Mexico Information Archives - La Colina Project

Summer Lovin

October 7, 2022October 7, 2022
by Beave

We have been jungle dwellers now for five years. It is long enough for it to be not so easy to remember life when we were living in a more conventional house and had somewhat more normal jobs and lives. We decide to mark the occasion by leaving Mexico and experiencing other things for a while. Jayne has essential purple stuck in her hair and we are ready.

Our plan is to visit Jayne’s entire family who have all arranged to be in Vancouver from where we are to embark on a week long voyage aboard an unfeasibly vast cruise ship around Alaska. After this we will travel to San Francisco to stay with our good friends and assist each other to go to Nevada. We are again to be part of the vast crew who construct, participate in and pack up the Burning Man event in the harsh remoteness of the Nevada high plains desert.

So after a week of food, family, intensely beautiful Alaskan green nature & all the weather that goes with it we find ourselves in the salt and dust and intense heat of the Black Rock desert for nearly three weeks. As uniquely surreal an experience as Burning Man clearly is we had our hands full this time. The temperatures during the day were ridiculous and the dust storms were severe and frequent. Nothing much knocks the energy out of you quicker than overheating with lungs and eyes full dust. Except maybe Covid. Which we both contracted again. It was definitely harsh but also remarkable. (photos borrowed from various sources including the amazing John Curley & Erica)

So after a long six weeks away we are back home. Our good friend stayed in our treehouse to make sure the cats didn’t eat all the jungle beasts while he worked on our new house. He happens to be a Master Carpenter and is producing high quality bespoke cabinets, drawers, doors, steps and Jayne’s sexy parota desk.

In our absence the wattle and daub upper walls are complete and await large round windows that we have commissioned. Cabinet frames are completed so we can bring in the marmolero who is the craftsman who can cut and install our slice of Italian mountain into sexy quartzy countertops. The front doors are built and need to dry out while awaiting windows. We have the final layers to complete on our earth walls and floor. We also need to complete all the other window installations and our specialist Tadelakt finish in the shower……and then we only need to build our bed and move in. We are getting there.

In the meantime the jungle is offering us just enough challenges to keep things interesting. This time of year you can actually see the vines growing and without attention the bush grows six feet high and takes over everything surprisingly quickly. It took a few hours of macheting to make it possible to move around the land freely again. In the process I managed to disturb a few unreasonably grumpy hornets that took exception to being hacked. They decided to dissuade me by stinging my head a number of times. It’s an effective strategy. I immediately return, chastised, to the treehouse via the newly cleared pathways with a dull machete and a throbbing head.

We are preparing very slowly for our day when we notice a commotion in the treehouse. It feels like the cats are racing around crashing into things and making the sarongs that hang around the place move around. Confusingly the cats are motionless and quietly ignoring the world. This, we discover, is apparently the effect from a 7.6 magnitude earthquake 400 km away, 15 km under the sea. The predicted tsunami didn’t happen but the surfers loved it.

We are passing our front gate heading to town when we noticed a strange shape in the road. On further inspection it was the back end of what looked like a good size snake. It was thick and long and black and lifeless. No sign of damage but no sign of movement. This was exactly the same type of snake that scared the life out of me when it emerged from our pool full of frogs a few years ago. I was curious as to its size so I braced myself and took hold of the tail and pulled. The snake (ex-snake) that emerged was indeed a large specimen. Despite it being smaller than the one from the pool it was a good deal longer than I am tall and also shockingly heavy. Very glad I didn’t get to meet him when he was alive and hungry. I left the body next to the road on a large rock. This was not the best idea. A couple of days later the stench of rotting snake was overpowering !

The weather this year is highly unusual. There are rains nearly every night but the water in the rivers is only just flowing. Our well is currently full but if the aquifers are not fully restored this will not be good for our community. By this time last year I had replaced our road that was completely destroyed four times. This year there just hasn’t been anywhere near the amount of storms, tropical depressions or hurricanes. The past 24 hours, however, we have been hunkering down due to hurricane Orlene heading straight for San Pancho. Thankfully, for us, the grade 3 storm headed North and missed us. Our tropical jungle releases warm air out to sea that had the effect of diverting storms. Much as we can use the water we would rather not lose trees, roofs and roads at the same time.

Since our return we have, however, had some impressive thunder storms. Last week we had seven inches of rain in one night. The lightening hit very close to the treehouse and the resulting thunder claps shook our world. The result was that the lightning took out our well pump and also appears to have frightened off the bees again. We just installed our new replacement pump but, so far, no sign of the bees returning.

I am outside our local mini-store in town trying to get my keys to open the car door. This is not easy as I am carrying a collapsing box of groceries while balancing a drooping open tray of fresh eggs. Suddenly the sky falls in with the noise of a bomb. Twice. I instinctively duck down. The eggs do not. Somehow in an unrepeatable and instinctive display of juggling skills I catch them all before they egg-wash me. I had completely forgotten that it was the start of Saint Pancho days.

This is the infamous week where the patron saint of animals is celebrated by scaring the living shit out of every dog, cat, bird (and egg carrying human) in town by regularly setting off the loudest possible fire works for “religious reasons”. Further traditional celebrations in the town square (when it stopped raining) include dodgy roulette, shooting stalls manned by dogs, deadly fireworks, deafeningly awful live banda music, dancing horses and dozens of aspiring gymnast kids accompanied by their parents consuming jugs of harsh margaritas and a few hundred cans of Corona light.

The whole of the area has a different feel and look this year. The lack of water destruction is very welcome. In its place are acres of plants we haven’t seen before. There is a quick growing fine grass that produces bright yellow flowers that has carpeted large areas. Contrasting the yellow are swaths of stunning red fire blossoms. It’s a stunning look.

It is also, however, distracting. There are a number of golden web spiders that have suspended themselves from golden threads between trees and larger plants. These structural strands are strong like wire and if you are making your way through the jungle mesmerised by the pretty colours you will inevitably be clotheslined by them. Feeling (an admittedly very beautiful) golden strand hit your eyeball is unpleasant.

We are settling back in to our jungle routines. Jayne is back to working from her four poster office until her new desk is completed. I am preparing long list of jobs we need to do and accomplishing just enough of them to keep from being swamped.

We are rewarded by the extraordinary firefly show every night. It’s that time of year. A loose swarm of fireflies will flash their lanterns in their abdomens randomly. But when the swarm reaches a certain density, the fireflies begin to blink in unison. It is almost perfect synchronisation, with rhythmic, coordinated waves of light. We are so very lucky to be right in the heart of it. No plans to leave here again any time soon.

Jungle Journal

Touch of rain

October 30, 2019October 30, 2019
by Beave

In the past months, we have dealt with a high number of infrastructure issues, the jungle jeep, the burglary and its aftermath. Whatever has needed attention since Jayne left in the past months has , of course, been down to me . I’ve spent what I considered was a surreal time in Toronto until I spent the best part of a month at Burning Man. Most of the time in-between I have been dealing with preparations for what comes next and firefighting what nature has decided to throw at me. It has become apparent that I have been considerably busier than I have realised. I have made a pact with myself to slow down a bit. Smell the jungle. Watch the butterflies. See more sunsets.

I let myself down pretty quickly. The solar system is running terribly and keeps cutting out during the night. It’s 4 am and I’m awake. I’m hot and sweaty and breathing in the thick warm air. It’s impossibly humid and pitch black. The lights are out but worse, much worse the fans are off! The sweat flows slowly and constantly down my body. I am miserable in a warm puddle of myself for long enough to realise I’m not sleeping again and grab torches and clothes and head out to put on the generator.

It’s a good rule that we don’t walk through the jungle at night. We are too low down the food chain when the sun goes down. My understanding of this is overruled by my need to sleep and breathe. Walking very slowly and carefully through the overgrown pathway to the solar battery house focuses the mind beautifully. I can hear every noise and my eyes are straining to catch any movement. There is no moon. It’s very dark. I manage to walk into a few spider webs. The webs here are vast and sticky . They cling to your head glueing their contents into your hair and face. I spit the bits out and carry on. The ground is soft from the rain. Thin strong vines are everywhere and wrap around my ankles in an attempt to pull me over. It is with great relief that I arrive at the battery house door without being eaten.

I pull out the dead weight of the generator and fill it with fuel by the light of the torch between my teeth. Everything is plugged in and ready to go. I grab the starter cable and give it a strong yank. My arm flies backwards and I end up on my arse in the jungle with the handle in my hand and my torch some feet away in the dark. It’s somewhat disorientating. The starter unit is busted. I recover myself and work my way down the steep slippy hillside to the Bodega to get tools to fix it. When I finally work my way up and over the hill again I am soaked to the skin with warm sweat, covered in vegetation and a good quantity of fair size bugs attracted by the torch light. I remove the starter cover and duck sideways as a long strip of metal fails to hit me in the face by not much. My motivation to struggle on in the dark is leaving me. I gather all the parts I can find that are now scattered far and wide. I struggle to lift the fuel filled generator back into the solar house and head for home to better assess the situation.

Missed me by inches this horrible thing.

Dawn is an hour or so away but the air is no less thick and warm. I try and rewind the sharp metal strip spring into its plastic housing with absolutely no success. It’s effectively impossible. I give in and take a series of showers to survive the heat until daylight.

The morning is spent finding a generator starter-unit fixer. There is tell of such a bloke outside La Penita and I drive up to find him. I find a ramshackle shop stacked with mowers and generators and chainsaws. A very tiny, dirty young guy called Alan greets me nervously. He explains in great detail that the handful of part I have brought him are stuffed and he needs to see my generator. This is communicated mainly but the medium of mime as his Spanish accent is unique and delivered at incredible pace which I use as an excuse for not understanding a word. In the weeks since this first meeting , he and his identically tiny, dirty young brother have fixed two generators, a chainsaw, a mower, a water pump and two weed whackers for me. All for a handful of beans. Alan is my new superhero.

Caitlin our Australian caretaker has moved on. Probably the inability of the Australians to beat Wales at Rugby again that finally did it. It’s not the easiest to follow the Rugby World Cup in Japan from Mexico. Kickoff is usually 3 or 4 am so you have to be keen. After the match, it only took her a week to find the strength to leave Mausetrappe and head South.

She has somehow managed to ingratiated herself very effectively into the local community and a band of mates turn up in the jungle to give her a sendoff. It starts to rain hard and we all congregate in the palopa next to the bar and around the orange block. The trees are lit up and there is a DJ playing till the solar system finally gives up. Inside the tightly packed palopa a large piñata shaped as a beer bottle emerges and Caitlin lays into it. To her and (almost) everyone else’s surprise the whole thing explodes and covers the damp, tequila filled crowd in flour.

September has been unseasonably dry. The good news for me is that the roads & rivers have been passable so getting in and out has been as easy as it ever was. A year previously we were crossing raging rivers on ropes. I have been quite concerned our well would not fill and we would have to make contingency plans to gather enough water to get us through the dry season. I need not have worried. October started with hurricane Lorena followed by a tropical depression Narma. Much as Lorena came close enough and dropped a steady 20 hours of moderate rain upon us Narma properly moved in.

A tropical depression sounds like a tough day after too much tequila rather than a scary hurricane so we didn’t really have the usual precautions in place. It’s about 4 pm. I’m pottering around when it starts. It’s a sunny beautiful afternoon filled with bird song and butterfly’s then the sky darkens almost instantly. Within minutes blinding lightening is striking very close all around and the intense crashes of thunder are shaking the treehouse. The amount of water than is dumped is impressive as hell. For the next many hours, I can see only a few meters out of the windows through what looks like a vast waterfall. I can just make out a proper brown torrid river flowing down our hill. The noise is deafening. Despite my best speakers on full bore I can hear little else but the rain hitting the roof. This is as much rain as I have ever seen in one go. I didn’t think that was possible having been through monsoons in India and Thailand. Mexico for the win.

It’s not till much later the next morning that the intensity of the rains stops enough that I can leave the treehouse to assess the damage. There is a full-on new brown river running past the house. I am wearing rubber wellies to my knees but that’s not good enough. I’m slopping around ungracefully with wellies full of water in no time. I’m nearly taken off my wobbly feet a number of times. I struggle to reach the casitas that have thankfully survived well. Somehow I stay upright in the fast-moving water. As I move past the casitas I find my water trenches overflowing with silt and half the road down towards the gate washed out. Deep striations filled with new foaming river. The tiny stream that was dry a week previously and usually meanders slowly in front of our gate is now unrecognisable. Its meters wide , fast , deep and raging. There is no way across. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.

I work my way to the gate side and note a large number of broken branches scattered around the place. The lights that were suspended above the round parota tables are on the ground and are in a sorry state. I look up. The landscape has changed. The orange block roof is covered in huge branches. The outdoor shower is completely obscured although clearly in many pieces. Something dramatic has happened and it’s hard to work out what exactly. There is no way up the hillside which is covered in downed trees. The ground has a coating of leaves that reach above the knee when I try and walk through. The big clue is that there is a significant lump of brand new sky visible at the top of the hill. A 20-foot shard of wood has appeared pointing to the sky. I manage to climb around the mass of downfall and reach the hill top above the solar panels.

The first thing to greet me is our internet cable that was previously buried beneath the path . It is now entirely pulled out of the ground. The huge new wooden shard is in fact a root from a massive tree that has toppled down the hill landing just a few feet from the orange block. Our cable is now attached to the highest point of the root. Way out of reach. This beast of a tree is lying on the hillside. When it stood it was around 100 feet high. Its size and mass has destroyed half a dozen other trees on the way down. Some of these are big enough to have had their trunks smashed in half but still stand. Others are on the ground with branches contorted at all angles. There are two that are worryingly sizeable that are suspended many feet above the ground. It’s not a safe place to be.

Thankfully its only me trapped out here. If this had happened 24 hours earlier then this would have landed on Caitlin’s party. Doesn’t bear thinking about. Tragedy averted. No flour dipped bodies to recover.

Orange block battered and shower smashed

I share photos of my little incident and the raging river outside my gate with friends in town. In return, they send me images of San Pancho entirety underwater. People literally floating down the main street! I am lucky enough to have adequate stocks of essentials and settle in for a few days of solitude.

It has taken a couple of weeks to chainsaw my way back to relative normality. The flattened shower is uncovered and awaits repair. The damaged water lines are fixed and internet has been restored. The hillside has been cleared enough to get access to the solar panels and batteries. The solar rig has been refigured after finding a few dodgy batteries buggering up our system and is now working well again…….time to relax ?… maybe?

It’s October in the tropics. It rains pretty much every night. It gets horribly hot . The humidity is famously inhuman. There are however many distractions. Dozens of fire flies dance around the mosquito net at night. Impressive to even the most jungle weary . The quantity and variety of butterflies are stunning. They follow me around apparently attracted by the salt on my skin. On the other hand, I’m coming across the occasional less sexy creatures. There are snakes coming out of the wet undergrowth, a few large hairy tarantulas crossing the path in front me, remarkably huge scorpion eating whip spiders and hornets. Hornets. My least favorite of beasts. I’ve spotted quite a few hornet nests and dealt with them but the sneaky buggers have had their revenge.

Stunning varieties of butterflies follow me around . Found a number of this type in the treehouse.

‘Canklays” Whip Spiders: Our Scorpion eating friends

Bad news. The lightening has scared away our bees. The hives are located in a clearing a few hundred meters from our house close to the casitas. I have had lightning strike very close to me a few times and embarrassingly have dived for cover (far too late) more than once. A friend from town has asked to relocate two swarms at our place. I check out the area and all seems well. Happy bees. We arrange to meet up and add to our bee stock. Two days of storms later and I get a call to say both his swarms have vanished. At least twice I have seen hits very close to the hives so I go and check them out. They are abandoned. Not a single bee left.

There will be other swarms in our future so I take the hives over to the parota tables and spend some time slowly preparing for new residents. I clean out the wax and repair the wires. It’s a satisfying job only made painful by being stung by a hornet in the leg. Hornet stings hurt. A lot. They only sting if threatened and almost always protecting their young in their nest. If you stay around the nest they keep stinging you till you get the message. The correct strategy is to run as soon as you are stung to get out of the sting zone. I leap from my chair and start the hunt for the nest. I check under the table, around the bar and scan the trees. Nothing obvious. Slowly I retake my seat and carry on with the job in hand. My leg throbs.

I get up again to reassemble the newly renovated hive. This time I’m stung twice. In the same leg. I swear loudly and swat the general area with my hand and connect with one large hornet. There is another on my foot. Another circles menacingly around my head so I limp away as fast as I can. I return cautiously and kick over the chair I’ve been sitting in. There it is. An active nest under my seat. For the past hour, I’ve been sitting on top of a hornet’s nest full of hornet grubs. I deal with it aggressively.

After considering my luck that I have not been more seriously attacked (or lack of it having sat on a nest in the first place) I set about cleaning up the bar area of broken branches, leaves and weeds. A few minutes into the job I am stung four more times. Too quick for me to hop away. Two on my good leg and two more on my sore limp one. I use my machete to upturn all the dozen wooden chairs around the tables. There right in front of me, under another chair, is an even bigger nest again full of hornet grubs. I make my way to the Bodega and collect a poison spray that I save for very special occasions such as this. My legs are dysfunctional. They carry me around like broken candle sticks. I deal with the hornet nest without mercy and call it a day. The hornet poison is making me feel very odd.

The signs are there. I need to slow down . The hornets stopped me for a day or two. I’ve had over a week out of sorts with a irritating ear infection & the added joy of food poisoning that felled me. It’s the first time I’ve had to deal with Mexibum for a long time. Our Jungle jeep is threatening to be ready soon with new roll cage and bull bars and even seat belts. Everything important here is working again. I can’t do much more now till the rains stop. I’m allowing nature to set my agenda which in many ways is a blessing. Let’s see what she has in store for my immediate future. Hopefully not a lot. Jayne is back in one month’s time. That gives me a month to stop charging around so much, deal with the oppressive heat and rest up. It’s what October is for …. I am learning .. slowly.

Jungle Journal

Change is in our nature

August 5, 2019August 5, 2019
by Beave

My ability to capture our lives in this blog has been somewhat scuttled due to a number of reasonable excuses of late so there is a bit of catching up to do. First and foremost, not having a laptop has been a fairly demotivating factor. My newly purchased tablet has been bloody useful and reconnected me with the wider world but is a compete pain in the bum to type on. The frustration of insanely programmed predictive text and a randomly functional narky touch screen rather than a key board has been frankly too annoying to face.

The days after we were burgled were very strange. There was gratitude for what we had left and acceptance of what we had lost. The process of gathering police reports and evidence for the insurance company is never a joyous process but the Mexican way beggars’ belief. Convoluted requests for notional paperwork mixed with conflicting advice of how to get them combined with almost fictional bureaucratic madness combine to send the sanest of us completely bonkers.

This tarot card was the first thing we picked up from the pile of random mess we found in the treehouse after the robbery.

At one point, we are asked to return to the police station 10 miles away to request that all the paperwork they gave us is reprinted and stamped with an official stamp. The admin girl there is stern and officious but Jayne has melted her stony heart and they get along fine. The paper work is redone and stamped and we are presented with a bill that must be paid and certified. It’s a total of 30 pesos. Less than 2$US. We happily try to pay the girl but police stations are not allowed to take cash. In order to achieve what we need we are instructed to drive to the official payment office and return with the receipt to be authorized. The payment office is 50 miles away. That’s a 100-mile round trip to pay 2US$. We look at each other in disbelief. Even Madame Admins expressionless face cracks a little as we ask her to explain this to us a few more times very slowly as we frankly don’t believe it. As it happens her love for Jayne manifests in a dodgy side deal that makes the process easier but we did indeed have to travel 50 miles to pay for the photocopying.

I will be kind and save you the many further tales of extraordinary pedantic police administration we witnessed and endured. I am happy to report that some weeks later we have been paid for one insurance claim. When someone eventually admits to understanding the system that they are employed to manage and lets us know how they want us to invoice in the correct way we should presumably get paid for the other. Without Jaynes excellent Spanish, our endless patience, perseverance and our thick sweaty pasty skin this would have been impossible. Insurance companies here make themselves safe from any poor unfortunates that may actually need any money from them by constructing seemingly endless levels of increasingly nonsensical administration. Maybe it’s a universal business model. Bastards.

It’s a few days after we get back and we are busy re-sorting our lives and taking stock. We are anticipating the rains arriving soon and it’s already hotter than is absolutely necessary. Not expecting any guests any time soon. We are interested what life will throw at us next. Then we find out. Jayne gets an email from Toronto.

In one of her former lives Jayne has been a significant player in the world of transit. Getting people from one place to the other. The fact that in London anyone can get on a tube, train or bus by waving a credit card at a bleepy box is down to Jayne and her team. The heady days of long sweaty queues juggling change at counters or machines to work out what ticket you may need are no more. Toronto want to move from sweaty queues to bleepy boxes so need Jayne to make it happen. They need her enough to offer a short-ish term contract at very sexy money. So there is a decision to make.

We don’t need the money even though it would change our lives short term. Jayne does not have to leave her beloved jungle home. The cash is the temptress. It would allow us not to be beholden to chasing Airbnb 5-star rating from guests. It would allow us to build more infrastructure, spend more time on our own projects and attract heaps of art. We as a couple have not spent much time apart so that in itself would be a fairly dramatic new dynamic. The contract does offer the potential in the near future to find ourselves in a position where we both live in Mexico and Jayne remote works a few days a month and we would be entirely self-sustainable. That is the real golden goose. It takes a lot of soul searching but it has been decided upon. Jayne has accepted the contract and is required to start in Toronto in about a week.

In what seems no time at all the treehouse is in bits again as everything we own is dragged out and half of it imported into our remaining luggage. Friends offer to lend Jayne all the essentials she is missing for her new temporary city existence. There is quite a lot missing. Silly little things such as clothes and shoes. We have one night out in Puerto Vallarta and then very early Jayne flies out to a posh hotel for a few days while she looks for an apartment to rent and I am left alone in the jungle with the cats. This is a huge change and it has happened so quickly. These last weeks have all been something of a blur.

Our treehouse is a modest 6M x 6M but now there is so much less stuff and only the three of us it seems somewhat larger. The jungle seems to have expanded too. All this space all to myself. It’s been a while since I’ve had this much time for just me. It takes a short while to readjust and settle in. It’s a good few days before I find myself leaving the jungle or talking to anyone. I spend the time digging drainage trenches , building furniture, rearranging my new living space for one and preparing all the many thing for the coming downpours. It’s exhausting and distracting.

Moving myself and stuff around the Jungle is a different prospect now the Razor is elsewhere. Django (our 1982 van) is our only form of transport and is limited to where it can go and at what pace. It currently has 480 000 km on its clock. Life slows down noticeably as a result. When the rains come properly it will need to live in the town as it will get trapped out here. Our jungle buggy is getting a new suspension, seats and wheels so no sign of that for a while yet. Thankfully our stunningly generous friends, currently in the USA for a few months, lend us their jeep. Now jeeps have something of a crap reputation here. There is a romantic image many gringos from the USA have of travelling around the tropics in an open top jeep. To the obvious delight of local mechanics many do just that. Jeeps are their no.1 source of income. Despite its reputation we gratefully accept a solid 4×4 that will get me across my land. Over the week or so I used it I sorta kinda got to like her a tiny little bit. She has stiff suspension and is a bone rattler for sure but it didn’t miss a beat going up and down our hill.

I get a call from town. Our well head turtle sculpture is ready to go. Exciting stuff. The paint required to protect it from rusting away has arrived and applied in funky style. It’s now clearly a male turtle. We load him up on a truck and bring him out. In place, he looks extraordinary. He is named Wel-Ed. The day is getting ridiculously hot but there is work to be done. I prepare the area and mix concrete. A mate turns up out of the blue to deliver life saving ice cream and give me a much-needed hand. We are both soaking wet with sweat and dizzy in the heat but it is done. Wel-Ed is solidly in place and he looks magnificent. Our first commissioned art piece.

The process of getting accommodation in Toronto is proving a touch more challenge than expected. After spending many hours on line reviewing small but luxurious apartments it becomes apparent that many of the adverts are scams. We quickly learn these scams are well known and frequent in Toronto, Vancouver Seattle and many other places. Dodgy buggers armed with much cheek and gab trawl Airbnb sites for pictures of apartments and then re-post them as rentals on Craig’s list and fake websites. They ask for upfront deposits. When renters arrive at their new home they find it already occupied by the actual owner or legitimate renter. We came across a load of them. All pushing hard for deposits up front and reluctant to show you the property. Took a week before Jayne navigated her way around the unscrupulous and moved into a rather posh, if compact and overpriced, apartment not too far away from the office so she can walk to work. Let the temporary nesting begin. Bring on the gin and Tim Bits. Tim Hortons who are the ever-present coffee provider of choice in Canada also offer highly addictive boxes of small round doughnut type balls (Tim Bits) with varying levels of sugar coatings. Canadian crack.

The highway construction has been relatively quiet recently. Environmental groups have been conducting studies to see what the actual effects on the wildlife are manifesting. A group who track Jaguar have been working close by and we meet up. They are tracking about a dozen Jaguar who are all very close. One of them is over 100kg in weight so we are advised to be cautious. They have set up cameras and hung pig guts in the tress to attract them. These photos were taken just a few hundred yards from our house. Jaguar are not interested in humans as food and concentrate their attention on cattle. Their greatest danger are cattle ranchers who shoot them. To prevent this the Mexican government pays farmers a good price for any cattle the Jaguar take. The problem is that the paperwork and administration is also very Mexican and most ranchers can’t or won’t go through the compensation process so continue to shoot them. The conservation teams have jumped in and now take on the administration on the ranchers’ behalf to encourage them to keep the guns away from the Jaguar. This bit of direct smart conservation action is making a measurable difference.

The land is looking good. Drainage ditches are in place and I have stripped all the beds and prepared the place as best I can to cope with the water that is forecast very soon. I have installed tarps over the kitchen and a water repellant coating on the outside walls of the most vulnerable casitas. My dear mate from Lo De Marcos has asked to live on the land for the Summer and help out. More than anything this will allow me time away if needed. I start a plan to visit Toronto for a short while.

I am approached by a local girl who lives in the guts of the town on the main exit road where all the construction traffic passes 24 hours a day. She is looking for a more peaceful place to stay for a few months. She wants to garden and generally keep the place clean and functional during the time when we don’t have guests and do have thunderstorms every night. So that’s two self-sufficient people on our land for the Summer. Result !

An Australian friend of Jakes contacts me. She is in Columbia and heading North and interested if there is a place to stay over the next month or so. There is a ready-made small community developing with the aim of making thing better here. I have agreed for all of them to be here until November. That is the rainy season covered. Be great to have some help and keep the place alive. I am starting to realise this new situation removes my best excuse for not going to Burning Man this year.

Jaynes contract goes up to the end of December. She can leave with 10 days’ notice but potentially she won’t be back till Xmas. She is not the jaded old burner I have become so is very keen to go to Burning Man in Nevada again this year. www.burningman.com We have great friends who have recommended us to an infrastructure build so we have been offered staff passes and the ability to arrive way before the masses. It gives Jayne a much-needed break from city competence in the freedom of the desert. La Colina is now occupied so I have run out of excuses not to join in. My resistance is weak and I crack under the considerable pressure. I’m in and flights to Reno booked. Here we go again.

Dusty Desert Nonsense in Our Future Again

The rains arrive. A huge storm of tropical proportions delivers a vast amount of water in the shortest time through the night. Lightening is close and the thunder rips the sky above the treehouse. It’s been a while since I was in one of these. Spectacular. The morning shows that the water ditches were 80% successful and show what adjustments need making. I check the well. The water is back for now. It’s been a worry as we have had no well water for weeks. The source stream up in the hills that feeds all the dwellings between me and the town stopped flowing for the first time in 40 years the week before. Relief.

The frogs and toads have turned up again. Raucous amphibian orgies keep me awake for another couple of wet nights. The pool has had no water for weeks and is in a sorry state. It’s now home to countless swimming beasties. There are long strings of toad spawn , water beetles and many thousands of tadpoles. There are also masses of horrible looking things that constantly swim vertically from the bottom of the pool to the surface and back again. They are a few inches long, black, a cross between a fat slug and a hairy caterpillar with fins and a large head. They look like something from a bad movie and there are hundreds of them. When there is enough water I’ll restore the pool to the humidity sanctuary that it will become for the Summer. In the meantime it will have to remain a well occupied jungle pond.

So things have rapidly shifted from jungle solitude to a full schedule of travel over the coming weeks. I let it slip that I am flying to Toronto and the word gets through to an animal sanctuary in Sayulita http://sayulitanimals.org . These lovely folk rescue animals in bad situations and get them adopted around the world. There are two puppies that have new owners in Toronto and they are desperately looking for a mule to transport them to their new owners. They bombard me with messages and calls. I am puppy mugged. It looks like that’s going to be me.

So I gather what could be considered relatively normal clothes and an empty suitcase and am collected by the animal sanctuary with two four month old puppies and head to the airport. They are by any standards cute. Even the process of checking in is hampered by adoring crowds. I am to carry these little buggers all the way through Dallas and then onto Toronto. By the time I get onto the first plane and they are squeezed under the seat in front me there is already a small dedicated crowd of puppy followers. If you would like to experience the attention usually saved for the most famous and beautiful people carry a box of puppies through an airport. I’m mobbed. It’s past midnight when I arrive in Toronto and get through the hoops and special inspections to get dogs into Canada. The new owners are waiting with great anticipation but they have to wait for Jayne who is first in the queue to greet me. Two happy new puppy families later we head in a taxi towards the city.

Its already a bit of a head twist, post-puppies, arriving in Toronto centre at night. Our rather posh apartment has a view over the city and the CN Toronto tower. It has automatic blinds, a TV the size of me , a dishwasher , ice maker, heating and air-con . It is also home to a fully automatic toilet with an electronic control panel to allow for a number of bum washing and polishing options. Bit of a change to the usual bucket in a box option. I look out into the city from our posh apartment with a glass of cold chardonnay. It absolutely feels like I have landed in a graphic novel.

More bum cleaning choices than absolutely necessary

So walking to the office with Jayne in the mornings shows that perhaps I’m not entirely city conditioned. The amount of other people is a touch overwhelming . Crowds of them at pedestrian crossings all packing the pavements heading to their offices. No one talking to each other. Half of them dodging joggers, bikes and traffic while staring at a phone. Then at 9 am peace descends on the city. Office folk are in their offices and everyone else is in a Tim Hortons. Shops don’t open till 10 am . It’s altogether a bit strange.

So as Jayne applies her genius at work I am released to Toronto. I spend far too much time in the Apple store and not quite enough time buying tools at Home Depot. We stock up with tech, shoes, clothes and cheese. It’s a very multicultural city with all the benefits to gastronomy that brings. It’s good to catch up and our week is brightened by fresh Pad Thai, home cooked chicken, a quite superb Moroccan lamb , authentic Japanese dishes, Portuguese sardines, dozens of buck-a-shuck oysters and very importantly buckets and buckets of much missed Guinness. We add culture with a trip to an interactive art exhibition and a night at the theatre. It’s all very different. I haven’t been bitten by anything for over a week.

I’m very grateful that Jayne is so well appreciated by her colleagues and that we have the money to enjoy time in what is without a doubt a very expensive place to be. As I drag my over-packed bags back to the airport Im absolutely looking forward to getting home. The luxury of well paid city life is a measure of great success for many. We can certainly appreciate it for a short while but it’s clear our basic human needs are met elsewhere. I am most grateful that we both know that and have our self created sanctuary in which to stay just the right side of sane. Jayne will be back in our world soon enough. It’s not easy to play the game when you know its not the game for you. We just have to change the game.

Arriving back after just over a week away is a shock. The whole place looks entirely different. The dust has changed to dark rich earth. The paths are overgrown with vines and covered in fallen branches. The roads have been washed thin by the flooded rivers that are now showing signs of flowing and are full of rocks after the storms . The pool is now two feet deeper. The tadpoles and black hairy swimmer things twice the size. Since I left there have been real tropical storms. Huge quantities of water and lightening.

The effects are not entirely welcome. A few days before I return the power went out. The solar system is showing fault lights and it’s tropically hot. We don’t have lights , refrigeration or more importantly fans ! I spend the next two days sweating like never before while tracing and repairing potential faults. It’s so hot I can’t think. I find myself sitting on the sharp jungle floor with a breaker box in pieces in front of me. Ants are biting my feet and my head is under constant attack from mosquitos. The heat turns me into an even more obvious moron. My over heated brain feels like its forcing it’s thoughts through warm soup. I spent half my time looking for my screwdriver with my right hand that I eventually discover in my left hand. I have been up at 7 am in order to speak to three separate solar inverter experts around the world who all give me conflicting advice. The latest is to remove the entire 40kg inverter and send it to Mexico City for repair. I can’t face the idea of that unless absolutely necessary . Even my soupy brain tells me they are all talking bollocks. I pass out and wake up a few hours later with an idea. I return to the solar inverter which I have stared at for hours and flick a few switches . Power is restored. I am saved.

It has occurred to me only today that I have one week to get myself ready to fly to Reno. I must not only prepare the land for leaving for the best part of a month but I must entirely prepare myself for burning man too. So I have a week to clean the pool and fix the water pipes , collect and return the jungle jeep, replace security cameras and finish this overdue blog. Then I get to pack enough stuff to leave the humid tropical heat of our jungle and spend a month in a hot dry dusty salty desert. I’m looking forward to be dehydrated in a whole new and exciting way . Lucky me.

Jungle Journal

Grand Slam …

April 2, 2018April 2, 2018
by Beave

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jungle Journal

Home

January 25, 2018
by Beave

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

And this is the sunset I leave behind.

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

Jungle Journal

Christmas Buzz

December 23, 2017
by Jayne

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!! Sending you all our love, seasons greetings and a big hug. This post is jointly written by us both, so we’ve labelled the writer at the beginning of each section.

Jayne: We’ve decided to skip Christmas this year. No decorations, we are not sending any Christmas cards, or giving presents, and it has been stress free, uncommercial and very nice so far. We’ve been invited to eat Christmas dinner with new friends in town on the 25th, and I am going to attempt to make pumpkin pies. So far the only troubles I’ve had are not having pumpkin, pie dishes or an oven. It’s all going exactly to plan. I’ve still got two days.

To be honest it doesn’t feel a lot like Christmas here in Mexico. When we do see a decorated tree, or one of the very few houses with lights on them, they seem somehow out of place.

It probably has something to do with the weather…

Beave: Our ability to manifest continues to surprise. Jayne wants local bees on the land. They produce a deep dark honey which is divine stuff. We get a call from a guy who wants to meet up. He is from Chapala and lives close to our illusionary mechanic there.

He has some bees he wants to relocate.

We agree to meet up the next day and potentially collect three hives from somewhere not to far away. The location turns out to be a cornfield less than a mile from our house.

Jayne: I spend quite a lot of time trying to define how La Colina will be in the future. It’s a constantly changing vision and every day we have new ideas, or change course slightly or make a wild new discovery. A few things have been constant however:

We will manage the land according to permaculture ethics and principles.
La Colina is intended to be a place for people to take a break from their default world, get in touch with nature, and reset themselves.
La Colina is our home first and everything else second.
We will grow food.
We will have chickens.
We will have bees.

I am keen to have bees not only for their delicious honey and useful wax, but because bees are so important in keeping our planet alive and thriving, and without them so many plants would not survive. I want to nurture them and keep the planet happy. I was thrilled to hear that the bee man wanted to gift us some hives. However my only beekeeping experience is vicariously through my parents and sister, who have hives in Canada, and my very good friends Arielle and Jon, who have a honey farm.

Beave was nominated head beekeeper because he’s so strong, and the hives are heavy! I’ve seen my sister’s beesuit, and so I made Beave a bee hat by stapling mosquito netting around a straw cowboy hat, and duct-taping the holes shut.

Beave sporting my specially constructed hat

Beave: I have no experience of bee keeping at all although I do know a fairly large crowd of apiarists. Somehow this qualifies me to be appointed chief bee mover. Jayne staples mosquito netting around a straw hat and puts me into a white long sleeve shirt with work gloves and wellies. I am fully protected and ready to go they tell me. Bee man fills a smoker with dried cow pats and in clouds of poo smoke I am introduced to a large amount of fairly pissed off Africanized Mexican bees. They are mildly more aggressive breed and especially today as moving was not in their plan. We wrap the hives in blankets and I carry them to a wheelbarrow. The hives are heavy and vibrating strongly with countless complaining noisy creatures. The buzzing is so loud that I am unable to hear Jayne who is trying to tell me something. I have something on my head apparently. The bees that were not captured in the sheet have all decided the best place to hang out is on my hat. There are hundreds of them up there. No wonder the noise is so loud.

My hands are vibrating strongly. I have learned very quickly that bees do not like the colour black. My black work gloves are covered in stinging bees. A few of them are getting through and it hurts. Thankfully these stings are nothing compared to the hornets and are soon forgotten. I haul the wheelbarrow with one of the sheet wrapped hives across a muddy cornfield three times. With my lungs full of poo smoke and my hands full of stings I am positioned in the back of the truck clinging onto many thousands of angry bees as we head towards their new home. It’s getting dark.

Getting the smoker going

Old hive location

Preparations

Putting old frames in a new hive Jayne built

Corn!

Bee Sunset

Alex smoking the hive while its being moved

The Beehives new home at La Colina

The off load is many times more dangerous. It’s now entirely dark and the torches and lanterns we are using glare my eyes through the mosquito net and also attract bees who are in stinging mood. There are yelps of pain from the torch carriers. “Don’t show the light to the beasts” shouts our bee man helpfully. I blindly and very slowly carry the hives one by one along our jungle path to an area of cleared jungle down a muddy slope. I must avoid tripping on tree stumps and sliding off the path at all costs. The prospect of falling in the dark with a hive of angry bees is not worth contemplating. Finally we have them set and carefully remove the sheets and retreat into the darkness. We return to the tree house to lick our wounds and contemplate our future of abundant honey.

Xmas is approaching. No apologies for lack of Xmas cards and presents. Replacing all that with genuine feelings of connection to all our friends and family. We are truly blessed to know you all.

Feliz Navidad x

Jungle Journal

Well pumps and welly boots….

December 10, 2017
by Beave

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jungle Journal

Journey to Polaris

November 28, 2017
by Beave

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again my own hypocrisy in this matter is under review.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jungle Journal

Rustico ! is the new Janky

November 19, 2017
by Beave

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jungle Journal

White is the new Orange

November 4, 2017
by Beave

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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