Blog - La Colina Project

Slow Roads, Poo Smells & a Melty Tree

May 3, 2021May 3, 2021
by Beave

Our recovery from our grotty gut virus was thankfully swift. The excuse for a rest was appreciated and almost worth it. Spring has arrived. It’s a stunning time of year here. The primavera trees are in full magnificent bright yellow bloom and the colours of bougainvillea blossoms bust through the jungle. The remaining flowers the cows have chosen not to eat are popping up everywhere. The whales have moved on as the sea has warmed up. The sky is deep blue every day.

We take time to review our jungly surroundings and make plans to improve things. It’s become obvious that the road that gets us to our land is stuffed and is taking its toll on our vehicles. The sub has required new steering bits again and various suspension bolts have broken on the Razor. In one single day I managed to get three flat tyres. We have finally invested in new tyres as the ones we had were repaired so often they were pretty much held together with glue and hope. The bed of rocks that were left after the last flood were covered in lose earth but are now reappearing as the dirt dries to dust again. To protect our new tyres we decide to take action.

When the machine arrives to take on levelling the road we are confident that a few hours of pushing more muck around should do it. As is usual, we are wrong. It takes an hour to clear the rocks from just a few meters of road. The lumps of stone that are bashing our suspension are but the tips of vast boulders buried deep. When they are excavated they leave great big pits that need filling with new earth. There are dozens of them. The road is now lined with huge impressive boulders. The road is now passable without getting bashed. It’s a vast improvement. It will be interesting to see what to floods will do to it next time.

San Pancho has been considered a cool and trendy place to be for a very long time. It attracts artists, chefs and musicians from all over the world. The town has (until COVID) staged annual music, food and dance festivals. Such gatherings over the past year have been missed. There has, however, been an upsurge in murals. Local artists have been encouraged to show off their talents. Heaps of new art has appeared on the walls near the beach and around the town square. It’s impressive.

My attempts at dusting off my surf boards and getting back in the waves have been thwarted. The last of this season’s waves have been tempting me for weeks and I finally give myself permission to descend into surf beach bum mode once again. My boards are waxed and loaded and I’m ready. It is not to be.

Just before I leave for the beach I make the terrible decision to empty our loo. Our composting toilets are basically large buckets that require emptying weekly into our humanure compost heap where we bury contents under leaves and let nature make us good stuff to plant in. I very carefully carry a very full bucket down 17 steps from our treehouse and manage to chuck its contents into the compost. In the process of aiming the heavy bucket in such a way as to avoid splash back, my spine twists in a way it shouldn’t and I’m crippled. I can’t even carry my board so chances of catching waves are slim to none. It takes weeks and a few visits to my favorite back cracker to fix my poo bucket injury. More time to slow down and wait for waves. Surf bum life on hold.

Semana Santa is the week of celebrating all the saints that ends on Easter Sunday. It’s the week that has traditionally marked a vast exodus of overexcited people from the cities to the beaches. Convoys of coaches arrive outside town spewing thousands of visitors carrying tents and coolers. Huge families spend a week crammed on the beach drinking endless tins of Corona lite, playing music at full volume and eating biscuits and tacos. It’s best avoided. Those of us who live here tend to hide . Our place becomes the perfect sanctuary to avoid the masses.

Last year, due to lockdown, Semana Santa was effectively cancelled. Road blocks and beach bans were aggressively enforced by marines and federal police. Everyone is preparing for a post lockdown backlash this year. All the stores are over stocked with high walls of corona lite, biscuits and tacos in anticipation. We stock up with essentials and hide ourselves away.

Finally after running out of excuses and a huge amount of buggering about we manage to attach the polished parota shelf to the kitchen with our custom designed brackets. It’s taken nearly a year to get it sorted but worth the wait.

The anti-climax after Semana Santa 2021 is tangible. No one showed up. If anything, the week before Easter is one of the quieter weeks of the year so far. It’s a blessed relief to many but others have been left with more beer & biscuits than they know what do with.

It’s Good Friday and our Semana Santa hibernation week has been delightful . We agree that The Democratic Cocktail club will host an Eastery event at our bar. It’s an opportunity to emerge from our hiding places and meet up again. It’s another splendid evening and gives us further reason to vanish away again for a few days of recovery and peace.

Easter sees our chocolate orchid in flower. It’s a powerful orange colour that appears once every two years and gives off the distinct smell of Maltesers.

Our gate posts are completed and our actual gate is under construction. It cannot come fast enough as the jungle cows continue night raids into our gardens. We have been hosting Guadalupe, an Argentinian girl, for the past few months who has been tending and planting and nurturing our food and plant growth. In the last raid, we sadly lost most of her hard work. All our squash is gone along with, most of our lemon grass and a few banana trees. To add further insult most of our stunningly beautiful flower heads have been munched off. it’s brutal.

With the highly skilled rock work completed around our gate and hobbit door, attention has shifted to the intimidatingly tough job of getting our driveway completed. Since we agreed a price we have had half a dozen boys collecting and installing tons of river rocks for up to 20 hours a day. It’s an incredible feat of strength and sweat. The concrete is set. It’s done. We now have safe access to our treehouse all year around. It’s taken so many months of extraordinary work but it’s turned out a stunningly transformative creation. The boys are exhausted. They have worked with us full time now for over a year and have left us to take a few well-earned months rest. We now await our gate.

Our other project is also taking shape. Our summer house/scorpion temple renovation has had some serious attention. Quotes are coming in for roof sections, walls, bathroom, kitchen, mezzanine and all the bits to hold everything together. We are creating a budget from the designs as they develop and dreaming of a day when we can flip an air conditioner switch.

Amongst the springtime jobs is to keep a solid eye on our vanilla vines. It’s the time of year when we have only a few hours every morning to discover brand new and very short lived vanilla flowers and get pollen inside them quickly before they drop off. Those that pollenate will eventually develop into a vanilla bean. Vanilla is only naturally pollinated by the Malipona bee. Although native to Mexico this is a very rare creature and the chances of one happening by a flower that only ever opens for a few hours is slim. Almost all vanilla orchids are, therefore, hand pollenated.

My birthday comes and goes leaving me older and heavier. Jayne takes two weeks off work for the first time in over a year and we take time out to better appreciate our lives.

We eat oysters, drink good wine, watch sunsets and swim in the warm sea. We listen to the birds and watch the lizards dashing through the bush. It’s deeply satisfying to allow ourselves the space to do nothing guilt free.

On the day of my birth we host a party for friends in the jungle. We are fortunate to know so many creative and slightly mad mates. There is an impressive amount of dancing, singing DJ-ing and general nuttiness. Two of the slightly madder variety of friends proceed to both shock & entertain us in equal measure with a fully costumed and choreographed dance performance of” Like a Prayer” the Madonna classic. It is perhaps my most unusual birthday gift.

It has been planned for while that we take a few days away from the jungle and install ourselves with a bunch of very good friends in an exclusive beach resort which is 20 minutes away from us. It’s an idyllic spot on a secluded beach. It’s been owned by a good mate who employs great skill and care spoiling us all for a blissful few days. We return to the jungle fully restored. And certainly fatter.

About a km from our land is a water treatment plant. It’s been there for about 5 years and was built but not commissioned. Rumours are that the money put aside to connect it to the town was embezzled and so the building has stood as a testament to Mexican corruption. Over the years a number of small houses have popped up around it and it was assumed that it would eventually fall into disrepair and be forgotten about. That was until the owners of the local polo fields made a deal with the town’s sewage works to pump out partially treated water to the plant and then re-pump better quality water to the polo fields for irrigation.

The first signs that something was happening was when the power company installed electric poles and lines from the highway up to the plant. In order to do that the road out to the plant was widened and graded. After a few intense weeks of installing power, the lights around the plant came on. The night-time peace was shattered by the deep vibrations of the filtration pumps. The plant started to piss out run-off into the dry riverbed which soaked into the surrounding fields. When the fields were soaked the river started running again, filled with the outpourings from the plant.

After a week of operation, the night-time noise was the least of people’s worries. The smell of raw sewage from the plant pollutes the air for half a km in all directions. We are incredibly thankful we are far enough away not to have to deal with it. It’s revolting.

The run-off water also has its own worrying odour. It smells a like cheap household cleaning fluid. It’s a cloudy colour which algae seems to love. The wet rocks become overgrown with bright green algae and the water appears to be leaving a chalk like residue on the riverbed.

The residents of the area are, unsurprisingly, mad as hell. They have teamed up and employed an environmental lawyer who brings in a crew to examine the plant and take samples of the run-off and ground water in the area. Within a week the lights are off, the pumps are not running and the smell stops. The rivers are now dry again. The algae is gone but the river bed still has a covering of residue.

We have no idea if this is the end of the polo field’s project. We absolutely hope so. It’s encouraging that Mexico has moved on so far in so little time. Only a few years ago there was no way a community could get in the way of even a highly polluting privately funded project like this.

There are some positives to come out of this. It has certainly brought the community together. Also, large sections of the area now have power lines for the first time. This may result in a lot more terrible loud music being played but that’s slightly better than the choking smell of poo. Slightly.

Strange things happen often. Some easier to explain than others. Another of our trees one day decides to fall. This is far from unusual but this tree managed to do it in slow motion. It’s the tree where “Camel”, our giraffe, is mounted which made the whole thing a touch weirder. It’s a fair sized tree, fairly old and covered with bougainvillaea vines and flowers. Loud cracking noises attract our attention as we see the very top branches headed ground wards gently and very, very slowly. Like an old man taking a slow bow. The trunk bent in half then suddenly releases a plume of water into the sky. It’s dry season?! Where does that amount of water come from?? The tree stayed broken and balanced and wet for a few weeks as it very slowly appeared to melt onto the ground. The whole thing sorta kinda dissolved. Camel has been relocated.

Work has restarted on the highway out in the jungle. Bridges are being completed and earth moved in great quantity preparing for tarmac. Part of the construction involves a convoy of enormous heavy earth moving trucks. These beasts get access to the build sites via our jungle road. Thankfully they turn off and are diverted to the highway not far from the water treatment plant.

The impact on us is that the construction company has further widened the road from the highway and have pipa water trucks making runs many times a day to keep the dust down as the dump trucks come past. The result is that we now have a much better dirt road that takes us right up to our own janky boulder lined jungle road. Access to our place just became significantly easier. But, thankfully, still not too easy.

Jungle Journal

Pig pits, mouse hunts & a banana injury.

March 11, 2021March 11, 2021
by Beave

The New Year starts with unseasonal blankets and hoodies and even the odd beanie. I am essentially a Viking and happiest in a snow drift with an axe so this period of fresh weather is not terrible news for me. It’s is, however, not so good being the only warm-blooded bloke in the room sometimes. I am imposing strict social distancing rules to avoid Jayne’s cold feet and hands.

Our year begins with a growing list of stuff to do. In order to prioritise we actually make the list exist. Jake & Jayne’s bizarre love of spreadsheets is employed. We now have at our disposal prettily coloured pages filled with dozens of urgent and less urgent tasks. It is most likely to be used as a tool by which I am nagged. I look forward to ignoring it.

The boys have all but completed the entrance where our dragon gate will be. The round hobbit door has been formed with carefully selected and polished rocks. Soon we will be cow proof. Can’t come soon enough. The huge twats have been munching everything we have been nurturing. We are effectively growing cow food.

Jake has his first Mexican gig. He has been hired by a group of ladies and female DJs to serve cocktails at an exclusive party in a vast mansion on top of the hill in town. His life continues to improve slowly.

A mate of ours is having a birthday gathering and has decided to cook a pig to share. There are many ways to cook a pig but, as it turned out, by far the most entertaining version is chosen. Days are spent collecting logs from some of our fallen trees and interviewing pigs. It’s late at night. The wood and the honoured pig are ready to go. A deep pit has been dug in the ground. The wood is loaded and a fire hot enough to melt a tank is built. River rocks are pushed on top. We gather and ceremoniously protect the pig in banana leaves before placing it between two sheets of corrugated tin and carefully locating it in the pit which is then filled with earth. We depart for the night and agree to meet the following day to dig up lunch.

Now things rarely go as planned and almost never in Mexico for sure. When the pig finally resurfaces it is well steamed but has somehow skilfully managed to avoid being fully cooked. We are now out of wood and lunch is looking a far-off prospect. A posse is gathered to go and collect fresh wood while I am tasked to build a small fire with what I can gather. The plan is to create a spit out of a scaffold pole and roast the half-cooked pig to deliciousness.

The spit is constructed and finally the fire is at roasting temperature again and pig cooking 2.0 begins. All goes well as a tent of corrugated tin has been formed over our piggy friend to allow an even heat. He is soon smelling fantastic as his skin crisps up and thin streams of juices are released. The juices hit the glowing embers and ignite. The whole pig becomes engulfed in flame. Thankfully our host is a retired fire fighter so is able to douse the flames without entirely putting out the fire. The cooking continues.

It is said that a dozen men can BBQ happily for many days and occasionally there may even be food. It’s the highly entertaining journey to a possible feed that is the fun bit.

This may have been a slower project than planned but within a mere 16 hours the pig is released from its leafy jacket and divine porky goodness falls from its bones. The legs are wrapped in foil and thrown back on the embers to keep warm as the body of the beast is devoured by a hungry throng. It was a magnificent feast and certainly worth the efforts. We have learned how many blokes it takes to cook a pig…. All of them.

It is a sobering time in our small town. A well-loved local girl, Wendy Sanchez, who has been running a small clothing and art shop within our favorite Birria restaurant has gone missing. She set off to Guadalajara a few weeks ago and has not been seen since. Her family are understandably distraught. There is no sign of her or her car. No ransom demands. She has just vanished. Instances of young people disappearing in Mexico is very worryingly not rare enough. They call them los desaparecidos. Friends are continuing a campaign to keep her in our thoughts, put pressure on the authorities to act proactively and to send a message to those responsible that this is not something that can be tolerated.

Our abilities to make wood pretty is improving. Word has spread and we are tasked with creating polished tables for the new Tomatinas bar. Large heavy lumps of Parota wood are delivered. Gallons of marine varnish and loads of sanding stuff are acquired. Parota dust is actually poisonous and causes irritation to lungs and eyes so we must employ full PPE protection at all times. It’s a daunting job but we are fully motivated. The unusual cool weather is causing moisture in the air which can make the varnish dry in weird ways but Jake has more patience then even me. We are confident that they will be excellent. The wood is impressive and comes to life beautifully.

While we have the impetus we take the opportunity to upgrade our own tables. They have never looked better . We christen them with a Shakshuka & tequila breakfast.

Jungle peace and quiet is a wonderful thing. There is the opportunity, however, to add to the joyous sounds of nature. San Pancho has amongst its secrets a tiny shop run by a very sweet old man who is skilled at making musical instruments. His guitars are legendary. I have decided that I will treat the world and buy myself a new Ukulele. Jayne is, of course, delighted.

Jake’s fame as a bartender has spread and he has been approached by the Diplomatic Cocktail Club in town. It’s a skilled chef who offers pop up food and cocktails at exclusive invitation only events that are secret until 24 hours before. We agreed that the next secret venue would be our bar in the jungle and invitations went out the next week.

In preparation for the event we spend some time cleaning up the kitchen and bar. We find some curious fluffy stuff appearing from under the oven. Further investigation suggests that we have a mouse problem. Some mini beasts are stealing the insulation from the oven and making themselves nests. We are fully motivated to dissuade them with traps and peanut butter. The little buggers can’t resist peanut butter.

Day one and I check the traps and voila! Caught a big fat guilty looking mouse. I give him a few hours of shame in the trap before releasing him a mile away.

Day two and voila! His even fatter mate is trapped. He is a lively one so I leave him to think about what he has done until he calms down a bit. Unknown to me he has attracted some attention and we are being watched. After walking to the other side of the land to check the water lines I decide to release him into the thick bush. No sooner as he races out of the trap I hear the noise of two cats on the hunt. With luck he may have escaped.

Day three and sure enough another peanut butter coated offender is caught. This one a touch smaller than the rest and rigid with fear. I don’t wait much time to release him. A more grateful mouse I am yet to meet. He runs around in circles and appears to be dancing with delight at his unexpected freedom before zooming off at great speed towards the river.

The traps remain locked and loaded but it’s been a week since our last capture. The oven appears unmolested. Problem solved.

We have met with a number of architects over the past months to look at an investment in our land that will be a real game changer. We don’t have a single traditional window in any of our structures here. All our windows have mosquito meshing only, no glass. This makes the prospect of air conditioning impossible. This is acceptable for 10 months of the year but during those killer months towards the end of the rainy season a sanctuary with cool fresh air will transform our comfort and mental health. We have decided to transform what remains of the Scorpion Temple into our new summer house.

We currently have a large concrete foundation with a few janky walls and a totally termite destroyed roof. With some imagination and a number of months work we can create our brand new funky sanctuary. We are in the process of designing a raised mezzanine floor for a large bed, a round picture window, a kitchen with one of Jayne’s beloved islands, huge column arms with hands holding up a palapa frontage attached to a green living roof. There is even a proposal to create an outdoor bathing area. The prospect of long baths under the stars makes me very happy. First draft plans are in and quotes on the way.

Our lovely and totally mad friend in Sayulita is turning 50 and is milking it dramatically. She has arranged a beach Olympic day, a sailing trip, and a jungle party at our place. All socially distanced of course.

We gather kinda nervously for a beach cook out and whatever beach Olympics is. We have downsized our ambitions from a whole pig to a few burgers so the chances of getting fed in less than a day are vastly improved. It turns out that adding tequila to a bunch of ageing hippies on a stunningly pretty beach can get a touch competitive.

We start with more traditional daftness such as tug of war. I help by tying the rope around me, sitting down and refusing to move. It’s my anchor move and proved rather successful for the win. Spinning around a broom until dizzy enough to collapse while trying to run around obstacles was achieved by blatant cheating/distraction techniques.

All appeared to be going rather well until the banana race. This was a new sport to me so my training was lacking. The methodology is to hold a banana between one’s buttocks while attempting a hundred-yard dash. Now I am at a physical disadvantage here because I don’t really have any buttocks. My arse is best described as upper leg or lowest back. It’s hard for me to keep pants on. Being the highly motivated athlete I am, I give it a go. I have never had an over clenching injury before. I don’t recommend it. Where my arse should be cramped up and I crash unceremoniously out of the race. For the next few days walking took on new challenges. Despite the pain and the limp by far the most awkward thing was avoiding too many questions. It’s a tough injury to explain.

The Diplomatic Cocktail club’s first jungle pop-up is a total success. Over the course of a very long evening they sell out of food and all the drink. About 40 people showed up and left so at regular intervals so it was never over crowded but allowed things to click on merrily all night. They make more money than they bargained on and pulled off a memorable event, which was the point of the thing. We were designated chief food and cocktail testers and can attest that the entire menu was superb. When the time is right this might be a more regular gig.

One of the guests at the pop up is a very well-respected chef who is managing vineyards and a distillery inland. Jake and the girls are invited to visit and within days take they set off on a road trip for a few days. After a long 10 hour drive they find themselves in a beautiful valley, sipping unique wines and Mescal discussing distribution options throughout Nayarit. Endless possibilities.

The birthday sailing day started well with good winds pushing the steep angled boat through the light waves at stunning speed. We hang on tight while watching the whales and dolphins surrounding the boat. We appear to have adopted a painfully cute humpback calf which chases us while dutifully chaperoned by her massive mother.

The winds suddenly and unexpectedly decide to depart and we are left a few miles off shore for an hour or two not moving at all. It’s a good opportunity to swim around the boat. I am floating in the warm sea relaxing and watching the diving birds fishing close by when I notice the back of the unanchored boat getting smaller. The sails have caught a breeze and it’s time to swim hard to catch up. It’s much more difficult than it looks. I am comfortable sea swimming and manage not to panic but the boat is faster than I expect. It’s hard enough to maintain distance and pretty impossible to reduce the gap between us. A line with a buoy is throw out and I gratefully grab it and use the rope to pull myself towards the stern steps.

As the boat gets close I find myself in a cloud of a strange soft particles that look highly out of place mid ocean. The larger bits stick to my body hair. I clear off the worst of the mystery substance and climb onto the boat. It turns out that the sway of the boat in the doldrums has turned Jayne’s stomach and she has retreated below deck to throw up in the sink and flush it out to sea. I hastily remove the remaining odd lumps still stuck to my chest.

The following night we are invited to an exclusive private 80s themed gathering at friends renovated hotel. They are testing their kitchen and we are happy to help. We are very curious to visit the fancy hotel behind the wall that we have never seen so accept. We are accosted by strange women and suitably wrong clothing and heavy eye make-up applied. The girls back comb their hair and coat themselves in glitter. We all look truly ridiculous. The gathering is small and the venue rather posh. They have done a great job making the open court yard surrounded with rooms feel intimate and exclusive. The kitchen is large and well equipped so the chefs are able to cook up a storm. It’s a fun night but we return to the jungle early as Jayne is not feeling too well.

What happens next is best not described. Jayne appears to have contracted Norovirus and is effectively emptying herself very efficiently. It’s a very long night. We sleep very little. By the morning Jayne is in a wretched state. I head to town for sick person supplies.

Overnight one of the biggest trees in the area has come down. No wind or rain to help. This immense Copomo just decided this was its time and fell across the road, crashing onto our friend’s gate and very nearly taking the front of his house off. It’s about half a mile from our place but blocked our way into town. Our friend owns the local organic farm and is very well connected and by some miracle has a team of chainsaws on the problem immediately. The entire tree is dissected and piled into huge stacks of wood within hours. By the time I arrive on the scene at 9 am on the way to collect much needed medicine and hydrating things from town the central trunk has already been dismantled and our truck is able to pass by.

I offer my condolences for the damage and congratulate the boys on their amazing efforts. They are all friendly enough but seem to be looking at me kinda funny. The pharmacist also gives me a few sideway glances and even the check-out girl at the Oxxo seems to find me especially amusing today.

When I arrive back to revive Jayne with fluids and sympathy I notice what my tired early morning eyes had missed. The light shines onto our bed and is reflected back a thousand times. Jayne’s wet sick eyes are dark and running with makeup, her hair is standing upright on her head and the whole miserable scene is covered in glitter. I realise slowly that neither of us has showered yet. I check the mirror and sure enough my man-scara and guy-liner is still thick and my cheeks flash glittery colours. It is not a glamorous sight.

My nursing attempts are soon dutifully rewarded as I also get infected. We are totally pathetic and entirely anti-social. Everyone is now fully trained at avoiding viruses, of course, so we efficiently quarantine ourselves for the rest of the week. Our friend in Sayulita calls us reporting similar symptoms. We must have picked it on the boat trip. Her jungle party is postponed indefinitely. We rest.

Jungle Journal

Killing Thyme with a possum.

February 3, 2021February 3, 2021
by Beave

I absolutely promise that this blog will not include any mention of the over bearing heat and humidity here and my inability to cope with it. It is clear that that theme has had the life banged out of it. So, for contrast I can report that I am currently wearing long sleeves, socks and a hoodie for the first time in 3 years. December delivered us delicious fresh air. Then unseasonal rains and for fun a few nights of proper chilliness. By New Year it was 4 degrees Celcius. That’s the coldest it has been here in this part of the Mexican tropics in living memory!

The cold nights are now the new absolute topic of every conversation. Everyone is unrecognisable and proper dodgy looking with face masks and hoodies. We are all wearing the pre-Covid outfit of the ne’re do well. When we poor souls try to gain sympathy from the rest of the world we get none. To be fair it might be that most of my Northern Hemisphere mates are shivering their blue bits off in snow and ice.

Biggest change is that we have a new jungle resident. Jake, my son, has finally given up trying to make a bearable life in the UK and has effectively moved to Mexico for the foreseeable future. He has been rudely thrown out of his world as a hugely successful cocktail guy in one of the best bars in the world. Now even trying to serve socially distanced beer and food out of a tiny brewery in the North of England is considered too dangerous. Inevitably he decided to come over here and look for opportunities. Easier said than done.

Trying to find a flight out of the UK to Mexico used to be an easy business with many sensible flight options at reasonable prices. Well that’s no more. The only flight we could find was cancelled due to the early December UK lockdown. The only flights from Europe were out of Paris or Madrid on AeroMexico. So, a plan was hatched to take an early flight out of Manchester to sit in an airport in Madrid for 14 hours then fly to Mexico City and then to Puerto Vallarta where we would meet him. We find a stand-by flight which is less than the price of a new car with the reassurance that in these times of relative insanity planes are half empty so there will be lots of availability. And relax.

The endless rock driveway project is crawling its way nearer to completion. The road now is built from the top of the hill to the bottom and one and half the highly decorative stone retaining walls for our gate are completed. The final wall will feature a small round hobbitesk person access door hinged in the middle. Our ongoing plan is to create an automatically opening/closing gate at the bottom of the hill to keep the bloody cows out. They eat everything and are covered in ticks. We spend way to much effort shouting madly while herding massive stupid cows and bulls off our land. To make things a touch funkier the artist who built Well Ed the Turtle has agreed that our cow proof gate will feature Draig-Twp a Welsh dragon we created complete with top hat and monocle. Now that will be worth waiting for.

Our latest challenge has been to keep our plants alive. The cows have been destroying everything they can chew and the ants have been stripping down everything else they can’t. The newest juiciest most delicious growth just doesn’t stand a chance. Our friend Ferdy has local knowledge of what grows and what doesn’t so has been helping us plan our gardens. We have planted vegetables, herbs and flowers. It’s anyone’s guess how many, if any, will survive or thrive. Our herb garden outside the treehouse has been an unmitigated failure. This was not entirely helped by me accidentally driving over it . We clearly have brown thumbs rather than green fingers and have managed to kill just about everything we plant there. Our basil, mint and rosemary lasts but days. Our most impressive skill seems to be killing thyme. We can’t get a healthy pre-grown plant to last more than a day! It’s sorta embarrassing. We have moved our newest batch of herbs to sunnier spots and repurposed the herb area to flowers to see how long we can keep them alive.

The email arrives within 48 hours of Jake’s flight to Madrid to let us know Spain now requires a negative Covid test within 72 hours to get into the country even for transit passengers. It looks like we will have to cancel and try again later… unless. By some miracle there is a single venue we can find in the whole of the UK that will give an adequate test result within 24 hours. It happens to be in the North of England 40 minutes from Jake. He finds himself in a car park at midnight collecting stuff to shove up his nose and posting it into a letterbox with the promise he will get a confirmation email a few hours before he is due to fly. He takes the train to Manchester and we wait.

The email confirming Jake is not currently infected arrives on his phone at the last moment and he is allowed to fly to Madrid. The poor girl in front of him in the queue is cruelly denied her flight home to Madrid because her negative test was taken 72 hours and 15 minutes ago. Wow!

Jake arrives in Spain early morning for his midnight flight to Mexico City. The airport is empty and effectively closed. No food places or bars open so his much-anticipated long Spanish lunch is cancelled. Since he left the UK Madrid has declared a no travel zone from midnight. No-one can leave or enter the city without a very good reason. Tourism is cancelled. In anticipation, there has been a mad rush to leave Madrid on the very few flights that are operating. Jake’s flight is one of them. The previous flight was oversold by 14 seats. It’s not looking good. His standby flight may not work and he will have to navigate his way into a fully locked-down city where he is being told he’s not allowed to be.

He hasn’t eaten in many hours, there are no restaurants open but he finds a vending machine. It’s all sold out apart from a few remaining sad and suspicious looking sandwiches. He buys them before someone else does. He waits the final stressful hours at the check in desk trying to flirt with the check in girls while smelling of old airport shirt and vending machine crab sandwiches. His phone loses charge 15 minutes before the flight so we are entirely unaware of his fate. Is he sitting in a cramped plane wearing a stinky crab mask or trying to blag his way into Madrid for a night wandering the streets?

12 hours later we get a message from Mexico City. He has had to recheck and repack his bags to meet new weight restrictions but theoretically he is heading for the last plane and should be with us in a few hours. Most of his excess weight allowance is cheese and tea for us so we do feel slightly guilty. We head to the airport to meet him.

What arrives after a solid 72 hours travelling is a very pale exhausted and practically suffocated version of the Jake I remember from 2 years ago. We last saw each other when he boarded the flight back to UK after his last visit all bronzed and fit and charged up. He removes his face mask for the first time in days. His bright white UK winter lockdown skin is blindingly reflective in the sun. He takes some much-needed breaths of warm air and we head to the jungle.

A fitting introduction to jungle life is a close shave accident with potentially serious consequence. It sharpens the senses. The opportunity comes about by our need to manage the trees in our life. We have been introduced to Uri who is a local guy who is famed for his fearlessness in the face of gravity. This Mexi-monkey can climb just about any tree with the aid of a two-foot length of rope wrapped around his feet. It’s bloody terrifying to watch. We employ him to work with Ferdy to help us remove large lumps of tree that are threatening to land on our solar panels.

The most worrying of these is a huge Papelillo tree which is looming at a precarious angle over our battery house. The tree is a magnificent example of what is locally known as the Gringo tree. It is such named because of its red coloured paper like bark that peels off in strips like a sunburnt gringo. It’s over 100 feet high and its massive upper branches are waiting to smash our panels as the trunk cuts our battery house in half. These trees are also famous for falling down with no notice.

Uri fires a string attached to an arrow over the highest point on the tree which we use to pull up a rope. He puts his feet into a loop at one end and we literally haul him up to the top of the tree. He stands unsecured 100 feet up on a branch. He is smiling and far too relaxed for a sane person. The rope is lowered and a chainsaw pulled up. The rope is then removed and tied around one of the largest branches and the rest thrown down to us. In order to persuade the branch from falling away from our solar panels we are instructed to climb the hill behind the tree and wrap the rope around a palm tree three times and prepare ourselves. We hold the rope nervously as the branch is removed. The air is thick with fresh sawdust from the chainsaw. There is a loud crack as the branch slowly falls but is held by the rope just long enough to swing clear of the panels. We lower the hanging lump of wood to the ground safely.

We are dropped more string to recover the rope. We need to do that again. This time we plan to remove the upper section of tree. Its high and difficult to judge the size or weight of the limb but we know it’s big. When the rope is lowered to us we climb high up the opposite hillside and find a suitable tree. We wrap the rope around it three times and three of us hold the rope tightly in anticipation. There is a familiar cracking noise and the rope gains tension. Then a larger crack followed by the high-pitched scream of a rope being pulled through the jungle at lightning speed. As the rope flies off the tree and out of our hands we thrown ourselves to the ground. The limb hits the jungle floor completely unhindered by our rope. Thankfully a few feet away from our battery house. We pick ourselves up slowly and check ourselves for injuries. The rope knot hit Ferdy who is not doing well. His ribs and arm do not look good. Jake and I have rope burns on our arms but nothing worse. We are all very lucky. That could have been a heap more serious.

We gather our senses and check out Ferdy’s arm and are concerned enough to want to get him to the hospital to be checked out. He is a tough rough Mexican bloke and is happy to continue to work but we call it a day. We realise that Uri is still 100 feet in the air with no rope. Before we can deal with our wounds we need to get him down. I am tasked with firing an arrow above him. I’m not the most experienced of archers but give it a go. I learn very quickly that I need to aim a lot higher as the first arrow hits the branch where Uri’s head was moments before. Good job he was paying attention. My second attempt was more successful and we lower him down and drive back to town. The tree is many times safer. Ferdy arm and ribs are not broken but he end up very sore for a week. We all have a few extra story scars.

Hearing the Christmas was effectively cancelled in the UK makes us epically grateful we are here and Jake made it out just before things shut down entirely. Our Christmas, for the third time, was a pot luck outside jungle gathering at the bar. This time a social distanced affair. No traditional Xmas snogs this year. Folk are due to arrive throughout the day but are avoided all morning while we prepare ourselves by ingesting large quantities of British sausages and Heinz baked beans on toast. The finest of Xmas breakfasts.

Our entirely unnecessary but rather special Xmas breakfast.

Our new Covid-kitchen is soon christened. The sinks and oven are fully employed. Heating and serving and cleaning up all in one spot which makes things considerably easier. It turns out this is an opportunity for our mates to show off . We have further obscene amounts of outstandingly good food offerings delivered.

Our French restaurateur friend sets the pace by heading out to sea early morning to catch a huge dorado fish from which he creates the very freshest sashimi, ceviche & herb infused BBQ lumps of deliciousness.

Our friends from Atlanta bring the entire kit to deep fry a turkey. Deep fried turkey has so far only been a thing that Southern boys have told me about. My first taste was a few weeks earlier when we were invited to the American version of Thanksgiving Day. 45 minutes in a bucket of bubbling hot oil and what comes out is extraordinary. The skin is crisped up and tastes almost like bacon. The meat has cooked quickly at very high heat in its own juice. Untraditionally our Xmas turkey is neither boring nor dry.

A good-sized ham arrives and we add our contribution of a lamb leg. There appears a number of Xmas lasagnas (I’ve never heard of those before) and acres of creative side dishes. Our new neighbours engage in a competetive won-ton off… A Korean girl and a Chinese boy each creating their own version. We encourage such nonsense.

Notable by absence was my Mum’s Xmas cake and mince pies with chunks of strong cheddar cheese washed down with port. In truth, I didn’t much bother with them when they were piled up on our UK Christmas table but sorta kinda miss them now.

It was a proper feast and a great way to share Christmas. Throughout the day we must have fed over 40 visitors. It does not escape us how lucky we are to be able to host people in this way. Someone from my own family in the UK told me recently she hasn’t had human contact since March. That’s heartbreaking.

Jake’s birthday a few days later was a great excuse to take up an offer from our new friends in Sayulita to go sailing and whale watching. They have a 45-foot classic sail boat moored close by. We meet up and set sail in perfect conditions. Much as it’s always exciting to see whales breaching from the shore, from the bow of a sail boat it provokes a different level of adrenalin rush. They are truly magnificent creatures and big. Very big.

We spend the day, under instruction from our captain, celebrating Jake’s 26^th year by pulling the right ropes at the right times and manoeuvring this very beautiful piece of art across the ocean through pods of dolphins while spotting humpbacks tails waving and sinking on the horizon. Perfect antidote to the awkward gap between Xmas and New Year.

We have decided that we need to be better bee parents. Our termite rotten hives that were rejected by the last swarm are done for so we make the jump and commit to a couple of brand new hives. They will arrive with swarms installed and queens pre-coronated. A better class of apiary is in our future.

Our favorite beach bar in Lo De Marcos s going through some changes. A brand-new bar area is being constructed beach side which will effectively be Sasha’s new home for almost all of his awake time and there is much to do. They plan to open on New Year’s Eve. We have been tasked to make grotty lumps of Parota wood into serving trays and table tops to class up the place. Our first efforts to create sexy serving pizza and burger trays hits a few snags. After much sanding, my enthusiasm to varnish proves unhelpful. The ridiculous cold snap colliding with the high humidity is making the lovely clear varnish dry milky and a heap less beautiful. We spend days re-sanding and varnishing those trays endlessly. We deliver a few but quarantine others due to my incompetence. They are well received as they make the pizzas and burgers look well posh. Tables next.

Our treehouse is a fabulous place to be. It’s set in the most perfect altitude to watch birds and see the shimmer of the vast palm leaves as the jungle breezes skip along the tree line. It is decorated with some of our favorite things that have somehow followed us here. It is, however, a small space. It’s a lofty 20 feet square which is plenty of space for two large folk and one and a half cats to coexist but no more.

We do, however, have a frequent visitor that is testing our tiny boundaries. He lets himself in at all times of the day and night uninvited. He regularly interrupts our sleep by eating lemons remarkably loudly and wrestling with our pans. He is known to smash the odd glass and is stubbornly reluctant to leave. We have a possum squatter.

My attempts to scare the little twat with my aggressive nakedness throughout the night has been totally ineffective. I have acquired and mined the place with moth balls which we are told will dissuade him. They do not. He is sneaky and quick. We make a plan to borrow a trap from the local animal sanctuary. He will have to go.

Our new bee guests arrive. Each of the three swarms has been preinstalled into a hive which we set up. They are trapped inside by gauze for now. We place the hives carefully to allow the right amount of sun and shade then leave them for a few days. When they have recovered from their journey and are more settled we will need to remove the gauze, build the hives and feed them with sugar water.

The Possum trap arrives. Big long thing with a pressure pad that closes the door at one end. We load it with pineapple and lemons which we know the wee bugger loves and prepare for the catch. It is not long before we catch a cat. Twice. Two nights in and no fruit left, no sleep and no possum. The cat has finally learnt that it’s not the place for her but frustratingly the long-nosed freak is outsmarting us.

Our bees have been settling in long enough and need to be freed. Our co-apiarist Diego and I suit up and take on the task of building the hives. Each of the three boxes are packed with bees who are lively enough but do not appear aggressive. We have both been on the wrong end of a few too many wild bees so are mighty relived. I douse the area and the swarms with sugar water which seemed to go down well. We removed the retaining mesh on each box to release the bees who are now in sugar subdued and set up a second story on each. We install extra bags of syrup then pile rocks on the lids to prevent attack from greedy honey hunting Tahones (coatis.) We return to the treehouse in confident mood without a single sting. We now have three happy hives.

The Possum trap has been installed for over a week and so far, we have managed to feed the $%&# half a dozen lemons and a pineapple and yet we have caught no possum. The noisy long nosed %&*@ is being well fed while carefully avoiding the metal trigger plate on the cage floor. We get creative with the bait positioning but can hear him at 4am sniggering at us gratefully and loudly crunching mouth-fulls of pineapple.

Our new throwing axes and knives need an outing. It has been suggested to me very strongly that I must create a safe space before I get carried away and perhaps impale something or someone that may not be so keen to be impaled. I’m absolutely on board with avoiding non-consensual impaling so devise a plan. There is a perfect spot beside our Bodega which provides the right throwing distance and a huge wall to prevent any over throws. We have installed fabricated metal shutters onto our Corona-kitchen which has freed up a load of wood I had put aside to build wooden ones. This is now re-purposed and we create a target board and hang it on the Bodega wall. It’s perfect. So far after chucking very sharp metal things many times no one has yet been impaled.

I have lost patience with the possum. It’s 3 am and I have been awoken too many times. He’s taken to stealing cat food, he sounds like he’s chewing on gravel. It’s driving us insane. I take another long look at the trap. I stick celery sticks into peanut butter and stick them through the bars. I take a pad of paper and rest it on the trigger plate so theoretically it will make it more sensitive and have a larger area of effectiveness. I return to sleep.

Its 6 am and I am woken by the wondrous noise of a trap door shutting. One fat cocky possum all mine. We leave him in the cage to sulk till midday then I take him to the outskirts of town and let him go. There is a large field where he can bother no one. He leaps from the cage, doubles back on me and runs into a small roadside kitchen. There is a loud scream and I last see him being attacked by a shocked woman with a broom. No longer my problem.

New Year arrives at last. We’ve all been waiting for this one since March. Tomatina’s bar in Lo De Marcos starts the night off with social distanced live music played from the top of a bus. We then meet up with friends outside on the top of the hill overlooking the town and end up on the roof of other friend’s large house overlooking the beach. It was good to avoid the inevitable crowds in town.

Life throws in another spanner. My very good friend in New Zealand, Dave Lawrence (aka Hi Dive), takes his daughter and her friends to a roller disco. He is almost certainly showing off his most fabulous moves when he drops dead of a heart attack. He was my age but a heap fitter and more athletic. I attend my first, and hopefully last ever, zoom funeral. Dave was a good man and we have had far more fun that is strictly necessary in many parts of the world together. Travel well brother. The final kick in the balls from 2020.

Jungle Journal

Santa, Spiders & Fluffy Balls

November 26, 2020November 26, 2020
by Beave

It’s been a while since my last blog. I have a number of great excuses. Technical issues and our site being hacked are amongst the most useful. At one point we thought we had lost our site and all our blogs into the dark mysterious unexplainable void of the hacker’s delete button. Thanks to considerably smarter people than us we are resurrected and spending much overdue retrospective efforts backing up our backups with backups.

Excuses aside, in truth I have been cooked. The baking humidity has poached me in its moistness and rendered me stupid. My ability to move, think or function productively escaped me entirely. The last few weeks of October were bloody awful.

It is with considerable relief that I can report that on the night of Halloween the weather finally broke. The humidity vanished. No more rain. Dry season is upon us. We have delicious fresh, dry air in our lungs. I am not constantly dripping on things and leaving damp patches behind me. The ceiling fan has been turned off and there are blankets on the bed. The best thing about this exceptional turn of events is that I have stopped banging on about how unbearably hot it is. Finally.

With the passing of the rains comes the passing of the fireflies. They hatch around September and live for around two months. For some weeks, we have been parking next to our front gate on our way home. We turn off the headlights and watch as many thousands of firefly bums flash in ever changing but certainly synchronised patterns. At intervals they somehow all turn off for a moment of dark and a fraction of a second later throw their tiny lights around in mesmerising fashion . They line the river banks and tree branches; the fields are thick with them. Yesterday we tried the same trick and saw only two tiny flashing critters who are most likely mightily confused where all their mates have gone.

Day of the Dead passed us by with no celebrations, pomp nor ceremony. Even the cemeteries, where families are used to spending the night with their dead, were closed this year. This was a purely political action too far for many. The Mexican traditions of honouring your dead run deep. Extraordinary alters of photographs, candles and marigolds usually fill the town square. This year there were none. We make up an alter on our balcony with traditional flowers and non traditional symbols to honour our own lost friends and family. It’s a gesture but lacks the unique communal mix of celebration and grief that this day is here to represent.

Canadian Thanksgiving came and went. Canadians wanting to drive their huge RVs down to Mexico for 6 months on a beach are unable to cross the Canada/US border as this is not considered essential travel. The result is that the usual influx of snow birds is not a thing this year. Almost all of them have cancelled their wintering in Mexico. Despite there being considerably less Canadians here than at any other time it’s still hard to avoid them.

A gathering was arranged and for some days a truly obscene amount of food was prepared. When we finally got to the point where we could start the feast the heavens opened and it properly rained. The carefully constructed and decorated outside eating area was dismantled in moments. We made a good effort to eat as much as we could, squeezed into a considerably smaller and drier makeshift covered area. A splendid effort with enough left-over grub to keep us stuffed for days.

Halloween was also allegedly cancelled this year. There was, however, a mini revolution from parents refusing to further disappoint their bored lockdown kids. The whole of the town was packed with the usual gangs of parents dragging around over excited sugar fuelled kids dressed as ninja turtles, spider men, batmen or devils. They paraded up and down the main street as normal. In anticipation, we dressed up and took a huge bag of high sugar Mexican candy with which to dose the little buggers. I wore my theatrical gorilla mask which was perhaps misjudged for my audience. Terrified children scattered when I got close ironically throwing candy at me to keep me away. Best intentions and all that.

Inexplicably the kids didn’t exactly warm to my efforts.

Thankfully our productivity levels have risen considerably and notably as the humidity has fallen. We have serviced all our vehicles, kept the jungle fairly under control and rescued vast areas of wood from ravenous termites. We have also persisted with our river rock driveway. Despite the torturous heat the boys have worked the entire time dragging huge rocks and tonnes of hand mixed concrete up our hill. Along with our substantial road that will last for centuries they have created two splendid rather beautiful rock retaining walls. Just this week in far more optimal conditions “we” laid a further 12m of rocks. It’s all happening even if the pace is often glacial.