from the corners of my luggage all the dusty bits and bobs from last year’s stormy, stinking hot and covidy burning man and replace them with fresh nonsense. Who knows what we will need.

Last year’s Nevada adventure was so extreme with dust storms and extraordinary heat that we made do with a few bikinis and goggles. I think I broke my own dubious record for living in the same pants for the longest time. This year we just don’t know so pack something for every occasion along with way too much make up and far too many costume options.

Our logistical burden is considerably eased as last year, in the confusion of dust and covid, we somehow managed to persuade the “org” (those with power and influence at Burning Man) to pick up The Growler (our trailer) and store it for us. Theoretically it will be waiting for us as we arrive on site a week or so before the event starts. It’s practically impossible to rent a truck with a tow hitch in Nevada so we have always had to blag a truck in Reno to tow our very old sun baked, graffiti covered living box from its storage spot near Pyramid Lake the 50 miles to site. This involves getting registration, a full set of working lights and risking the ancient tyres for one more trip. We also get to pass every overeager state trooper (at 29 miles an hour) with what is effectively a “bust me I’m a hippy” bait trailer. This stress maybe a thing of the past if we play our cards well.

So we fly to Reno and meet up with all the people. After a few days of relaxed organization (one trip to Walmart and two to Trader Joes) we arrive in daylight to be met with the welcome sight of The Growler. We start the process of cleaning and nesting so we can start work building a fun camp for the communications team, construct our infamous viewing deck and raise Media Mecca. This is the interactive meet and greet space from where the flock of over enthusiastic drone pilots, journalists and media folk are carefully and expertly managed. We are organised and have a handy bunch of buggers on our crew so it shouldn’t be difficult.

We are settled in and we have a plan. We arrange a pre-build meeting and prepare ourselves for the challenge of a few intense build days. Then our good mate mother nature appears to further remind us who and where we are.

It is Sunday around midday and it starts to rain. In 2004 it rained a little as the event started and the chaos was unforgettable. The salty dust crust on which we live turns to a ridiculously sticky wet clay which grips to your feet and will suck down a vehicle in no time. Nothing can move. The lines of traffic trying to get into the event were stranded. The only solution is wait for the sun to dry up all the rain so itzy bitsy hippies can move their trucks again.

There is much more rain than 2014. A lot more. It’s a week before the event and we are surrounded by water and seas of glue. It’s impossible to open the container where all our wood and equipment is waiting to be transformed. If the old dried out wood gets wet we are buggered. So we wait. We share food and resources and make the best of it. No one is going anywhere. There are only a few thousand folk here and our stocks of all supplies are not worried. It’s an exercise in patience and self-care. We are very good at caring for ourselves and each other so it’s just fine. After a few days of exhaustingly intense selfcare we dry out and prepare ourselves once again. This time last year we were pretty much done with build and we haven’t even started yet. No pressure.

It’s midnight on Tuesday and Wednesday appears under an impressive star filled sky. We drive an art car out into deep playa and arrange a game of petanque (bocce) with brightly coloured lit up balls under the moonlight. It’s a beautiful night. Someone on crew has a “one wheel” on which one’s balance skills and delusional confidence are tested. An electrically powered single wheel attached to a modified skateboard propels the rider who is balanced above it at speeds up to 20 mph. The playa is flat and smooth after the rains and moonlight visibility is clear. It appears an ideal space to give it a good go. We do not have any protective helmets or pads but that doesn’t seem to be an issue. I am forcefully advised by my less confident selfcare assistant that it’s not a good plan for me as we have a long few weeks ahead and the prospect of me smashing myself up is not ideal.

I return to my flashing balls game as my mate Josh, who is currently awaiting his selfcare assistant to arrive, takes off on his first attempt unhindered by wise advice. He is pretty good at it. He arrives back at speed, wide eyed with growing over confidence. It does look like fun. Until it doesn’t.

On his fourth attempt he is now flying around us. He swoops past the art car and then instantly the wheel stops. Josh does not. There is a crunching noise and worrying cloud of dust.

When I get to him it does not look good. He is winded enough that he is struggling to breathe at all and his eyes are looking distressed. It was something of a relief when he started moaning and stubbornly refusing to lie still. I felt his shoulder pop back in place and noticed a particularly squidgy bit on his collar bone. By some mad twist of fate, in this desert void way out from the event space, there happened to be a real life ambulance just cruising around. Ironically the one wheel was dispatched to retrieve the crew who within minutes pick up Josh and take him to Rampart (the newly built triage & EMT center.) Thankfully Burning Man provides excellent EMT facilities to service a fair sized city.

Josh becomes the first passenger of the year on an emergency medical evacuation flight to Reno. Although he has a broken collar bone, cracked scapula and bust ribs which are all inconvenient and irritating he has not broken his neck or damaged his brain (much). He is incredibly fortunate although perhaps not feeling so lucky.

The next day we are confident enough to open the container and the hard stuff begins. More crew have made it out and there are enough willing hands and built up enthusiasm to knock everything out in just a couple of days. Everything looks just about perfect as the gates open.

Josh or “One Wheel” as he is now called, turns up just before the crowds arrive. He is all fixed up after an operation in Reno and has decided that burning man is the ideal place to heal and caught a lift back. His selfcare assistant is at his side so it’s much more likely to happen. He is stubborn enough to not miss his first burning man entirely. He has one good arm so he can get back to work.

It’s Friday when we hear that more rain is potentially forecast. We watch as vast sand storms skirt around us but mostly they are near misses and we remain dry. Until we are not. We are caught on the outskirts of the city visiting friends when it becomes clear that the rain falling is a substantial downpour and will most certainly be changing everyone’s lives significantly for some time. The water settles in vast shallow lakes moved around by the wind. The radio broadcasts endless corny rain themed songs and strict warnings to rest in place until further notice.

Some bloody idiots just can’t bear the thought of doing as they are told (it is the land of the free you know !!) and try and make a run for it. As predicted they are buried up to their axles within a few meters. It’s chaos, but no matter who you think you are, we are all in the same muddy puddle. It’s another lesson in patience and helping others to stay warm and dry and just a little drunk.

We are grateful to be taken in as refugees in a very well-resourced camp. A large red carpeted tent full of perfectly bemused strangers gets slowly overcome with water. At one end is a tiny bar that has notably high end booze offerings. The guy who introduces himself meekly as bar manager does not appear confident. He tells me he has been drafted in but doesn’t drink and has no experience at all. He opens a fresh bottle of outstandingly expensive whisky and deposits half a pint of the amazing stuff over a cube of ice and hands it to me nervously. I congratulate him on a very decent pour.

Remarkably, attached to this tent is a separate fully equipped kitchen with stand up freezers and large stocks of food and wine. Chefs wade through the puddles and deliver freshly made pasta and meats to soak up the dozens of bottles of cheeky Bordeaux’s and the odd Pinot Noir that are being rapidly consumed. No booze less than toppest of shelf or deepest of cellar is even considered. We have certainly hit the best refugee camp on Playa. We are wet and cold and only a little tipsy after a few cheeky bottles of red and only a couple of pints of whisky. We all cram into our mate’s trailer that offers warmth and a tiny dry corner to attempt to pass out while listening to the rain hit the roof. It’s a long night but we are amongst the fortunate ones.

The next morning after a final flush of morning rain we are absolutely surrounded by miles of muddy water. I climb out the trailer and monkey climb my way from table to chair to the big red tent. Its red carpet now under a few inches of water. There is no one around except for one muddy soul sitting on a soggy coach smoking a joint. She smiles at me. No words are necessary. The floor is strewn with full bottles of Krug champagne and the remains of the excellent red wine stocks. I help out by collecting an armful of each and returning to the trailer to present my hunter gatherer breakfast.

After breakfast we are suitably refreshed to try and brave the mud and return to camp. What would usually be a half hour stroll is far more of a mission. We encase our feet in duct tape and plastic bags or go commando. Bare feet is my preferred way to go but it’s a much slippier option. It takes well over two hours to arrive close to where we live. At some point we eventually arrive back and exchange tales of our overnight survival.

What happens when you leave your mate alone for too long

And then we find out that the world is taking an interest in what is happening. The previous week when a few thousand of us were trapped for days was not really news worthy. Now around 70 000 folks being told they can’t go anywhere is proper news. There are some amazing rumours.

One news outlet is declaring that there is an Ebola outbreak that no one can escape from. Our comms team has to send out a declaration that no communicable diseases have been reported. We are all waiting for the sun and all will be well in a few days.

We get all the messages from deeply concerned family and friends on the outside. You are on the news! Are you Ok? Has anybody drowned in the mud or resorted to cannibalism? It’s actually only been 24 hours of further self and community caring. That’s a good space to be in. We are just fine. Everyone who gets it are just fine. There are some people who consider their need to be elsewhere important enough to bugger everyone else up but not too many of them. They will be the last to be rescued.

Media Mecca is effectively the communications center for the whole place so we have ways to communicate. This gives us access to all the world wide news reports which we find a little disorientating. What we see are extraordinary images that suggest an entirely alternative existence that in which, apparently, we are currently living. A drone photo of a mess of RVs all stuck trying to exit on gate road is shown on US prime time. We are concerned and send a copy to our mates who are out there and they tell us it’s make believe. It’s a creation of AI. Then we see other published images of what we are going through. Nothing authentic at all. AI has created a story in pictures of what it has decided is happening and publishing it to the world as fact. It’s stunning that you really cannot trust much anymore. Even, bizarrely, your own eyes. The following images are all AI creations. Extraordinarily… none of this happened and none of the people exist.

Eventually some bloke called Joe Biden sends his thoughts and prayers so we can all relax . We are saved.

NOT an Ai creation. This is spectacular reality.

Our world dries up. Things start moving again. The man burns a few days late as does the temple. Both are extraordinary as most people have already left. It’s way more intimate and a whole heap less hectic. The man burns after a spectacular pyrotechnic display. The temple burns in silence as we watch from the flatbed of our truck that we have driven to the perfect viewing spot. It reminds us of many years before when not as many people were aware of this place.

Our clean up and tear down takes a bit longer to ensure we are not storing mud for future years but it’s just fine. Everyone who remains does their bit and leaves the place exactly as they found it.

We indulge in a few very slow recovery days in Reno. We find Guinness and sushi and try unsuccessfully to blend into casino life. Our bags are packed and we head South back to the humidity. It’s going to be a few well deserved weeks of prevarication, laziness, sweating, sleeping and the odd tequila. Can’t wait.

Jungle Journal

Fires , a Flagpole & All the Pink

July 29, 2023July 29, 2023
by Beave

The land neighboring ours is a huge lump of untamed nature around 20 hectares that remains empty most of the time. The family who own it have ambitions to sell to some yet to be identified gringo for a huge wad of pesos. They are somewhat deluded. The zoning is restrictive so it’s really not that saleable. The cattle that were grazing there have been moved on as they were a bit too much effort to look after. The many dozens of chickens that inhabited the area are down to but a few. There is little water and access is not good. During the rains it’s pretty much cut off.

We have a visit from a softly spoken ancient old bloke who is trying to build a Catholic church deep in the jungle. It’s a strange ambition and we have no idea why. Maybe he has decided at his very advanced years that it’s wise to make peace with whoever and maybe in some way improve his odds of salvation. He has an idea where he will pay for big earth machines to cut a road through our land and onwards through the dense jungle for the few kilometers up to his land where the Church is under construction.

Our Scorpion making it’s nest on our balcony.

He is a cheeky bugger. We very politely decline his kind offer. We risk the wrath of a vengeful lord and absolutely refuse to build his Church an access road. There is an existing route that follows the river up to his spot. Despite it getting washed out a number of times a year it will have to do to serve the needs of the almighty.

He is also, we discover, a resourceful bugger. He approaches our neighbours family and sells them on the idea that they can also get much better access to their land by building his road to redemption. This will theoretically make it more desirable to gringos. They agree and a line is drawn on a map. It shows the proposed construction missing our land but following the arroyo outside our house and then cutting through the jungle upwards and onwards. They agree to build a gate that can be locked which will effectively make it a private access road only. Gods work starts almost immediately.

Within two days of long hours from the massive ground trembling machinery the arroyo is cleared. A wide long stretch of strong smelling freshly uncovered earth appears where there once was trees and thick bush. We grab the Razor and decide to ride the new camino up to the Church. We get about 500M into the jungle and are stopped as the road turns into a hugely steep dusty hill. It’s impassable. Thankfully nothing is visible from the house and we are fairly convinced that when the big rains come it will be entirely destroyed, but we wish them well. Inshallah.

We meet one of the first neuvo camino users who is waiting for the gate to be unlocked. He is the local water diviner bloke and is very keen to demonstrate his skills. He uses a forked stick to find underground water sources. We all have a go. The reaction of the stick is strong and convincing. He assures us we have a water source close to the house about 10 meters down. Good to know.

Jaguars are sneaky buggers and hard to spot.

So it’s been some weeks since we were teased with promise of rain. Our well has been dry for a month. The dust is thick and gets into everything. The jungle is desperately thirsty and despite the humidity becoming increasingly flammable. We were reliably told by retired and recovering firefighter mates from California that the chances of being troubled by wild fires is very low. The humidity is always so high that fires don’t make it for long. Someone failed to tell the jungle.

Our neighbours son is standing in the arroyo looking seriously concerned. He tells us that there is a significant fire heading our way. We can’t see or hear anything so are not as concerned as perhaps was appropriate. It’s about half an hour later when we smell the smoke. If we listen hard there are certainly pops and cracks coming from the hill right behind us. There is a worrying breeze that is dropping white ash all around us. We all jump in the razor and head up the new road to have a look.

The ash is falling like light snow but it’s the only clue. Only as we get about 300 meters from our house do we see the wind assisted flames . They are at least 20 feet high. All around us are large areas where the jungle is now just piles of ash. We note that our new God given road is acting as a sort of fire break and slowing progress considerably. We don’t hang around. It’s clearly not the place to hang out. We are joined by the cavalry. A gaggle of marines turn up in impressive but maybe not entirely useful open top military hummer trucks with 50 mm machine guns at the ready. More reassuringly there are a few fire service pick-up trucks leading a backhoe for shifting dirt around.

Two hours later everyone returns satisfied we are not in danger. The biggest factor being the breeze has stopped fanning the flames. The smell of smoke is strong and ash is covering everything as a gentle but menacing reminder of what could have been. That was an uncomfortable few hours.

The sun and our jungle canopy are forever at odds. We want all the photons we can to be captured by our solar panels. The sun, however, has other ideas . It changes path as the Summer moves on and our effective photon collection times are significantly reduced. It means we run out of power and need to employ Brian ( our generator). One solution is to add another array of six panels at a place where we can take advantage of the morning sunlight. This is a complicated, technically challenging and logistically difficult project. So it is decide to do it.

We identify a good sunny morning spot and acquire the panels .New cable is found, conduited and run to the block where our batteries and inverter live. Over some weeks the metal is manufactured to assemble the frame. It’s not a simple process. Mounting holes must be drilled to fine tolerances through thick steel angle lengths. There are many new components that are sourced and delivered from numerous places that require expert installation. Jayne somehow manages to fight her way through the technical specifications and successfully plumbs the new panels ( that are not installed yet ) to the existing system. It’s impressive.

The array frame is completed, painted and with some effort erected in the correct space and concreted into the ground. We theoretically now only have to mount the panels and plug them in to have all the power we need. That will be tricky as the frame is now 8 feet in the air.

It’s PRIDE week in Puerto Vallarta and a very sensible, shy group of calm and introverted folk are assembled to visit. We all had a quiet highly relaxing day out.

Lack of rain and our dry well is a worry. Our water stores around the land are almost out. The cistern in our house is also very low and we have to accept that we won’t be catching any rain anytime soon. We call in a pipa truck which delivers 10 000 liters with which we fill our cistern, top up our emergency tinaco and flush out the well. This doesn’t help get water to most places but at least our house will be sorted. The delivery boys tell us that they are very busy. The rains are now officially over a month late. Nothing forecast in the near future.

Our tiny tomato farm is doing Ok. The tomatoes that have appeared are huge and beautiful and very tasty but not plentiful. We have had just a few from each plant. Our friend takes us around his nearby organic farm and boats he had produced 1500 kilos of top quality tomatoes this season. We have a lot to learn.

My daughter Suzy arrives from UK with an extra bag full of marmite, chicken stuffing, cheese and licorice all sorts. It’s very good to see her too. She has brought her mates who settle in the treehouse. It’s off season now so Jake also moves back from his retreat center in town. Sasha has also recovered enough to be back on his motorbike so is also back in the jungle. We are always happy having the place proper lived in. We do, however, have all the people and but very little water. We need it to rain. Soon.

Jakes best mate Luca decides to prove to us all that his best dog jungle life has not gifted him with any road sense at all. While dutifully walking at heel in town he decides to run directly into a passing car. Idiot. We are grateful he is alive. He does, however, look very confused and quite rightly ashamed.

Our local falafel seller who is also a vet is close by and confirms he has dislocated his leg. The people doctor’s office in Los De Marcos has an X ray machine and we take him along. It’s a pretty well executed dislocation but thankfully no other issues. Our town vet then knocks him out and pops all his bits back in place. Luca is now confined to no exercise and rest for a minimum of fortnight. It will be about four or five weeks until he can run around again. Looks like Jake and Luca will have a quiet month ahead.

The doctor who helped us with the Xrays is a good bloke and we decide he will be our new doctor. Our previous doctor moved away to Guadalajara to work for an insurance company. Don’t blame him as doctors ( like dentists) are not paid huge money in Mexico. We have both recently had a full medical screen and my assessment was that not only was I handsome and wise but unlikely to die anytime soon. (There might be a touch of interpretation and paraphrasing involved … but something like that.)

So it was unexpected when I got a call that my new doc wanted to see me. He told me that there was good news and bad news. I forget what the good new was but the bad news turned out to be that tests suggested that I may have an issue . Apparently for a man of my age it is wise to check things out. This was the opposite result to my recent tests so a little confusing. He contacted his mate in Puerto Vallarta and I’m booked in for an MRI.

This happens quickly. After fasting and awkwardly enduring two do-it-yourself enemas I arrive at the test clinic the next day. I am entirely unprepared for what might happen next. The clinician is a nice bloke and speaks to me in Spanish. My Duolingo skills don’t entirely cover medical procedures but from what I understood he wants to strap me to a table , attach gadgets to my body and shove me in a tiny tube. There is something else he is trying to tell me. I soon discover what that is. My knees are placed on my chest . He then asks me to breathe deeply and inserts what feels like a flagpole into my rectum. It’s not what I had expected at all. For 40 minutes I am squeezed into the truly tiny tube where I am told to stay entirely still while listening to the crazy clunks and whirls and zaps as the machine dissects my innards with its magic beams . I do my best to ignore the flagpole that is skewering me like a kabab.

The following day I am told that the images showed little to worry about and we agree a plan to entirely rule out any unfortunate possibilities. I continue to be handsome, wise and unlikely to die any day soon. ( Note possible further paraphrasing and interpretation ).

Jayne has arranged to head North to Canada to see her family. She will return in a few weeks when we will be journeying once more to the deserts of Nevada. We will both be working and playing at Burning Man for the best part of a month. Before she departs we arrange to go with a gang of excited friends to the posh movie theatre in Puerto Vallarta to see the Barbie film. It turns out that having a flagpole inserted was not the most uncomfortable thing to happen to me this week. Despite my very best efforts I could not last more than 15 minutes before I had to retreat from the cinema. I found this extraordinary pink acid trip unbearable. Remarkably everyone else loved it. What do I know ?

Jungle Journal

The Art of Doing Nothing

May 25, 2023May 25, 2023
by Beave

We are still here. Living a mostly peaceful life in our fabulous wee house in this beautiful Mexican jungle. It is difficult to comprehend sometimes. How did this happen? It was never in any great life plan. We never dreamt of this outcome.

This level of *mostly peace* was never in any grand plan.

As it gets hotter we inevitably get slower. The air is getting thicker and my wanderings around our jungle pretty much always result in delightful puddles of sweat and the need to stay still for a while afterwards. Although there is always something to do, there are growing numbers of opportunities to stop, take a breath and avoid filling the space with endless nonsense from our laptops or phones. The ability to be still and untethered by life is both a challenge and a blessing. It’s not so easy being inactive. It’s not useful to judge oneself lazy or unproductive but it often feels like that. If you call it meditation it’s much more socially acceptable to do bugger all. We are getting better at it. Doing absolutely nothing. Just being. Guilt free. Takes practice.

We are now living far enough away from the treehouse that we have taken our eye off the vanilla. It was an abundant year last year so we are not expecting too much this time around. We have seen evidence that we have missed a few flowers which have remained un-pollinated. There are even fewer flowers appearing than expected so we might have a fallow year. In anticipation we have taken cuttings of the mother plant and are attempting to introduce new growth on a number of trees around the new house. They are effectively air orchids requiring no soil. We have them hanging from the knarly Copomo trees around the house. It would be great to have vanilla babies.

Luca hanging out in jungle as Jake takes a trip to LA to see a girl

There is a now a famous end of season event on the local calendar. We are invited once again to join around a hundred friends who gather earlyish and are bused to the marina where we all embark on a cruise boat catamaran for a day on the water. Free food and an open bar is provided. The cost of the whole event is very generously covered by our friends who have gifted this day out to the community for the past few years. A great chance to catch up with everyone and keep the bar staff fully employed all day while practicing doing nothing on a boat.

Practicing the art of doing nothing on a boat

The pool has not had much attention recently. We haven’t had it clean and ready for use for a long while. It takes a heap of chemicals to keep it clear and constant attention to remove all the drowned leaves, dust and occasional beasts. As it has to be baking hot to persuade Canadians, with an aversion to cool water, to get wet so the actual days of pool use are very few. We spend more time cleaning the bloody thing than using it. It is decided that we will transform our existing set up to a natural organic version. We will add the correct balance of plants to do all the work for us. It might end up more like swimming in a lake or river than a pristine gleaming tiled pool but it’s maintenance free and ready to go at any time the need takes us. There are a number of options. We have had a few folk (that claim expertise) out to have a look. They have all offered to help us, for a price. We are considering our options.

Stunning new murals have appeared in the town square

It’s very early but we have had some rain. Not the rain that smashes us and tears away roads and trees. This rain came for an hour and left with the dust beautifully suppressed. It’s been noticeably more humid in the past few weeks so this is welcome. It’s just a taste but it’s the first we have had for six months. The weather sages are predicting a very hot summer with the El Nino affect hitting us later in the year. So more heat than usual and more storms forecast. That’ll be fun.

There is an all-night party organised at a posh event space on the beach in Punta Mita which is but a taxi ride away. It’s another fundraiser for the Mayan Warrior which is the extraordinary Burning Man art car that is fully stocked with mind bending lasers and sound weapons. Tickets are purchased and a series of reasonably appropriate costumes are created in anticipation.

Friends of ours in town have had the nightmare of waking up to find their dog had died in the night. The grumpy old twat had been with them for very many years. His age finally caught up with him. He is already missed madly. We offer to bury him in the jungle and that is arranged very quickly. We bring him from a freezer in town to a quiet, beautiful area where they dig a hole and collect a good pile of large stones. We lay him to rest in a glorious arrangement of jungle flowers and rocks. We then conduct a reasonably respectful wake to honour him. Born on the streets of Compton and buried in a Mexican jungle. Not a bad life. RIP Grocerito.

We hear rumours that the Mayan Warrior has caught fire and is no longer. It takes a while but we verify that at some point on the journey to Punta Mita a fire broke out and completely destroyed the entire structure and all their laser and sound equipment. The party is still going ahead but that is the last of the infamous Mayan Warrior. That will mean a big chunk of sky is forever without lasers and a heap more dust undisturbed by dancing.

Much loved art, energy and hardware up in smoke

A dubious group assembles to paint up and pimp themselves. A taxi is booked and we head South. Despite the absence of its’ star attraction, the party is well run and a large group of us spend the night surrounded by light & sound before gathering on the beach for sunrise. A grand farewell.

The sea is warm again and waves are rising. The sunsets are showing off and life is taking a new pace. The past few months we have had a load of our folk passing through and staying around for a while. The jungle has been full at times. We do like having our favorite idiots staying and playing here. We also like it when they bugger off and it’s quiet again. It’s been a while. This is the first time since October that we have been out here by ourselves. The balance between doing things and releasing oneself to peace and calm is just about perfect right now. We try and balance knocking things off the to-do list interspersed with periods of more doing nothing practice.

Final touches : Wood staining, sanding and varnishing many doors and many shelves

All the building and moving around and other more pressing stuff have distracted us from growing things. The gardens we have previously attempted to fill with good stuff have been left feral and most are barren of anything except the usual mix of normal jungly growth. We do discover a few healthy looking pineapples and even a few wild tomatoes. We even discover a tree with a good amount of satsuma oranges. Our own attempts at creating food have been poor this year. The exception is Thomas, our heirloom tomato plant, grown from a seed. It sits just outside the front door so we remember to throw water at it. Tom is doing well. We are excited to see a small green lonely tomatina appear. First of very many we hope.

So BBC world news reminds us that the island we left six years ago is getting itself a new king. Charles is getting his fancy hat and it’s an excuse to have an end of season get together. There only needs to be the merest hint of an excuse to dress up a little here so the decision to host a Kings & Anarchists Coronation pool party takes things to a new level. We bring together head costumes, beverages, food and a DJ deck . Over the course of a splendid afternoon many strange anarchists are joined in the pool by a stranger troupe of Kings. God save the King or indeed stuff the monarchy. You choose.

Jungle Journal

Newest New Things

April 4, 2023April 4, 2023
by Beave

It’s happened. We are in our new wee house and it’s remarkable. All the time, effort, tears, sweat, learning and adventures have come together at last. We have moved our cat and a few essential essentials out of the treehouse which has been our home for over five years. With luck and persuasion and maybe a little bribery it is my intension to transform the treehouse into my own sexy man cave in the trees. Jayne may have other less perfect ideas.

There are a few endless last minute jobs which will extend that last minute for a number more weeks but we (she) is beyond ready to move in. We have moved in.

Things are different. We now , eventually, have a massive four poster bed with stunning views of the tree filled jungle and a have the added attraction of a mattress like I have never known. It envelops us in soft delicious comfort cuddles and makes the prospect of moving much less likely. It is often impossible to tell if Jayne is even in the bed. This is entirely different from my usual reality which is being shoved and battered all night by a wall of cold arse.

The shower is extraordinary. The purple tadelakt finish is cold and stone like and quite beautiful. There are two nozzly bits where a forceful stream of warm water appears at speed getting into all the nooks and even the crannies. I have never been less mucky for longer.

We have a fridge freezer that is big enough to be useful and a new posh oven stove that not only works but lights itself. No need for lighters and damp matches. The kitchen is functional and clean and pretty. Amazingly we can now drink water and brush our teeth with our tap water. An involved UV filtration system removes all the froggy and grotty bits and delivers pure stuff we can use. All in all, after the treehouse, it’s a lot like living in a boutique jungle themed hotel.

It’s all rather pleasant but certainly different. We lucked out when the stars aligned and this bizarre and unlikely project became possible. It’s taken a few years from when we produced some sketchy plans on the back of envelopes. Our crew started in July last year and after a frustrating but exciting nine months of gestation period, here we are. We have zero plans to be anywhere else for a good while.

Our stock of life’s absolute necessities is not in bad shape. We have had many mules deliver large amounts of good cheese, marmite and Yorkshire gold tea. We haven’t, however, any breakfast beans.

Now Mexico is, if course, a world leader in the production and consumption of beans. Sadly, British breakfast beans are not a thing here. Jayne is motivated by the challenge and after much research and a few beany experiments she manages to reverse engineer the contents of a can of Heinz baked beans. They are perfectly excellent with eggs and sausages and bacon. Large bubbling pots of the “nearly the same” beans are created and frozen. We are much comforted as our essentials are restored.

Jake and Luca have moved to a quite stunning retreat center in town where they are making themselves useful and are rewarded by living their best life. Lucky buggers.

Our ability to use all our vehicles here did not last long. Before he left us for the frozen North, our savior mechanic gave everything a good look over and made educated guesses which bits would fail next. We are handed a list of parts we need to find and start the process of recruiting mules.

Within a few days of his departure, spookily, all his prediction come to pass. On the way back from town the front wheel on the Razor decides to part company. It is clear that the large bag of bearings and shafts and bushings will all be needed.

Over the past (and coming) weeks we have had (and will have) many friends travelling down to spending time here. It’s high season and the weather is perfect. That works out well for us. Parts start arriving on various flights from many places and are, thankfully, fairly unmolested by customs. By exploiting as many mechanical skills as we can discover and pulling in all the favours we, somehow, are able to re-press all the balls and bearings and replace the shafts. Huge communal effort. We are back to three vehicles again, but not for long.

Our friends, inevitably, bring new friends and we now have quite a mob of folk all wanting to get places and either do (or avoid doing) things. It is decided to look at buying a car that is roadworthy and jungle appropriate that we can lend out to our guests and mates to offset the cost.

In no time we get a call from a car auction in Tepic up North. We are persuaded that a little bright green Suzuki 4×4 is just too good a bargain to miss. We take the bait. After a short amount of buggering about finding insurance and going through the Mexi-document dance we now have four vehicles. It’s small and green and Japanese so we call her Edamame.

There is pretty much always a good reason to get together. It takes the slimmest of excuses to gather a bunch of folk and end up somewhere unexpected. When this happens there is often a requirement for tequila. It’s cultural. We are blessed with having the town of Tequila within travelling distance so there is very often someone visiting and prepared to stock up and deliver direct from source to us. We are fortunate enough to have discovered a great opportunity to acquire large amounts of the good stuff at a ridiculously low price. A country singer superstar in the USA sells his own brand mexi-liquor at (we are told) up to 150 bucks a bottle. We now know the producer who sells us gallons of the same stuff for a handful of pesos in handy plastic jugs. San Pancho is now thankfully awash with excellent tequila.

Good friends are celebrating their Wedding Anniversary and have offered to create a South African Braai (BBQ) at our place. They arrive with a bunch of blocks and in no time we have a huge wood pit ready to cook. There is great meat heating , face paints and a penis piñata full of condoms and femidoms. We now have drawers full of both!?!

Termites are greedy little twats. We are discovering our rustic railing around our yoga deck and shower block are delicious. In just a few months, when our attention was distracted, they have chomped the lot. It all needs replacing. The wooden stairs up to the Selva Vista apartment are also making us nervous. Between mold and termites there is the growing sense when you climb those steps that they have a fair chance of giving way at any time causing an irritatingly serious injury. It also needs replacing. Jayne’s brother’s family are on their way down with kids so it’s probably not great thing to roll the dice.

I am carrying a heavy box of stuff up the stairs to the apartment with both hands and leaning on the banister to prevent me falling. It doesn’t quite work like that. My weight shifts a bit as I balance on the banister, when it decides to head jungle wards. Thankfully there is one bolt that holds it to the top of the stairs but the rest gives way, delivering me upside down slowly but unceremoniously to the jungle floor with a box of heavy stuff on top. It hurts a lot and my plight is not helped by Jake seeing the whole thing and finding it just too funny to ignore. The decision is made. This staircase is history.

It takes a few weeks but eventually the old termite bitten stairway is replaced by a new bespoke metal staircase which is expertly welded in place. Looks great.

It is somewhat surprising to know the new highway, over the hill behind us, is open. This is a very good thing. Our fear after listening to them build the bloody thing for three years was that it was going to attract big lumps of antique Mexican trucks that fart along in-between screams of air brakes. Thank the gods that this has not come to pass.

It’s expensive. It costs 12 US dollars to travel a little bit faster from the exit 10 miles north of us to the exit about 20 miles south. We are in the middle so it doesn’t help us at all. 12 US dollars is a lot of money and so it is pretty much empty most of the time. The small number of posh modern quiet cars and buses who can afford it can hardly be heard at all. This is really good news. We were only able to buy this place because the rumours of the highway actually coming through our land put people off. We are proper fortunate it’s worked out not bothering us at all.

My birthday jumps up at me suddenly. Another one. We are again fortunate enough that the Cirque du Soleil project Cirque de los ninos is performing again to celebrate me. Full troupe of well-trained kids and a perfectly receptive audience makes for good circus. Bless them. Fabulous job !

The Coconut Lady Burn crew are all close by and there are a number of keen visitors who have good experience building things to burn in various venues around the planet. It is decided that it’s about time to do something on the beach again. It’s been while since the last one for all the reasons. We are also blessed with two large piles of spare wood bits from all our projects. We can knock out some scorpions out of them.

It doesn’t take too long to create all the bits we need. A dozen baby scorpions that will sit on the back of a mother beast of claw and tail which will carry the Coconut Lady Man on her back. We have also sparked the creative juices of one of the world’s very best kinetic sculptors who we are lucky to have live close to us. He is the brains and the sweat behind the extraordinary fire spurting octopus El Pulpo Mechanico and his newest touch of genius El Pulpo Magnifico. We are all excited to see what he comes up with.

There is a gathering of around eighty people who have turned up to the beach to watch our little group of sculptures light up as the sun goes down. And then it arrives. A real piece of art. A Duane Flatmo original piece. A scorpion made from all the bits we tread on every day. Palm fronds and bits of fallen detritus. It’s ugly as sin and twice as beautiful. It is decided that we can’t bring ourselves to burn it. It follows us home to find a more permanent home in the jungle.

The rest of our collective art is happily put to the flame. It was a splendid night.