Hurricane Archives - La Colina Project

Nature, Idiots and Bloody Nora.

September 1, 2021September 1, 2021
by Beave

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jungle Journal

Spinning Plates

October 24, 2018
by Beave

Be careful what you ask for, right? We have been nagging on about the lack of water for months. We are now hunkered down after 30 hours of constant rain. The rivers are too strong to cross and a category 5 hurricane is heading our way tonight. We are stocked up and confident we can get through fairly unscathed but the poor buggers 50 miles North of us are set to get smashed. Huge seas swells and up to 18 inches of rain are forecast. Roads already closed due to landslides and there is a mass evacuation to higher land along the entire coast. Been up connecting generator to solar batteries and trenching water paths since first light. I’m soaked. We are not half as worried about our well levels today.

The Malecon in Puerto Vallarta *credit: Edgar Garnica*

Our fixation with getting lamb also has come to a head. Our butcher has promised us he now knows the difference between a goat and lamb and we order one. When we ask him about it the next week he tells us it has been delivered and is at his house. His kids are feeding it. Would we like to meet him? So that’s our meat eating choices becoming very real and in our consciousness. We decide that we cannot be too hypocritical and we will collect the meat the next day but decline the introduction. We are presented with our lamb skinned and whole. We agree how we require it butchering and take it all. The head is saved by me for a slow cooked treat at some point when I’m by myself. Jayne cannot face the face. Our freezer is now full.

My prison wine has had a lot of loving attention and sugar feeds. It’s time to decant it into glass and mature it to perfection. There is, however, a strange phenomena that we notice when it is in the bottle. Under the sunlight coming through the window the opaque amber liquor appears to be moving in patterns. A sort of shimmer and slight changes in colour. I examine closely and then chuck the lot very quickly into the jungle. It’s full of very tiny drunk worms. Wine fail. I am disappointed we lost all our banana stash. Jayne less so.

Our mate Pauly has arrived with us from Essex, UK for 9 weeks of helping us out. We take a “business trip” to Puerto Vallarta to collect him from the airport and indulge somewhat with what the big city has to tempt us. Recovery times are long and we arrive back to the jungle late. Our new 24V DC water pump he brought in his hand luggage from UK is installed immediately. His gifts of cheese, tea, marmite and whisky are quickly hidden away in the “precious things“ store. Pauly’s first night brings 4 inches of rain and a rather impressive lightening storm. He emerges from his new jungle cabin home shaken but not too phased. That is a good start.

He reminds us that he is about 300m from our treehouse. That is the furthest he has slept from another human being in his life.

Since we left for PV our man and his mates have taken machetes to the land and spent hours pulling roots. The place has been transformed. I can see the ground and jungle appears for the first time in weeks somewhat tamed. The water system repairs include a few broken lines and we get around to fixing them. While I am swinging a machete to make extra space for pipe I get a large painful strike to the ear. I consider that I have somehow lost control of the machete and hit myself. I then get another strike to my solar plexus and I rapidly work it out. I spot the nest. Hornets. Run. We leave the repairs for another day very rapidly.

I’m feeling slightly “other-worldly” as the day progresses. We go to town for a business meeting about some land for sale but I am just not able to make much sense of anything and am deposited in a restaurant beach bar to watch the surfers. The sea has taken on some extraordinary swells and the surfing at our beach is the best I’ve ever seen. The hornet venom adds some extra colour to proceedings. We watch as the beach is eaten away by the sea swell. The beach is only a few meters from the sea now and ends in a sharp drop down which a few large palapa shade structures are headed. We help save them and miss the main event. A freak wave has landed on the far table from us where Jayne is sitting. She is entirely soaked and covered in a thick layer of sand. Her amusement does not match my own. We leave for home as a tornado forms in the sea up the coast.

The disappearing beach is an annual event and is expected to return again within a few weeks. One of the benefits to the very high tides is that it is badly effecting a development that has been inflicted on our beach by less than scrupulous developers. Punta Paraiso was proposed some years ago as beachfront condo type apartments. The whole structure has been built far too close to the sea, which effectively steals land from the Mexican people and more disturbingly the turtles that have nested there for thousands of years. It is not supported in any way by the town and a strong campaign is underway alongside an active protest group to have it removed. Despite all the objections building continues and apartments are being sold off plan to unsuspecting Americans and Canadians. Karma may, however, be being played out as large sand deposits and waves have caused havoc already with the build (as well as Jayne.) The impending hurricane may just add to their worries too. We do hope so.

We are becoming a lot more productive. Wood has been ordered to construct our yoga platform in the trees. Not sure how we will get it all out there but will deal with that problem as is comes. We also acquired a load of pine wood and set about making a door for the Selva Vista apartment to replace the mosquito net and child gate that is there at the moment. What we end up with looks like a door from a pirate movie set and we are delighted. Just the right amount of nonsense. Fits perfectly. It’s good to get back into it again. Bit of creativity and the smell of wood being transformed.

Our truck is overheating, our razor exhaust has come adrift and our van’s transmission decides to stuff up as Jayne is on the highway going to collect her brother, his wife and her niece from the airport. Family day out required where we find someone to weld the exhaust and leave the van to get a new transmission. Living here has been described to me, by those who observe, as a constant process of spinning plates. There is always something that needs our attention. I’m not sure that it’s very different than most peoples existence juggling kids, work, habits, fun. We just have different plates to spin.

Our friend is having health issues and is in hospital getting rehydrated and contacts us to help her by letting her three dogs out. We are in the re-opened bar in Lo De Marcos and there is talk of baby turtles to be released on the beach at sunset. Jayne heads to see to dogs and agrees to meet us on the beach soon after. It turns out that it was a dog release day too. One of them decides to make a beak for it and vanishes. Jayne is distraught that her friend is in hospital now with a lost dog to add to her woes. The turtle release coincides with a spectacular sunset and a very stressed Jayne. The dog is eventually recovered, friend recovers and all is well again.

Juan Gabriel is a local horse. A fine good-looking sort that lives happily for most of the year outside near the local ranch. Unfortunately for him he has been recently deemed delicious by vampire bats and is covered in bites. Vets and local cures are deployed so the future is good but he is a sorry sight at the moment poor sod.

After a few days of overcast weather we awake to find we have no power. No sun means, of course, no solar power. We have become far too complacent with our fabulous system trusting it to power up in the dark. Not a good strategy. The generator is plugged in and saves the batteries. It’s been many days since we have seen the sun now and the humidity and rain have set in. Sun not expected to return for a while yet. Our clothes and our bodies are constantly damp or soaked. Hang anything up to dry and it gets wetter?? We make emergency runs to laundry just to get our stuff dry before it rots.

It’s a particularly wet day and so Jayne’s brother, Pauly and myself decide to lay 300m of Internet cable through thick jungle. As we know there is a perceived benefit to far too many to have constant Wi-Fi, Facebook and instagram available. Although our plan for jungle wide Internet does cater to those perceptions the biggest benefit to us is that we can talk directly to our solar system. Jayne is very excited by the prospect. It also allows the possibility of her Dad in Calgary, Canada to effectively monitor and manage our system remotely. Nerdy paradise. Another hornet encounter and a proper muddy soaking later the cable is laid. A day of fiddling and twiddling with modems and some trenching later and we have it. Our solar system talks to Jayne wherever she is and there is the facility (for those who need it) to attach a phone to their face at all times.

Our friends live in a rather amazing house on many floors overlooking Lo De Marcos from a hill. We are invited to Canadian Thanksgiving there. I didn’t know that was a thing . In advance of the party our man has been commissioned and has found some stunning Parota from which a table has been made and a bar constructed. Both bar and table are required on the very top floor of the house on top of the hill. We set off in the pickup truck which is massively overloaded with wood and men. It takes six of us to sweat and grunt and swear these enormous lumps of wood up all the stairs. My truck and my back will never be the same again. It was worth it. After a sand and varnish they look incredible. The party starts early afternoon for us with Mezcal and continues until late and we stay over. I somehow manage to survive my first Canadian Thanksgiving… but only just. I feel like I’ve been hit with a moose. Not a pretty sight.

We have had some aircrew friends and a pilot stay with us overnight. It reminded us that we need to be ready for guests at any time. Even off season rainy times. There is a flurry of sweaty & sweary cleaning and preparation not at all helped by my post thanksgiving moose hangover. We find that hornets love it around our cabañas and deal with a number of substantial hornet homes. One further discovery was that pillows just don’t survive the wet season here. They take on mold like nothing else even in these few short months of high humidity. Our “good value” pillows that were in protective plastic are covered in black mold and stink. I borrow some to get us away. Our next mission is to acquire good quality pillows and protect them with special covers and provide a delightful cloud like head space for our future guests. Our aircrew were sufficiently refreshed for it not to be an issue when the time came to collapse. They braved the jungle and the beasts well despite some clearly expressed anxiousness. Waking to find your window covered in black biting ants , however, may not have been the perfect start to the next day. At least they were on the outside.

Ants are everywhere just now. We have seen them take over entire areas in no time and then move on. Streams of them attack everything and anything in their path. Getting them in your shoes or sandals is not fun. We have seen large scorpions being carried off, hornets nests entirely overrun and even attempted to save a snake from them. The snake did not look well afterwards. They hurt when they bite.

Our bug of the month award goes to a very large black armored chap that gets to be the size of a small bird. They appear in the tree house attracted to the lights and fly very noisily around until they stupidly or clumsily collide with something. There is a “tock” noise as they impact the fridge or a wall and knock themselves out and land on the floor. I have to retrieve them and throw them outside before the cat chews on them. Not the most elegant of creatures. Dumb Bugs we call them.

Our perfect guests appeared on us with almost no notice at all. Our friend from Birding San Pancho delivers them to us. Thankfully our aircrew friends encouraged us to clean and prepare for them so we are a lot more ready than we were. The new group is a professor and four students from Mexico City. They are all entomologists! Unlike every other guest we have ever had they actually want to see bugs. Lots of them. They bring nets and screens and equipment and spend a couple of rapturous days in and around our place exalting all those things others revile. They leave very contented. That just might be a long term thing. Bring on the bug lovers.

So after a quick farewell surf Jayne’s brother and his family have returned to Vancouver. She misses them already. No more guests for a week or two. Pauly and I are still waiting for wood and a break in the weather to start the yoga platform. The hurricane is now just a few hours away and it’s still raining hard. We are attempting to stay dry and be ready for anything. Spinning plates.