Skip to content
La Colina Project
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Contact Us
  • Blog
  • Visit
    • Stay With Us
      • Room Rates
      • Volunteer
    • Directions to La Colina
  • Special Events
  • Shop
    • My account
    • Checkout
    • Cart
  • Activities
    • Birdwatching
    • 4×4 Vehicles
    • Surf
  • Donate

Find Older Posts

Recent Posts

  • Footy, the Colour Purple and an Adoption. December 30, 2022
  • A Hurricane, Scorpion Fun & Dead People. November 8, 2022
  • Summer Lovin October 7, 2022
  • Blue Buttons, Bees & Froggy Nonsense July 20, 2022
  • Hot & Wet With a Sexy Roof. June 25, 2022

La Colina Gallery

The White House
Forest path
A beautiful lotus growing in our pool
A beautiful lotus growing in our pool
Beave in the stone cottage
IMG_0061
IMG_0059
IMG_0052
IMG_0045
IMG_0040
Window view
composting toilet access
IMG_0026
hilltop view
IMG_0022
IMG_0018
IMG_0017
IMG_0014
IMG_0072
IMG_0064
IMG_0062
IMG_0013
IMG_0012
stone cottage 1
IMG_0009
Currently more of a pond...
Currently more of a pond…
IMG_0007
white house and yellow door
Mexican Roadtrip 2017 - Route
IMG_2337
IMG_0001
Jungle Journal

Blue Buttons, Bees & Froggy Nonsense

  • July 20, 2022July 20, 2022
  • by Beave

It may not surprise you to know it’s bloody hot here. There is, in fact, record breaking temperatures throughout Europe right now so we expect little or no sympathy.  It is true that the UK is really not set up for hot weather – bless them. The whole country has been on red alert ‘threat to life” status. I remember how grossly uncomfortable it is in the UK’s air conditioning free cities, homes and offices even at 35 degrees. This week the UK has had over 40-degree heat for the first time ever!  Despite me continually struggling along in a pool of hot sweat I will, therefore, attempt to take a short break from moaning about the temperature for a change. 

One of the gifts of being close to the ocean is the chance get wet and float around on a whim. Most times of the year this is a refreshing change but during these hot times the water temperature is that of a warm bath. It was one such whim that did for me. I’m at the bar on the beach that we have named “the office”. It is often that we arrange an urgent meeting with friends at the office. The beer was cold but not cold enough so I decide to strip off and dive into the waves. 

San Pancho waves are strong and mostly break quickly close to the beach.  The trick is to get past the breaking waves to the calm water out back. This is often not as easy as it sounds.  I negotiate the fast moving walls of water as best I can. Some I dive under, some I float over. It was at the top of a rising wave above water when from nowhere I get hit on the side of my head. My ear felt like it had been suddenly struck by something hard and hurty.  My immediate thought was that I had been stung by a hornet. I remember how much that hurts but in retrospect that was not the smartest assumption (being in the ocean, a long way from any hornet nests).  I instinctively dive deep under the waves to get away from any flying hazard and swim hard to get some distance between me and whatever that was.  The side of my body suddenly hurts, a lot. My ear is stabbingly painful and the discomfort is now all around my head and neck. It is only then that I see them. All around me in the water are bright blue bubbles. Blue button Jelly fish!

I make my way out of the surf swearing warnings at the oblivious swimmers frolicking around me. There are lines on my body where the tentacles have wrapped themselves. My ear and neck feel on fire. At least one of the little buggers has clung to my head and the cnidocytes along their tentacles have released harpoon-like structures full of venom, called nematocysts all over me. These things are not fun.  Back at the office, everyone has a helpful opinion about how to assist me. There are offers of soaking my ear in hot coffee.  A couple of people enthusiastically suggest they pee on my head. I take the decision not to accept their kind offers and try my best to scrape off the tiny harpoons as best I can. It is a number of days before I can forget about my wounds and some weeks before the skin around my hairline settles down.

Although the rains have started and we are getting rainfall most nights, there hasn’t been a storm of any note so far. This is good news. Our access roads are passable and although the jungle is growing over us as fast as it can we are just ahead of the game. It takes at very least a full day of swinging machete a week just to hold the green stuff back.  We, thankfully, have just the bloke to help us out with that. If he doesn’t turn up we are stuffed. Around the treehouse are a load of palm like plants that are shooting up. Some that have just appeared in the past few days are already many feet high. It’s a project! 

The fireflies have arrived and that is always a blessing. There is a dozen or so clumsily crashing brightly around the mosquito net every night. They are staying close to the ground at the moment which makes walking around at night somewhat magical. The trees glisten and flash. The undergrowth sparkles like glitter.

The nights are scattered with rain and lightning and the occasional loud smash of thunder. The jungle orchestra is on full song and we get to drift off to the calming music of nature. If it wasn’t for the frogs!

This year the frogs have changed their game.  Every year up to now we have had to endure listening to a rain fuelled frog orgy in our pool. It is usually a two-day, two-night affair. By then the frogs have kept us awake for 48 hours but have concluded their wild sex party duties or have died trying.  This year they seem to be more aware of social distancing. Smaller groups (bubbles) are declining the mass orgy option and getting it on whenever the mood takes them. The result for us is weeks of nocturnal non concentual acoustic abuse. We don’t need to hear that. They are clearly having way too much fun.

Our bee neighbours have been confusing the hell out of us recently.  Around six months ago I went to check on the bees and didn’t find any.  We have three hives. All were active until they weren’t. One week we were down to two active hives and then only one.  It is a disappointment that the last of the bees have decided to move on so we take advice from our wiser apiary mates who suggest we move the hives and try another spot.

The day comes and I have arranged to make a new sexy bee home area close to our solar panels which is more sunny and open. Should be a lot of pollen and water around so this seems a good move.  I approach the first hive and immediately get stung! On closer inspection, the bees have decided to return and seem to be fully occupied and content making honey and stinging me.  I abandon the relocation task for the time being.  The following week the second hive somehow springs back to life. It is highly confusing but they seem happy enough. Our friend calls us and asks if we have a spot for a homeless queen and her cohorts that he has rescued from someone’s house.  We now have three fully active and productive bee houses.   Honey in our future again!

Our house in progress is looking remarkably like a house. The stunning boveda roof has been matched up with a palapa roof. This week our wood whisperers will be building the tapanko loft where we will sleep. There are stunning stairs, there is an outdoor/indoor bathroom, there are bright tiles and polished concrete floors.  Our tasks now are to find tiles for the shower floor….  now. Lights for inside and out…. now. Decide on finishes and details … now. No pressure!

We are a week or so away from the builders completing all the buildy stuff. The electricians and plumbers are well on their way to finishing all the sparky and plumby stuff. We have ordered windows and doors. Our master carpenter friend is set to move into our place for August and apply his skills to the piles of Amapa and Parota wood we have had delivered.  We have cabinets and stairs, a bed, wooden doors and other secret things planned. It is going to be an interesting few months turning this remarkable space we are creating into a fully functional home!  It’s a splendid job. We are grateful for all the massive effort by so many to get to where we are.

There is the issue of water. The mornings these days are often cloudy and that severely restricts our ability to pump water up from the well and to our tinacos.  Feeding the tinaco on the build site has been a mission and so keeping it topped up for the new house is going to be a challenge.  The new water system we have is reliant on our large cistern which we built underneath the front porch.  We have a rain catchment topping it up. All the water to the house will be treated by traditional filters and an Ultra Violet (UV) light disinfection unit that removes most forms of microbiological contamination from water.  Our plan is to keep the cistern topped up by 10 000 litre pipa truck when the rains stop. This gives us the chance to use our high power water pump to back-fill our tinaco from the cistern if water is scarce. This is a huge bonus.  

There is the issue of power. The Scorpion temple is a good distance from the treehouse and, we discover, over 250M away from our solar powered fuse box. There is no real way around it we need to run a conduit and a single 250M length of high quality, high grade cable from the box to the site.  We manage to find the right cable and acquire a massive heavy reel of the stuff.  Our chosen conduit is bright orange and corrugated. It comes in 50M rolls so we have six of those. All we have to do now is to mount the reel and lay and connect up all the conduit, find a way to run it all under the stone driveway and 250M through the jungle to the fuse box and thread 300M of twin cable through the whole thing. This is a day we will not forget in a hurry.  My Covid recovery is frustratingly slow and I have been running on 30% power for some weeks. Add a bunch of extreme heat and humidity and it really adds to the fun. It is great news that Jayne is motivated and we have help from our mate from town. Somehow, we manage to get this all done in just six hours.  It takes me three days to recover.

There is the issue of the fuse box.  Our existing fuse box is far from weather proof and is now four years old. It looks a lot older than that.  The wires to it have been pulled and tugged by jungle growth for years so it’s a janky box with over tight connections attached to a tree and protected from the elements by a plastic container that I cut up in a way to function as a rain cover.  Our biggest issue is that the tree it was connected to fell over. The box was cast into the jungle but somehow still works. This is not a sustainable solution to our power needs. A new posh waterproof box is found and we mount it a few feet above the ground on plastic bug proof poles that we set into the jungle floor. We are desperate for power. It’s unbearably hot and humid and we don’t have any way of running a fan!! Jayne takes on the very frustratingly fiddly job of wiring the bugger up. Theoretically it should only take an hour or so but it is fully dark and I am lighting up the jungle with a torch before it is finally up and running. We retreat fully exhausted to the treehouse to shower and drink gallons of water and stare blankly and silently for a very long time. The feeling of satisfaction for a job well done will kick in later.

Jungle Journal

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 offending water “treatment” plant

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.

Uncategorized

Jungle Xmas & Thanksgiving-gate

  • December 24, 2018December 24, 2018
  • by Beave

It’s a few days after we land back from UK that we understand the extent of the changes that have happened since we were away.  In just a week there have been vast swaths of jungle completely destroyed by bulldozers and chain saw teams.  Bird sanctuary and Jaguar habitat gone forever.  The Auto-pista highway from Guadalajara to Puerto Vallarta has been spoken of for decades and  we were aware it was heading our way before we bought our land.  The reality now it’s here is sickening. The small village of Tiqueeleechi very close to us has had a 60M corridor of jungle ripped out of it.  We can hear the distant machinery and chainsaws every day from our tree house. 

We take a breath and a sharp machete and head out in the Razor to examine what’s happening close by.   We climb a hill about half a km from our gate. From the top  we can  see huge areas of trees grounded  and the yellow dirt where the highway will sit clearly visable.  It hurts to look at it. 

We take the Razor down rivers of mud where roads were only weeks ago and find total destruction. Trees laid everywhere and a huge mud super highway stretching for may kilometers  North. This is the direction they are coming from. To the South hectares of  jungle are already wounded and even more marked out for the heavy machinery to flatten.


Jungle completely wiped out

We approach a resting chainsaw crew who reassure us that they very much doubt the highway will be seen from our land but it’s only a guess and it doesn’t make the tragedy of this senseless destruction any easier to take.  The highway is a pay/toll road.  In Mexico they are only used by the wealthy or the bus companies selling premium tickets as they are too expensive.  Your average Mexican is not going to spend more than a day’s wages to make his trip from Guadalajara 2 hours quicker. They will take the old 200 death highway. This new highway is going to be empty, expensive and an environmental disaster like all the other toll roads we have used.  Too many people have been paid off so there is no stopping the thing now.  Too late for the new government to step in.

A previously beautiful remote jungle walk

The existing 200 highway continues to prove fatal.  Your average Mexican drives like a maniac. A bus carrying passengers to Guadalajara is run off the road by some idiot and rolls down into the jungle.  This takes place very close to us and is traumatizing for everyone who witnessed it.  The bus was destroyed and there were many fatalities and horrendous injuries.  Despite this there is still a frightening number of wreckless morons  on the road every day. We are lucky we don’t have to commute anywhere and when we do drive it’s invariably during daytime. Our driving style is defensive to say the least.  I drive like a scared granny with one eye and Jayne is a biker so automatically assumes everyone else on the road is a drunk blind twat and that helps. 

On a more positive note there is art in our jungle again.  We encourage everyone to leave no trace but leave us art. We were blessed to have one of our favorite artists staying with us who has epic skills with oil paints and has just spent the last year travelling the world perfecting hand-poke tattoos.

Jungle art day in at the bar

Roughing it on the balcony

She has surveyed spots for murals and has started an elaborate sign for us on a lump of parota wood. She had to leave to attend a posh exhibition of her work in London but will be back with us early next year when we intend to kidnap her for some weeks. 

Actually turns out she is back with us a bit sooner. We get a message from the airport soon after dropping her off. She has taken Pauly’s British passport and left hers behind.  She does not have shaved hair or mustache or any other resemblance in the slightest to Pauly. She is effectively stuffed. Has to return to us for a few days extra and rebook flight to get to London just in time. She is not at all phased by the added sun and jungle days.

We are all invited to US Thanksgiving. There is a crowd of six of us on the land and we arrive mob handed to a beautiful seafront property with a private beach.  Although many hours late we are the first to arrive and settle in for a huge feed.  More folk arrive as we carve up turkey and start tequila matching everything.  Turns out tequila goes with everything. The sunset is stunning and the moon is full. We all become thankful as newts.

A slight hiccough comes as we try and leave.  Our pick up truck is squeezed in a tight space and during much maneuvering manages to catch the large front security gates and make them an unhelpful new shape.  No drama as our very understanding hosts employ a guy who arrives and quotes for the repair and takes a rather hefty deposit for the work. Turns out the bloke was a chancer who has no intension of mending anything and disappeared.  The receipt for the cash was a fake. Cheeky bugger. A local chap mends the gates in no time for pretty much no money. Deposit gone and lesson learned.

Love is expressed by different cultures in different ways. In Mexico love is expressed by volume.  If there is a speaker playing it is on full volume. Bigger the speaker the more love. It’s insane. If there is a wedding or quinceñera party in San Pancho we can hear it out here in the jungle as if it was just outside.  Amazingly bad music played very very loud.

We are invited to an early Xmas party out at an organic farm through which we have met many good people.  It’s an impressive set up run through volunteers and a dedicated full time crew.  They produce organic vegetables, cheese and dairy and sell it from a shop in Lo De Marcos.  All goes very well until  further conversation is made impossible. A large group of highly loving musicians turn up and blasts our faces off with fairly terrible versions of all the traditional Mexican hits…. The boys then bring on their beloved horses to dance. How they have such affinity with these animals I do not know. They are in beautiful condition and dance pretty much in time to the crap music.  It’s a sight to behold.

It’s tourist season again. The days are bearably sunny, new restaurants are opening and producing exceptional food this year. Nights are cool enough to sleep. It’s altogether rather pleasant. With all the Thanksgivings over we now experience a great influx of Canadians and Pacific NW Americans who are here escaping the snow for the next 6 months.  Xmas is coming fast and the town is busy… and so are we.  Guests are arriving and paying us to stay. We sorta kinda forgot about the intricacies paying guests which is very much a lot of the point of the place. We have been too wet and warm and are out of the professional hosting habit.  It’s back to laundering sheets and employing my legendary patience. We seem to be avoiding the idiots that can’t work out where the beach is and attracting a more jungly sort this year which is good news.

So we have all sorts of ambitious plans to create and refurbish but have spent most of our energies transforming our rental casitas and apartment from soggy and rain-washed to clean and sexy places to stay again. It’s working out. Thankfully guests like what we offer a lot and our bookings are looking good for the next few months.  The jungle destruction machines and chainsaw teams are moving away from us for now which means our guests are no longer treated to the not too distant sounds of engines, falling trees and reversing alarms from 7am to 9pm. At it’s worst, it was still better than the roosters in town we are assured.  It turns out we won’t see the highway from any part of our land which is a massive relief but we will have to arrange for some guerilla bamboo planting in the next months to create further sound barriers.

More worky work is lined up for after Xmas.  We have a heap of wood ready to be varnished , placed and screwed. I have spent a week or two making the stuff taste foul to termites. Termites will take out a solid 4×5 beam in less than a year out here. By soaking the stuff in a mix of diesel fuel, engine oil and a particularly nasty behind the counter toxic red fluid it has a fighting chance of surviving 5 years. The right screws have arrived from USA with friends along with a new impact driver and other essentials we can’t get here.  Just in time. My beloved much abused Makita that came with me 15 months ago from UK actually burst into flames in my hand.  Didn’t know they could do that.  

The soon to be Sky Yoga Platform. Currently just old termite infested lumber.

Our chickens need to watch themselves.  A new morning visitor is a huge black eagle with a white face and long striped tail.  Size of a teenager. It’s taken to sitting on top of the chicken house and scaring the feathers off them.  To be fair it is a huge mean looking scary thing. We can shout it away but it’s not scared and looks twice it’s size in flight. Its very possible it could take off with a chuck in each talon.

Eagle food.

The new chickens continue to provide eggs, as is their purpose.  Sister Bricklebank & Sister Bland are, however, heading nearer to the pot.  To add to the mix our friend who is studying to be a vet saved a small scraggy chicken from the mouth of a dog. She mended its legs with lolly sticks and delivered  “Hey-Hey” to us to adopt.   I had a strong word with Hey-Hey about not becoming a rooster and giving us eggs and to add authority I pointing my machete right at her.  This daft little thug was not paying attention, she jumped on my machete and then sat on my shoulder and pecked my ear.  For the past week we have had a small chicken that looks like a dog has chewed it follow us everywhere while regularly nesting on my shoulder.  When we leave the house she gets in through the cat flap and eats the cats food and leaves chicken shit everywhere.  Mausetrappe is nearly as unimpressed as we are.  I have taken to launching her off the balcony as a discouraging strategy that seems to be working.

Hay-hay the half chewed chicken

We have a rather successful birthday party at our bar.  We have the place restored from the rains and lit up and ready to go.  The waterfall/pools above our land create a magical secluded spot and to have a unique exclusive jungle bar close by is a proper bonus. We have a friend cater for us and deliver endless shrimp and some excellent form of pig to soak up the refreshments. Everyone is fully refreshed for the mandatory scorpion hunt. It’s a great night and reminds us that we have a great venue.

Our exclusive Jungle bar venue ready to take on the masses.

Invisible during the day and day-glo ravers at night

Xmas is now upon us and we have decided to stay in the jungle.  There is no tree nor snowman nor Santa nor turkey nor pudding nor presents nor tinsel nor baubles in sight. We love the lack of Xmas stuff.  Not being total humbugs we have invited anyone who wants to come over in the afternoon to do so and bring food and tipple. We will set up at the bar as the venue. It occurred to us today that we have had over 30 people absolutely confirm they are coming.  If they all indeed arrive and bring food and booze then it’s going to be an event. We have created the makings for four large Beef Wellingtons which is pretty much the most complicated choice for a stress free Xmas but we are going to give it a go. We and our full compliment of guests will standby the beef with a lightish refreshment in hand and see what happens next.

Pressure washing spontaneous tags

More spectacular winter sunsets.

Gold thread spider. One of many throwing massive webs this this of year.
This fella is destined to be a belt.
Found close by when laying water pipe.
Love & Feliz Navidad to Everyone from La Colina.
What is not given is lost.
Be Kind
Jungle Journal

La Belle Verte

  • August 31, 2018
  • by Beave

It’s dark. Once again I’m on the balcony watching the fire flies and the lightening close in anticipating the rain. Through the window I see Mausetrappe chasing something around the floor. It catches my attention as it’s not clear or obvious what it is. It looks like some fair size bug with its wings bitten off. This I decide is the most likely but it is moving unusually fast and acrobatically. Not surprising because the cat looks intent on eating the thing. The escapee jumps in the air and hides under the fridge. Mausetrappe looks away for an instant and it leaps out and lands at my feet. Taking a closer look I am properly freaked out to see something twitchy and unidentifiable with no eyes, legs, wings or features. It’s a disembodied tail. It is winding the cat up magnificently. I check the corners of the room to see from whence it came. I catch sight of a snake and chase it out the house via the shower but it looks intact. Tail fully attached. I then spot the cat trying to pry a tail-less gecko from its hiding place where it is proudly and safely watching events. I catch him and release him. His unbelievably animated tail sacrifice saved him. Since this incident I have tried to save a couple of geckos from the cat and seen them dispatch their tails at close quarters. The gecko speeds off and leaves their tail to break dance and summersault wildly. Best distraction ever. Smart nature but proper weird and not a little creepy!

  

We have put out the word with a local butcher for a lamb. Rumors are amuck that such a thing exists and that we can buy a whole one for a very reasonable amount of pesos. Lamb chops, melty shanks, Sunday slow cook leg, roast shoulder…. in our future. We wait for the call from the man who knows the man who knows the lamb. We wait. Eventually we have the offer. A man will deliver to the man who will deliver to the butcher who will deliver to us a goat. It’s the same as a lamb in Birria right? Birria is a dark red highly spiced hang over stew/soup of long cooked meat available to nourish the dehydrated and sweat excess tequila from the body for breakfast every Sunday. No one can quite understand that we want to eat lamb when there is perfectly good goat available. The word is still out…. We wait.

We are completely swamped with enquiries from locals, internationals and gringos alike wanting our help with all sorts of buying, building, selling and renting adventures. Our makeshift office in the pub has been fully occupied for the last few days. We are sorta kinda relived the pub is now shut for the next three weeks. Tequila & bad karaoke and complicated Mexican legal procedures do not mix perfectly.  Our first “corporate” day out involved much ale, pizza and a flat tyre. It’s a good start we think.

 

There is a good scattering of strange fruit on the ground that is attracting pretty much everything. Two large trees are shedding them in great numbers. The butterflies cling to them and drink the juice as they sweat in the heat. The jungle floor is alive with a multitude of butterfly wings of all patterns and a slightly fruity smell.  We are surrounded by colour as they take flight around us. The ants and wasps eat the yellow flesh in no time and leave the orange stones. I have taken to using the side of my machete as a bat and hitting the stones at pre determined targets (usually a tree branch or a chicken). It’s a simple pleasure but my accuracy now is much improved. It has been suggested by the locals that the yellow fruit we can’t identify is some sort of sweet fig. I am unsure of that but we have asked a number of very nature savvy people who shrug and suggest it’s another local freaky hybrid.

    

Protecting turtles is a huge issue for Nayarit and the entire Pacific Coast of Mexico. Turtles have nested here for many thousands of years and thankfully the government take their well being very seriously. We heard tell of a local poacher who was caught with 300 eggs and sentenced to seven years imprisonment. He was up for release recently and faced the judge again with 6 months to go to be informed that he still had to pay a fine. 100 000 pesos for each 100 eggs. As you have to pay for your own blankets and food in Mexican prisons and his wife had left him and sold everything while he was inside he was unable to pay. He is not attracting much sympathy so may be inside for a long time yet.  The police have just conducted a raid on our beaches here to catch more poachers.  We were invited to assist but there is a law that only Mexican citizens can be “official turtle protectors” and the police were in serious mood so we gave it a miss. Last night at 2 am there was a nest of 110 eggs saved and two poachers chased through the hills.  The big result of the night was that a local “turtle protection officer” was found to be in league with the poachers.  There is a tradition that he will suffer the wroth of the community he has deceived by being taken to a remote spot and beaten with wooden sticks before the law get to throw him in prison.  You don’t mess with turtles in our town.

 

We are looking ahead to dryer days and deciding what to create next. There are two structures we haven’t touched on our land as we ran out of time and cash. The scorpion temple and the white house. The large white house is likely to be our forthcoming focus. We will wait for the rains to blow themselves out when they eventually come and then make a plan. The roof trusses are in place and in good shape so that just needs a cover of some sort. All the floorboards and supports are termite food so they need to be completely replaced. The shower and toilet block are solid so a new window or two, taps, shower head, paint and some spit and polish should make it a splendid prospect. The view from that spot is over the treetops of the protected jungle and is one of our best. We expect to have created a multi-function space for a yoga/bird watching platform and an open air bedroom overlooking the canopy in about 6-8 weeks from the start point. There is a little creative vision required. Looking forward to starting this process as soon as I can work outside for more than 10 minutes at a time without passing out.

 

Pineapples are appearing everywhere. It’s one of the many pineapple seasons locally. Our man has been working in the local fields planting maize and picking pineapples. Our current method of production is to save all the pineapple tops we use and dry them, soaking them and replanting them. He has however acquired us a large number of fruit and pre-rooted well-established bases from the fields . I spend time creating space in the green landscape and planting them out along with the half dozen heads we still have rooting in pots of water all over the house. In about a  years time we will have heaps of them. We know that pineapples require a seriously worrying amount of chemicals and water to grow commercially but we will deploy organic methods. More learning required. It will be worth it as our house currently has a very healthy fresh pineapple smell, which is a great deal better than damp flip-flops and moldy pants.

Jayne does something remarkable. She gets out of bed and gets dressed without violence or injury before 8 am. We have been invited to meet our man at a local farmstead and milk the cows. We are in need of a reliable source of fresh milk and so we present ourselves. Two bleary eyed gringos watching rancheros do their thing. Our “help” is an event in itself. Jayne realizes that a milkmaid she is not. The cow stubbornly holds onto its milk and the teat delivers but the tiniest dribble to the bucket. Our man takes over and extracts about half a pint a squeeze! I give it a go and soon realize the hand strength required. I’m told not to pull but squeeze hard. Our cow has her rear legs tied together so I don’t get kicked so I am over confident. I manage a steady stream of high froth and then quickly relegated to the bench while our man takes over. Life is too short to watch a gringo milk a cow. The kicker comes with the tradition of breakfast from the milking stool. Large cups are filled with spoonfuls of Choco-milk powder and heavy pours of good tequila. We then take turns to milk the cow directly into the cup which now overflows with warm, sweet, frothy Choco-tequila. It’s surprisingly delicious and filling and effective. Great way to let the day begin.

We had an unexpected flush of guests in August which was welcome. This we found to be partly due to the Mexican four week school holidays which have just finished. We have learned, however, that we have to improve our information, especially in Spanish. Despite being as clear as we thought we could be about what to expect from an AirBnB booking and managing guests’ expectations (this is not a 5 star resort in the jungle) it is becoming obvious that a lot of folk just don’t bother reading it. Minimum requirements to book with us are that everyone accepts that we are off grid, in the jungle, a few km from the beach down a country road and that we don’t use water in the toilets. This comes as a great surprise to a few guests when they arrive late, in high heel shoes, with no torch in their town car wanting the wi-fi code and horrified by the thought of crapping in a bucket. There was a family of five adults stayed with us for two nights who couldn’t bring themselves to use the facilities even once. Empty buckets! We have been advised that due to our excellent feedback since March we are “superhosts” with AirBnB and we want to keep that up. It’s great for business and we don’t want to spoil it by attracting the wrong people for our place. We know it’s extraordinary & unique to stay here and almost everyone who stays here agrees so we have added a few extra pictures of poo buckets on our AirBnB site to scare off some of the potentially squeamish sorts.

Some of our newest arrivals have been attracted by the overgrowth. A donkey, a mule and a horse go into a jungle bar and decide to stay. The three free range souls arrived with us a week ago and seem to like it here.  They don’t appear to be missed by anyone and they are keeping the greenery slightly less overwhelming. And overwhelming it is.  Despite much machete work the green stuff, beautiful as it is, keeps coming. We can’t see our house now from the road. Anything left out and  within range has vines and branches quickly reaching out to embrace it.

 

The past few nights we have had some encouraging and spectacular storms. More rain fell in the past few days than in the past few weeks. For a tantalizingly short time we had two out of five rivers flowing. The one past our house and the big one from the mountains. Its been enough to wash out the river beds . I have spent days moving rocks and filling in roads and maintaining our water diversion trenches. Despite all efforts access to us is now by 4×4 only.

By November the rains & humidity will be on their way out. Surf will be amazing, the bars and restaurants will reopen (pretty much everything is closed now) and life will return to San Pancho. We will then reappear, ragged from our damp, hot jungle slightly stir crazy to lower the tone somewhat.

La Colina Project

Waking Up at Home

  • August 11, 2017August 13, 2017
  • by Jayne

We were just over three weeks into our Mexican roadtrip when our lives changed course.

The day before we had driven down the pacific coast from Aticama to San Pancho. Our friend Pedro had recommended we visit San Pancho because it was smaller and more chilled than Sayulita.

We couldn’t find San Pancho on the map, which was confusing because our map was very detailed and had even very small villages listed. We used google maps to find the San Pancho Hostel. It wasn’t until the next day that we worked out that “San Pancho” is what the locals call the town. The official name (the one on the map) is “San Francisco”.

It makes me smile imagining the confusion we would cause telling people we have bought 3.5 hectares of jungle in San Francisco.

It was while wandering down the main road in San Pancho that we passed a blue and white real estate office. We could tell already that San Pancho catered more to tourists than the area around San Blas that we had just been in, this was certain to lead to higher prices. In Todo Santos, a tourist friendly town on Baja, we had popped in to a Real Estate office and been shocked by million dollar price tags.

Curiosity about property values and the luxury of spending a few minutes in air conditioning lured us inside. We were greeted by a friendly lady called Mariel, who gave us a binder full of the properties they had listed.

We were about to find our new home, we just didn’t know it yet. We still thought we were just doing research for a future trip when we would come back to Mexico to find a property “for real”.

Here are the 10 ways we realised we’d found our perfect property:

1. It was the only property in the book under $200,000 USD

We flipped through the pages of the binder, and while they weren’t as high as Baja prices, the first few properties were listed for between $250k – $1 million – in US dollars, not pesos! But we kept flipping and suddenly a picture of some trees rather than a building caught my attention. Then the price… Significantly less than all the other properties…

2. The property was bigger than an acre

After the price, the next thing we looked at was the size. Most properties listed were 1000m2, some up to 3000m2.

We really wanted enough land to be able to build treehouses, grow a food forest, keep chickens – we need space! When originally dreaming about potential land, we said we wanted at least a hectare (10,000m2) but the past couple weeks of viewing land in Mexico had readjusted our expectations.

We were now aware that we may only be able to afford an acre (4046m2) or so if we wanted land that met our other goals too.

This property was over 35,000m2. Our eyes met with raised eyebrows and hopeful smiles. We kept reading…

3. The land is covered in trees. Lots and lots of trees.

Not a tree to be seen…

We love trees. Our vision for treehouses, hammocks, a food forest, shade, and privacy all work best with established trees. There are plenty of things that you can buy or make happen quickly with hard work.

Old, big, established trees have to be there already or take decades to grow.

The first piece of land we looked at in Mexico looked like this, so to find a property with 1000+ big trees was a major plus.

4. Location is only a few minutes drive from the surf

Camping on Baja California

I have always wanted to live by the ocean. I grew up near the Rocky Mountains and loved it, but have never lived close to the waves.  Beave loves surfing, and doesn’t get much opportunity in the North of England. Being able to wake up and be in the water in 10 minutes will be a dream come true.

For example, this was our favourite campsite of the whole road trip, on the Baja coast just down from Mulege.

 

 

5. Living close to a village where we can be part of the community

Down the coast from Mazatlan we viewed some remote beachfront properties. They were beautiful, some had some trees that had been planted years earlier, they were bigger than a hectare, and they were almost affordable. Seeing these properties, and not feeling like they were quite right, we realised how important having a community nearby was to us. We want to be an active part of a strong community, not squirrel ourselves away somewhere where we have to drive for ages to find a shop, a restaurant or a town.

6. The Real Estate agent lit up when we said we wanted to practice permaculture

We soon realised that in a binder full of expensive houses on small pieces of land, we had found one property which, on paper at least, met all of our criteria. We asked the lovely Mariel for more details and she disappeared and returned with Shannon, a laid-back American expat who has been living in Mexico for years.

Shannon introduced himself and brought us into his office (with even better air conditioning) to tell us more about the property. The second we mentioned that we wanted a property where we could practice permaculture, his face lit up and he said:

“In that case this property may just be perfect for you. Let me tell you the whole story.”

7. The previous owner ran it as an eco-community

Currently more of a pond…

Shannon explained that the property is very unique, and has a very interesting history. The previous owner was a carpenter, who bought the property with the intention of creating an eco-community. He succeeded in leasing plots to at least four other people, and for a time there was a vibrant community. They would meet in the mornings to work in their communal garden, they ran on solar power and had a functioning well for water, and each resident was building their own homes in various ways. The owner wanted his wife to love it there too, and so he did things especially for her, the most notable being that he built a pool for her.

While we have no aspirations of building an eco-community, our plans for a natural space, with permaculture and art at it’s heart, are in keeping with what has been there before.

8. The property has challenges we’re willing to face.

This is a “good” section of the road

Why was a property of this size, in this location, affordable? We knew there had to be big challenges. It had been on the market for over a year and no one had bought it yet – we needed to know why.

Despite the property being just over a kilometre off the highway, it is not an easy road to travel. In the dry season it is uneven and covered in big rocks. Almost (but not quite) impassable for a standard car. (We later tested this in a VW Jetta, but that’s another story…)

 

In the wet season, the road traverses four arroyos (rivers/streams) of varying sizes. The last and biggest one involves driving into the arroyo, driving upstream for about 10 meters and then driving out.

We’re told that there is only running water in the arroyos for about 10 hours after it rains, so most of the time it’s dry. But a few times a year, for a few hours at a time, there is so much water that it will come up to the windows of a small car.

The second reason it hadn’t sold yet is the property is mostly protected forest. We can’t subdivide, we can’t build big houses or hotels, and we can’t chop down all the trees. Luckily we don’t want to do any of those things, and it means that the property isn’t attractive to developers.

Another possible reason people were reluctant to purchase the property is that there is a highway being built about 250 metres to one side of the land. We feel it’s far enough away, with enough trees between us and the road that it shouldn’t cause too much noise, and it might eventually provide us a route to town that doesn’t involve fording through a river. It’s all about turning “problems” into solutions (a core principle of permaculture).

9. There is tons of potential and a lot of work

We are becoming protectors of the jungle. Our role will be to manage the forest while also creating a place where it can be enjoyed without harming the flora or fauna.

The jungle has had four years to take over since the previous owner lived there. It will be a lot of work to restore, rebuild and improve what is already there. We’re excited to have a new challenge, and such a important responsibility.

10. When we woke up we both felt at home.

The moment when Beave and I knew for sure that we were going to buy this property was a couple of days after we first saw the listing. Shannon had taken us to see the property and had given us permission to sleep in our van there overnight.

I woke early to the sounds of the jungle, and climbed out of the mosquito net we had hung in the van overnight. I sat in the shell of the stone cottage and felt completely at one with my surroundings. Beave emerged and saw me there. He looked around and said with absolute certainty:

“We’re buying this land aren’t we?”

I could only nod yes with a tear in my eye because I was so overcome with joy.

There in the middle of a Mexican jungle, in an old van and a half built cottage, we had woken up at home.

Through the van’s mosquito net

Where we spent our first night at home.

Previous posts

Please note that some of the links in our posts are affiliate links which give us a commission if you choose to purchase through them. We only ever recommend items that we have used personally and love. If you’d like to support us at no cost to you by giving us a commission on all your Amazon.com shopping, just buy anything from amazon.com using this link. Thank you for your support, every little helps! 

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Copyright La Colina Project 2018
Theme by Colorlib Powered by WordPress
 

Loading Comments...