La Colina Project Archives - La Colina Project

A beautiful lotus growing in our pool

Currently more of a pond…

Jungle Journal

New Year New Bananas

February 9, 2024February 9, 2024
by Beave

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

Mausetrappe and I taking a much earned moment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jungle Journal

Perfectly Natural

October 2, 2023October 2, 2023
by Beave

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What happens when you leave your mate alone for too long

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

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

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

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

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

NOT an Ai creation. This is spectacular reality.

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

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

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

Jungle Journal

Almost Possibly Maybe

February 15, 2023February 15, 2023
by Beave

After a good feed we and most of San Pancho spend new year’s eve at our friends beach bar with the lovely ladies from the world famous Freakbaby DJ’ing us through the night. We and our many guests are blessed to be part of our funky and fabulous community here. It’s going to be a good year.

There are way too many people asking us (completely reasonably) when we are moving into the Scorpion Temple, our new house. We are close. The massively intimidating list of things to do is now a little shorter. There is a strategy to deal with everything except the unexpected.

One major project is the making of our bed. We have designed a solid Amapa four poster with some sexy features. The massive chunks of Amapa have been delivered. After lots of epic joinery magic and a good amount of swearing our wood whisperers create and assemble a uniquely beautiful but extraordinarily heavy bed. When standing on the tapanko platform where the beast will sit it becomes apparent that the floor is not build to take the weight. It is decided that we will not compromise on the bed design and the floor must be strengthened.

We are thankful that it appears that the problem is resolvable by the addition of a 13 foot long 6 x 6 viga (structural wood beam) carefully squeezed underneath the existing structure and held in place by custom heavy duty metal brackets secured to the concrete support beams. The fun bit is that both the supports are at opposing eleven degree angles. I apply my limited school boy technical drawing skills to designing the brackets. I am helped by traditional tools. A pencil, rubber, pencil sharpener and a shatterproof ruler. I can’t find a protractor anywhere. This is the antithesis to CAD design.

Somehow after a few false starts we somehow manage to get this done. The beam is found and delivered. It weighs a ton. It has to be sanded, stained and cut to fit the brackets that eventually come in at fourteen degrees. The viga ends are cut at an offset of three degrees to adjust. We manage to man handle the thing onto our light scaffolding. We use muscle and car jacks to raise the beam very slowly towards the roof. The extra height is taken up with random lumps of wood and janky stone blocks. It is obvious to anyone that this is just too dangerous. Drills and bolts and straps are applied. This reduces the chance of death just enough for us to soldier on. Still not sure how but we now have a floor strong enough for us and our bed.

My phone has finally decided that humidity and my grotty pockets are no longer survivable and is expressing its displeasure by sending messages and photographs randomly to the poor buggers on my contact list. It has also decided to rest up every few hours and refuse to work. I have two weeks of juggling two phones and attempting with little success to save photos and contacts and messages from vanishing forever. I am now in the midst of trying to employ my famous patience to tame a new phone. It is not going well. My new phone is somehow becoming more unpredictably confusing by the day. This may take some time.

Even the best of our lovely traditional mexi-mechanics make a quizzical and slightly scared look when we present them with our wee Polari. They won’t touch them. The Polaris Razor hasn’t moved now for nearly a year. The gear cable needed replacing and the six month drawn out process of nagging our third “specialist” mechanic to fix the thing appeared to have created a long list of new issues and we have lost the will to nag further. Our Polaris Ranger is recovering from the last time our fourth “specialist” mechanic fiddled with it. And then our mate Geoff arrives.

Geoff is a handy bugger. He’s a self-taught mechanic living off grid in Northern California and required to work out how to fix endless deteriorating machines on his property. Within days he has cheerfully inflicted his skills on our stubborn fleet. Both our Polari are now running like champions. He just “put them together right” he tells us. Geoff also insists we replace some highly buggered bits on our Toyota to make it safe for the highway. This is helpful. That highway is dangerous enough without us adding any additional peril. First time we have had three vehicles running for an age. Long may that continue. We shall see.

It continues to be part of my daily routine to pick up Jake and head to the gym way too early. By nine in the morning I am already tired, sore, sweaty and stinky. I used to start my day with a bucket of tea and a lovely lie in. Not sure this is an improvement. I may decide to accept a wobblier body and more sleep.

Jake and Luca living their best lives together

For the third magnificent year we are called to celebrate our lovely friend Emma’s birthday by participating in “EmmaOlympics III: the return of the idiots“. We all gather on the delightfully picturesque north beach in San Pancho to compete. To add to the traditional silliness of welly boot throwing, tug-o-war and the banana buttock, backward three legged, and inserted balloon racing there is some additional events. One requires spoons to be suspended from one’s waist and thrust towards one partner. Every spoon that touches another spoon is a win. The image of dozens of folk thrusting groins towards each other made for some unique and spectacular wedding photographs. Unknown to us (or them) our event was scheduled at the same time as two rather posh and clearly expensive white weddings on the same part of the beach. Wedding guests were partly entertained but mostly bemused at our antics. Despite being nobbled with a banana I am now the prize winning chucker of welly boots. Officially the biggest tosser.

It is hard to fathom that our new house is almost ready maybe. It’s been a remarkable few years of imagination becoming reality. Pretty much everything we thought of when we first considered our designs have not only appeared but have exceeded our expectations. We are incredibly fortunate to have been able to do this. There have been so many decisions and choices to make. It can be said that Jayne and I have very different ways of doing things and at no time have we ever properly agreed on much. Despite the constant collisions of alternative opinions we haven’t been too close to killing each other. This is quite an achievement under the circumstances. So as our new home appears from the future you will forgive us banging on about it for a wee while longer.

Scorpion Temple at it’s best 5 years ago before it fell down.

Our new toilet area is complete. The parota wood has been buffed to a sheen and our bucket and sawdust installed in a rather pleasing way. We do require a screen of some sort as we have discovered that toileting is not the best of spectator sports for our guests. The tadelakt shower has dried and the effect is a stone-like pale purple sheen. Our dark wood backdoor is complete with locks and cat hole. We drilled various size test holes and inserted Mausetrappe into them until we found one that she could just squeeze through. We don’t want to encourage too much cat nonsense in the new place.

Our open staircase is backlit with LED lights to add a little wow factor and assist with late night stumbles. Under the stairs , however, it creates something of a funky shape. This is taken as something of a challenge. Our woody heroes fashion perfectly shaped drinks cupboards for junk , glasses and booze.

The two arched windows we dragged from Sayulita over a year ago are now looking fresh and proper. Custom made amapa and parota trimmed. They could do with a good clean but, then again, so could I most of the time.

All our cupboards and drawers have had a good rub over with vinegar. This seems to be fending off the effects of the humidity. With luck they will stay mold free.

The desk support is ready and in no time doing its job. The groundhog days of endless polishing, sanding, re-polishing and varnishing a huge slab of sexy wood again and over again are done. It’s turns out to be a pretty fabulous desk. This extraordinary lump of Parota will last a millennium. Jayne will soon move from her four poster office bed in the treehouse to her own bespoke workspace. It will be like having a proper job.

Our bloody earth floor has had its last chance to impress us. It has been impossible to have a floor of earth and poo not create all manner of mold. Some super strength mold killer has been smuggled down to us. After another hand wash with vinegar the new stuff is added to linseed oil and the final final coat brushed on. If we see another new strain of mold appear it has been decided the next coat will be applied with a sledgehammer.

The final scorpion iron mongery has also arrived. Custom made scorpions are built into the banister around the bed and two more will be mounted on the lower panels of the stunning parota front door. We found some small metal scorpions which will be used for operating secret places (if indeed secret places exist).

So it’s now all about our massive heavy bed. The back will be built into the bannisters that will hold our metal scorpions. It’s so close. Some fancy electrics and a strategic window have been built into the headboard. There are a few things to finish before our brand new mattress is dropped in, but not that many. It is a possibility that maybe, one day soon, there is a chance, we might move in. But don’t quote me on that.

The canopy above our treehouse is attracting a variety of birds. They are feasting on the fresh Copomo fruit and dropping nuts loudly on our cars and painfully on our heads. The commotion has attracted forest falcons. Despite their ridiculous call (like “a lady in the throes of orgasm”) they are the biggest predators here and potentially aggressive. We have lost chickens to them previously. Their appearance has coincided with the absence of our second favorite cat. Gargoyle. This wee chap can’t leave food alone and hasn’t been seen or fed for over a week so there is a fair chance we won’t be seeing him again. Bless.

In the pub with shoulder cat the day after he was rescued from a dogs mouth

Shockingly our dear friend Sasha has had a bloody awful accident. There a was an unexpected shower of rain that lasted only a few minutes but made the cobbles on a comically steep banked hill (leading to the house he was looking after) extremely slippy. He attempted to make it up to the remote house gate on his motorbike but lost the backend. Somehow he is pinned under his bike unable to move for over five minutes with the hot exhaust pressed into his leg. By some miracle he was seen and rescued but not before his leg was cooked. Along with cracked ribs he has 40 percent third degree burns to his inner thigh. After a great deal of urgent expensive medical attention he has avoided getting the wound infected. He is on a very long and tough road before he can function again. It doesn’t bear thinking about the amount of pain and patience he will need to endure to recover poor bugger. You can throw him a few quid if you are feeling flush here.

La Colina Project

The Road to Paradise is Not Paved.

September 22, 2018
by Jayne

The road to paradise is not paved.

There are no crowds, no peddlers, nor shops.

This land is filled with babbling streams, butterflies, geckos and armadillos. And the birds – birds you have never seen before.

In every colour.

The night is dark, or so bright the full moon lights your every step. The sky is filled with stars, and the fireflies make you think the stars have fallen to earth.

Here you milk a local cow for your breakfast coffee, the chickens give you your omelettes, garnished with herbs from the garden.

You wake to the sound of birds singing, amongst the swaying palms and majestic old trees.

You can’t help but connect by disconnecting.

There is no need for your laptop, to stream entertainment, to post every moment.

Sit with me and a thousand butterflies in a clearing, lay on your back staring past the treetops and the soaring birds to the endless sky, create art.

A sculpture, a mural, a mosaic…

Meditate under a palm roof, practice your sun salutation overlooking endless jungle, swim in a pool that is away from it all.

Paradise does not have polished floors or air conditioned, dust free, clinical spaces.

Here you live with nature, her beauty, her sting, her inhabitants, her rage and her joy.

You are allowed to cry.

You are encouraged to laugh.

Here you feel.

The air, the heat, the humidity, the dirt, the insects, the love.

In paradise you feel at one with the earth, at one with others, at one with yourself.

If you have forgotten nature, if you are missing the feeling of growing things, if you need grounding, to be creative, to build things, to be part of community, if you are lost.

Come to paradise.

www.lacolinaproject.com – Jungle Stays & More – near San Pancho, Nayarit, Mexico

Jayne and Beave standing in the Scorpion Temple, a building full of potential but not yet finished.

A San Pancho Sunset captured by John Curley

We don’t use precious water to flush – we use sawdust to create compost instead!

Glamping at it’s finest. Sleep in nature, not away from her.

Cosy and comfortable sleeping options for every budget.

Jungle Journal

Spider Eyes and a Chicken Nunnery

June 22, 2018
by Beave

So I’ve been banging on about the rains coming for weeks and they finally arrive early and in style. Last night was the second night of rain. We have spent a very sedate day sweating and both recovering from my man flu. We mostly watched Netflix and waited for sleep to take us. No rush. The nightly chorus of tin whistle bugs is done and at midnight we drift off. At 1 am I am awake. The jungle is in instant shadow as the whole sky lights up in flashes. It’s chucking it down. Real tropical rain. The roof is holding up well and the ground is soaking it all in (for now) so there is little to worry about. Then the frogs kick off.

Considering how dry and water free it has been up to this point it is illogical in the extreme that all of a sudden a few hours of rain can create all the frogs. Where have they all suddenly come from?? I can’t count how many but the noise is deafening. Can’t hear the rain for them. I spend the next 4 hours in my man flu misery reading and listening. Amongst many others I identify a “base cello’ frog, a “scooter with a bad battery trying to start” frog and a particularly irritating “everything is hilarious and I’ve just huffed some helium” frog. The rains reduce by 5 am and my book is finished. The frogs care not and are still having a good old sing. I pass out.

The frog orgy has left without cleaning up. The evidence is everywhere. Frog and toad spawn had filled the previously dried up jungle pond. The sight of the swimming pool is shocking. There are about two dozen large frogs in there. I manage to rescue the few survivors and then start the body count. I fish them out of the pool and arrange them on a rock for curiosity purposes. It’s carnage.

I arrange the dead frogs on a rock beside the pool and return to the tree house. We are somewhat surprised by a high pitched scream. The local pool company has turned up for a visit and the girl who is examining the pool has just discovered my frog rock display. She is loudly unimpressed. Her colleague is highly entertained.

Curiously this whole frog rave lasted only two nights. They are still out there being irritatingly loud but this is an after party crowd. They now sound like clowns with bike horns and give it their all for about 20 minutes then shut up for an hour… then start again. It’s better than it was….

We now have lots of water. The well is filling up again (just in time), we have three out of five full tinacos, the pool level has improved, all the plants and herbs are thoroughly watered and the solar panels are washed. These are all good things.

Last week we wondered why our solar batteries were low. A brief examination of the panels showed that in just over a week the entire solar array had acquired a thick coating of twigs, leaves and muck from the shedding trees. How we had any power at all was a mystery. As our ladder was being used elsewhere an enthusiastic, brave and acrobatic friend who was visiting climbed up with broom and removed all the crap. Battery power renewed in no time. It was on our list of maintenance jobs to do this regularly but now there is no need. The rains have polished them to a sunbeam friendly gleam.

It’s time for planting stuff out. We have bougainvilleas to place on the fence line. Also a spontaneous planting of sunflower seeds has produced a dozen or so competing shoots that need a home. We have collected orchids in dormant state and tied them to trees. Theoretically these will suck up the moisture in the air and flower in a month or two.

I have had a nagging request for some time. Someone wants chickens. The opportunity presents itself when we get a call informing us that a local vet-student has chickens to rehouse. Our friends are bringing her and her family over to meet us on Friday… with chickens. I spend a day building a chicken nunnery tractor. A nunnery because it will NOT be housing any bloody roosters. Sorry girls. The purpose of the tractor element is to allow the chickens to eat all the scrub and insects underneath their home and then we move it along. In this way the jungle floor is fertilized and cleaned progressively and the chickens are safe, dry, fed and producing eggs. Chicken safety out here is something we need to understand better. Pretty much everything eats chickens. Eagles, snakes, jaguar, ocelots, us. They are famously delicious. Have to see how that turns out. The process of building all day in a ginger puddle has left me exhausted. I have been fooled by a few cooling showers and protective afternoon clouds and managed to get dehydrated.

I recover with pints of homemade Jamaica (pronounced “hamica”), AKA cold hibiscus tea, which is a red plant base that we boil up to make a concentrated syrup. Added to a heap of water and ice with lime juice it is as refreshing a thing as we have found. There is an endless jug of the stuff in the fridge.

My recovery is somewhat disturbed by the sound of the cat fighting with one big fat cicada type bug. It’s the ones that make all the racket at night fall. Now they are loud enough half a mile away but having one being chewed by a cat a few feet away is deafening. I drag myself up and grab a cloth. My first attempt at rescue only manages to scare it into a limping flight with its one remaining good wing as it attaches itself to the window screen. It’s bigger than I thought. A good handful. I make my move but it’s too quick and noisily collides with my face and disappears in silence. It’s nowhere to be seen. Mausetrappe and I look at each other in confusion. I feel a scratching sensation and am then startled out my wits by a massive noise in my ear! The little sod was hiding on the back of my neck!! I grab him and throw him hard onto the floor. The cat pounces and diverts the thing under the sink. He is silent again. Not for long. The cat gets him in her mouth. The sound is unbelievable. I grab him. My whole hand is vibrating wildly as it screams. On the balcony I shake the cloth in my hand and I see him shoot directly upwards into the trees. Gone. It’s raining and very dark. Around me there are slowly moving majestic lights. The fireflies are back!!

Mango season is upon us. I was put off mangos by spending a lot of time in Montreal. There was a phase of putting mangos on everything. It was trendy to have eggs and bacon with a lump of mango. Bugger that! I am , however, seduced by the laden local mango trees. Each mature tree produces up to 250 kg a season. We had to consider that when looking at land with a dozen mango trees. Thats literally tons of mangoes to deal with. The little ones taste better than the big ones.

Another welcome return is that of the toilet paper butterfly. This is unlikely to be the scientific name but they can best be described as a lump of toilet paper floating around in the wind. They are bright white and huge. The wings are far too big to be efficient so they kinda flop around randomly and somehow stay in the air. Inelegant but stunning to watch.

The chickens arrive. They are an ugly bunch. Dirty brown with bare arses. Tail feathers are optional we discover. The chicken nunnery is placed outside our balcony so we can keep them under review for the first few weeks. The ground is uneven so we create a rockery around the nunnery to discourage beasts from getting in. The chickens are installed and we decide to keep them locked in for a day or two so they learn this is where they live. Not necessary. Despite the door being left open all day the chickens don’t move from their luxurious perches in the shade. We learn that organic free-range chickens are mainly conceptual. Despite acres of lovely range to be free upon most chickens prefer to stay inside and view the outside from the inside. Despite being agoraphobic & antisocial our five chickens appear happy enough. I have decided to name our nunnery inmates. Sister Kwafi, Sister Pybus, Sister Bricklebank, Sister Allenby & Sister Bland. Any comparison with anyone with similar names is entirely deliberate. Eggs are in our future.

There have been a few nights now of heavy to very heavy rains. In retrospect many things have indicated rains were coming. The lime trees started to bear fruit again and we found a heap of bananas appearing the week before the rains came. We found a tomato growing wild next to the house, the last flower on the vanilla orchid appeared and was pollinated and the roof got fixed, all the very day before the rains came.

The ground is alive with bright glowing red beetles. We spend some hours at the waterfall pools and they are everywhere. Individually they are fascinating but they have a trick. They gang together and make balls of themselves. A bright red shape the size of a golf ball. I have no idea why. It doesn’t seem an efficient love in and there is no feeding frenzy going on. See how long they last. They are harmless and very, very pretty.

There is a phenomena that I was convinced was fake news. If you shine a torch or headlight at a certain angle into the jungle thousands of tiny glowing lights reflect back at you. Every one of these lights is a spider looking back at you. Well I had these lights shown to me a few times but refused to believe the spider story. This was until the tinaco above our tree house sprang a leak and I needed to change out a fitting immediately and the sun was setting. It’s not something you would chose to do without daylight but I had no choice. On the way up the hill my headlight caught a mass of reflections, which I ignored until the tinaco was fixed. On the way down the hill in the dark I decided to explore these tiny lights close up. Unbelievably its true. I got close enough to confirm that the closest dozen lights were indeed spider eyes reflecting back at me. They were only tiny spiders but they shone like diamonds. Spooky.

And with the rain comes the crabs. It’s a famously strange and wonderful sight here in Nayarit to see hundreds of thousands of large pink crabs heading a kilometer for the sea after hibernation all year. If you are in the way it’s described as biblical. There is no avoiding them! We have avoided them as we are just far enough away from the sea. Just. The run to the ocean is over now but the bodies of those that didn’t quite make it are everywhere.

The bugs have changed again this month. We had weeks of tiny little buggers that felt like grains of sand when you caught them trying to nibble on you. More recently there is a medium sized loudly buzzing night time arrival. It’s a good job we have the nets on the bed. You hear them first and then see them head butting the fabric screen loudly. It’s impossible to sleep with these antics so I have taken to punching them off the net. They cope with this tactic rather well. Despite getting a full knuckle punch in their face they come back at you! They have heavy armor that looks like a nutshell. It can take two or three well placed punches to put off a “nut bug”. The cat is far more efficient and crunches them loudly and leaves them in a pile for me.

The Summer Solstice is upon us. The longest day. Tomorrow in the UK Christmas cards start appearing in the shops. It is also the anniversary of the burning of an effigy on Baker Beach in San Francisco over 30 years ago from which the Burning Man event evolved. One of the founders of the event died recently and there is a worldwide acknowledgement of gratitude for the connections this event created. My life would certainly be very different if those guys hadn’t decided to burn something on a beach that day. So to mark the occasion we gather with friends both new and old and knock up a “palm man”. We collect mango margaritas and head to the beach. It was all rather beautiful.

The rains have held off now for a week. What appeared to be the rainy season coming early was actually the back end of Hurricane Bud. The first of the season. The real rainy season is due soon enough. We are preparing slowly.

There is no doubt that Mexico is now a great footballing nation. It only takes a single goal but timing is everything. We watch this goal live from our friend’s restaurant packed with locals. We also endure an hour of waiting for the Germans to equalise but incredibly it doesn’t happen !! Torture to ecstasy. The place goes nuts. Moscow will be out of tequila in the morning. We have the might of glorious South Korea next. Despite the dull as ditch water England performance against Tunisia Jayne’s footballing needs are satisfied. We are, however, asking ourselves if getting up at 6 am on Sunday to watch England v Panama is worth the effort… probably.

Jungle Journal

Ayahuasca Custard

May 9, 2018
by Beave

Vanilla Orchids….. not the easiest thing to propagate. Having climbed the Copomo tree next to our balcony brandishing a the pool cleaning rod to make sure the host vine is heading upwards a certain way then downwards a certain way we wait. Months later we spot the first buds and then flowers. Each flower lasts but one day. During that time it relies on a particularly rare type of Mexican bee to happen across it and pollinate. No pressure. This is far from a certain event. To increase the odds of vanilla pods exponentially we have adopted the role of surrogate bees and have been sexing orchids. Up a ladder with a toothpick may not be obviously sexy but is apparently effective. We pollinate our first two flowers. There are buds for many more so we will be up a ladder with toothpicks doing all the sex for some time. In 6 months we may have vanilla pods . It’s a long and delicate process. How do we ever get enough of the stuff for ice cream ….or custard ….??

Took the time to get beyond the break and float on my back in the Pacific watching birds and sky and sun. It is remarkable and beautiful and humbling. The sea here is so powerful and yet today tranquil and supportive. If I keep air in my lungs I rest on top of the building waves with no effort. I close my eyes and consider taking a floating nap. Sure it wouldn’t last long but it’s entirely possible. Need to do more of this. Floating meditation is the way forward.

The moon is full, the bar is open, the food is cooking splendidly and our guests arrive. All goes in a very relaxed and enjoyable way. Good food, too much wine and a moonlit jungle with the now compulsory black light scorpion hunt. We are now recovering with a heap of over catered left overs, more beer than we started with, an amount of actual cash and enough wine to keep us out of trouble for the next week. There is the satisfaction of a very pleasant evening and the knowing we can cater at a high level for up to dozen people without much drama. We are told that there will be a write up on the night’s activities in the next edition of the San Pancho Life newsletter. This is certainly another potential thing to do to earn a crust when the season starts again.

Jungle wake ups are slow. There is a routine of moving towards the kettle and creating tea while showering that is now achievable with limited brain cell activity and only one eye open. A bucket of tea brings the synapses to life and my mind fills with the strangest of priorities. Do we have water flowing? Is there air in the tires? Any petrol in the tanks? Water, air and fuel. I’m becoming worryingly practical.

The sun is moving overhead and mornings are later and evening stretching out further and further. The solar panels catch sun very differently these past few weeks. Days are getting hotter and the humidity turns the air three times thicker every afternoon. Warm thick air to breathe for the next three or four months. Got to get that needy pool in good order. It saved us many times last year.

My buddies are building a temple on a lake in Netherlands. They want us to join them. It’s the first iteration of the Temple for Peace that we spent so many months evolving last year. Would love to be there to share the load and the laughs. I have foregone the delights of Kiwiburn and Afrikaburn this year and don’t see us making Nowhere, Nest or Burning Man either. I’m not too sad about that as this new adventure requires a different mind set. Over more than a dozen years I have devoted energy, love, time and cash to create the space for some magnificent art. We have chosen crazy places in many countries to build cities, temples, huge scale propane delivery systems, exhibition spaces, large theme camps and much more. With few exceptions these creations were burnt to the ground or dismantled within a week. I have learnt to let go. I’m very good at it, I’ve had a lot of practice. Our project here is different. I’m letting go of letting go… slowly.

Dogs for security. Everyone tells us we need dogs for security. It certainly focuses the mind at night when a pack of dogs starts barking at you. None of them will bite you and most are scared off by a good stare but it’s definitely a deterrent. Tripod is next to bloody useless. He is properly attention seeking and has well practiced “poor hungry me” eyes. The tart will flirt with anyone if he thinks there is food in it for him. We are sure he limps on alternating legs for effect. He turns up now and again and makes a good show barking excitedly at some confused armadillo that might have wandered by.

We have a fair chunk of land to protect so at the moment we are considering at least two (and probably more) large ugly dogs that look mean and sound horrible. They need to be self-reliant outdoor dogs that eat once a week and are protective of us and scare the be ‘Jesus out of anyone else. Tall order even for here. There are very many stray dogs here. A shameful amount. We have had a couple of slobbery candidates directed our way. We are looking for dogs that will thrive out here and do not need too much counseling. None has passed muster yet. The search continues…

The season change is now pretty dramatic. It’s hot. Flowers are bursting out everywhere but at the same time the leaves are falling from the trees. It’s like both Autumn & Spring have come at once. With the canopy thinning so dramatically we can see around us new places and all the birds and a lot further through the jungle. There is now a carpet of leaves drying to a crisp on the hot slippy dust. The palm oil coconuts rest amongst them like ball bearings. It’s a miracle we can stand up at the moment let alone walk around.

We recognize the growing need for the pool to be ready to escape to. The sand filter pump has been working hard fairly often (subject to sun on panels.) It’s the only thing we have that makes even a dent in our “Nano-carbon” batteries which sit happily at 96 % or more all day no matter what else we throw at them. Good job as they cost their weight in truffle oil. We are well serviced for power thank the goodness’s. The pool however is stubbornly cloudy. It’s significantly less dusty and the filter is slowly working but the chlorine fish needs filling and probably some other costly process will be necessary. It’s currently a darkening shade of green. More attention required. It has been foretold by wise folk that lawns and pools need more upkeep than wives. I have a very needy pool that’s for sure.

We bite the bullet and head to PV to collect some cheap tyres for the Razor. They took a lot of finding but are less than half price of anything else we can find. They are 6 ply and many times better than the ones we have broken. The Razor has been on chocks for many days and this has made us a lot less lazy. We don’t drive across the land now but walk. It is a good thing to get more in touch with the land. We notice a lot more nature and wildlife. And jobs that need doing….

We have been invited to a XV Quinseañera party. Our man has insisted we join his family there. His son is the boyfriend of the birthday girl and he has a very important role to play. It’s a very well organized event with lots of traditional happenings involved. In Mexico the age of 15 is considered a very important time for young girls. Families save for years to show off and give her and everyone they know the party of her life. It’s a “coming of age thing”. It is not uncommon for pregnancy and marriage to follow soon after. We arrive at the town square on time. The stage is set for a band and the whole town square is packed with tables decorated in burgundy and gold.

We wait for the families to arrive from their long catholic church ceremony. No one shows so we hide in the pub for an hour. On returning we are spotted and join our man’s mum and a gaggle of kids and family. Still almost all the tables are empty. The panicked looking girl arrives dressed in burgundy and gold. She is shadowed by an equally stressed looking Mum. Slowly oh so slowly the entire town turns up. The band starts. I am surprised the racket that a dozen guys on stage can make. It’s a strange mix of wailing vocals , trumpet, tuba and at least two trombones (played as trumpets) with other bashing things behind them. This is either bloody awful or the best thing ever. I decide to decide later which one.

The girl is looking less stressed now and performs a well practiced dance with a dozen boys all dressed in identical burgundy shirts. Her brother leads her and our man’s son is right up there too. There is a table laden with gifts. There are presentations of dolls identical to the girl dressed exactly as she is. Bit spooky. Flowers are thrown and caught and every male member of the family gets a dance with her. The band are enthusiastically belting out what has become clear is bloody awful music. By 11 pm the place is packed and more tables are shipped in. The endless free beer takes effect and the dance floor starts to fill with some rather entertaining sights. There is a tendency for the lardy in Mexico. It is now published by the WHO that Mexico has officially the lardiest population in the world. This is demonstrated by the happenings on the dance floor. A properly entertaining mix. Some sprightly older folk at least 80 years old (probably older) swing dancing perfectly and looking good. A number of rather large boys practically suffocating slightly traumatized looking girls and sort of jumping together on the spot as the band blares out. Most transfixing is the huge ladies who have in their grip some tiny looking Mexican men who cling on for dear life as they lurch around not entirely in time with the music (if that is actually possible). The finale is the presentation of the girls first “official” high heel shoes. A traditional gift from the father. A sort of permission and expectation go now and be a woman. She looks a bit too young to me but what do I know.

The fatted cow is distributed. We knew the cow as it was one from a nearby ranch that our man slaughtered and spent all day cooking over a wood fire. Rather good stuff. It is served with what is now my new favorite Mexican delight – “frijoles puerco”. It is beans and cheese and chorizo all mashed together properly and deliciously. There is also a bottle of Agave type liquor which the family and many other random onlookers encourage me to drink a lot of. It is a poor man’s tequila but given a good go is still effective. It is effective enough for me to distribute cow juice and beans and chorizo and cheese onto my white shirt in a “look at me” obvious way. Embarrassing. It is confirmed by everyone on our table that we are the only “gringos” non-Mexicans in the entire square of many hundreds of people. It’s OK they tell us. “We are all Mexicans here .” Despite the spiny head and foody shirt that makes us feel rather good. By now we are ready to leave the noises from the band far away and make our way home. Its only 12.30 and we are the first to leave. The young kids and oldest folk are just getting started. The party goes on without us till sunrise.

We have met a number of people who have spent time out here over the years. The most recent is a girl who we heard about many times. She lives in town and had her first baby just about when we arrived so it has taken this long for her to surface. She arrives with us unexpectedly on her horse. We show her around as she shows us around. We go up to the Selva Vista apartment where she spent many years. She is relieved and emotional (in a good way) as she sees what we have created. Those tears are the best endorsement we have had so far by a long way. Before she leaves she shows us the many things she planted before she left 4 years ago. There is the lychee tree and the passion fruit and to our surprise a now mature Ayahuasca vine right beside our Morning Glory.

The important issue of the World Cup has arisen. Much as we would like to see England squeeze past the might of Tunisia and Panama I am more interested how Mexico will do against Germany, South Korea and Sweden. One of the restaurants in town is talking about remaining open just for the tournament and showing three matches a day. That is a huge relief. Wouldn’t want Jayne to go without her precious football.

Jungle Journal

Sprung

April 26, 2018
by Beave

It is without any doubt that spring has indeed sprung. It’s everywhere. And what a movement that was…

Within but a few days the Primavera (springtime) trees around us have exploded with sudden bright golden blossom. That scrawny old tree that had hidden behind everything else has burst front stage in a flamboyant flush of yellow. This display lasts for only a week or so. The Bougainvillea are alive and throwing colours everywhere. It’s an event .

It’s dry too. The ground is transforming into fine layers of dust. The pathways release clouds of the stuff which can be blinding when the sun reflects on it. Large thick roots are revealed as the earth evaporates around them. The rains are coming and we are now experiencing the grip of mild anxiety as we imagine all the landscape flushed of content and guess what might remain.

The humidity is also upon us. It’s been a quick transition between feeling the heat on the afternoon and the heat feeling you. Gets into every crevice. By 4 pm there is little option but surrender. If I’m outside I become a damp pink bloke with melting senses. Best to give up anything mentally or physically taxing. Which leaves little else to do but stay still and indulge in early day gins and naps. The fan has had it’s first good go of the year. Moving air is altogether more acceptable than the still warm heavy damp kind.

The sun has changed altitude and the mornings and evening have extended themselves later and later. There are days when the sun and squawking of mating parrots are ignored enough to sleep late. The sunsets complete their act around 8.30 pm so nights out are no longer ending at 9 pm. The town has emptied of most of the tourists. A steady but slow stream of beach seeking gringos still remain. The snowbirds (those who spend 6 month in Mexico/ 6 months in Pacific NW) are leaving for their long journeys home. Seattle and Vancouver are filling up again for Summer. We share a few last sunsets before they leave. The humidity moves in behind them.

Our mates from SF have bought a place in Los De Marcos 20 minutes away. We go with them to see it and end up at a jazz gig with newest friends. We agree to help mange the place and transform the garden and build a roof Palapa. That should keep us busier. We celebrate with dinner under the stars at our place. We engage in a late night Tequila fuelled scorpion hunt. We have a hand held UV dark light and we prove very quickly that when it hits a scorpion it glows like a light bulb. Have tried this before in Israel and South Africa but the Mexican scorpions are the brightest I’ve seen by far.

This did not help one of our guests. She had returned to stay with us for the second time because she loves it out here. Until that is, at 6 am, when she called us to an emergency. She had been hit twice on the foot by a scorpion that we find in her bed. We fly to hospital and wait there as she is observed for allergic reaction and bagged and given an anti-venom shot. It was her first time in hospital and a bit of a drama but we were soon out having breakfast of raspberries stolen from our white witch friend who happened to be passing by. Scorpions rarely are dangerous but they do give you a “poison trip” for a day or two that can be unpleasant. After she got over it all she went straight to town and had the astrological sign for Scorpio tattooed on her scorpion bite !

There are a very few things that I have avoided since being here but Micheladas is top of my list. I’m not universally known as a shy one and am all about trying new things but the very thought of a virgin Bloody Mary with beer in the same glass just seems instinctively wrong.

Our favorite sunset bar is closing down. Their lease is up and the owners are probably looking to sell their uniquely stunning spot for a hotel or something equally crude. Our Argentinian bar staff/friends who we have seen many times every week since we arrived are moving on. This is a sad turn of affairs and must be marked with a house Michelada. I’ve seen huge glasses of the red-stuff with salads of celery and cilantro spilling from their chili crusted rims pass my head very often. At no time has this tempted me in the slightest. However, in honour of Bar La Fresona and our brief love affair I order one. It arrives showy, resplendent and larger than necessary. The salt and chili flavours are soon overcome with an icy cool flood of tomato and the aftertaste of beer. It’s not entirely revolting. Over the next 20 minutes of sipping and battling a chili flaked celery in the eye three separate friends come over in high excitement to find out why I looked like I had been kicked in the face by a mule. No matter how much care and attention I took to get this this in me without drama it was not to be. For some reason I’m covered in bright red chili salt from hairline to chin. I am in bad need of a shower and a shave. Not my finest hour and I’m in no hurry to repeat it. Farewell la Fresona, going to miss you. Micheladas… not so much.

The season in terms of visitors has changed equally suddenly. We have had full occupancy these last few weeks and spent our days cleaning sheets and floors and greeting folk. I have done the tour of the land many many times. Same questions and similar answers every time. I have discussed this with bar and social hosts many times. How do you deal with being asked the same questions over and over again ? It’s not quite automatic for me but I can feel it getting a bit like that. Our story told in 20 minutes changes and evolves in the many tellings and as time passes. I have to keep an eye on keeping it authentic.

Right now we have no one on the land but us. It’s good. We have the odd enquiry and the very odd booking now and again. We have had a Welshman in a hammock for a few days and a couple of great friends bearing gifts of a new well pump, sheets, towels, car parts, jubilee clips, sewing machine oil and cheese. (Oh how I miss the joy of real proper, bites your tongue and makes you sweat cheese.)

The extra time we have now is a welcome distraction. We have had the space to start the process of planting. Much shifting of earth is required. We move pick up loads of real black earth from a river bed 1 km away to our piles of palms left over from the building. Earth on top and the placement of large river rocks and we have our “hugelkultur herb spiral”. It’s planted with all the seeds. Many herbs, chilies and marigold we smuggled in. Our well is still wet & the new well pump works okay after a repair or two so we may even have enough water for the plants and us.

A day is spent collecting good growing dirt. I remove 4 years of anthill & bat poo that has filled our pool pump house with a carpet of it a few feet thick. Back breaking but we now have sacks of the stuff. We mix this with rotting palm wood and a full load from the river bed. We ninja raid a local stable and make off with a bag of horse shit. This all meets in a single pile under the shade of the solar panels. We are assisted by our hermit neighbor from even further up the hill. He has propagated Bougainvillea for many years. He told us that he spent months growing them locally and then cows ate them all in one day. So we collect the cuttings from a local snowbird on her way home to BC. We create the perfect grow bags from mixing all our offerings together. Good dirt and ant and bat and horse and palm. We dip the snipped ends into white power growth hormone and then each is planted, released and watered. Left to fend for themselves and get big and strong. We now have more than 100 future Bougainvillea of all colours under our solar panels protected from cows. They will one day make the most beautiful and dangerously thorny borders for the fence lines.

It occurs to us that we don’t currently have a single Irishman on our land… it’s been some time.

Our Polaris front tires blew out again for the umpteenth time and the fourth time in a week. It’s now our No.1 expense. We have a crap bald second hand tire on one side but that is so much better than the teabag that is the other. Can’t keep air in it no matter what we do. Even inner tube blew out. So we are saving our pennies to buy new tires and for now Pauly Razor is on chocks. Thank the stars we have a friend here who has been fiddling (in a good way) with Limonada Toyota for the past week. Brakes work and accelerator pedal is reattached and wheel bearing renewed.

Armadillos are noisy buggers. Must be mating season coz they are everywhere at the moment. Didn’t see one for months then all the big ones turn up digging loudly and proudly around the tree house at 2 am. Even spotted one in front of our balcony in daylight. Maybe walk of shame from night before.

We are well on our way to putting our house on the market in Darlington. When that goes through we will be funded for our next phase of creating. Until then it’s the farmer’s diet of tacos and tequila for us. We are living simply and saving costs and keeping busy. There are still small opportunities to make a few quid (pesos) here now and then and we are keeping ourselves up for it.

An unexpected opportunity has somehow appeared on our horizon. We meet new friends in town. They have been retired here for many years and split their time between an amazing house here and an equally stunning property near Seattle. They generously gift us herbs, flower cuttings, curtains and tequila. They and their visiting daughter end up at our place and we produce a makeshift feed at the open outside kitchen in the jungle. We use the oven to roast chicken and we overcook (burn) spuds & vegetables in the fire. Despite this they have waxed lyrical to their friends about us and now we have been invited to invite “them all” out here to a dinner. We have the great and good of San Pancho at our place for dinner in a few days!! They want to pay us for the privilege and take photos for the local news-rag to promote us. This could become a thing.

Jungle Journal

Bromeliads from heaven….

December 31, 2017December 31, 2017
by Beave

The end of another year. Thank you for all your support with donations and adopting trees, bats and bee hives. It’s a considerable help to us and we appreciate it greatly. As do the bees and the trees and the bats.

Strange days continue to happen. It’s Monday and I’m at Oxxo, which is the Mexican 24 hour chain store that appears at every petrol station, and elsewhere. Oxxo do a half decent coffee from a gurgly machine and are useful for milk and ice. The rest of the store seems to be shelf after shelf of biscuits and cookies. It is also where everyone tries to top up their phone on a dodgy touch screen till. It is often a long process followed by disappointment. This makes the queue last enough time for coffee to go cold and ice to melt.

“Juan Juan The Slow Concrete Man“ is not there for his 8am arranged Oxxo pick up. I drink my coffee and wait a while. A guy walks over to me making direct eye contact and talks in a slow drawl of Spanish. I pick up the words for floor and concrete and practically nothing else. I later find out that no one much understands what he says most of the time. We have an odd gesture based conversation and I agree to take him to look at where our concrete floor should have been 3 days ago. I give up on JJTSCM with the idea that maybe he has sent this guy in his place. We arrive and our man is already there and greets this new guy as a good friend. I am confused. They look at me expectantly. I have not a clue what’s going on. I practically drag translator Jayne out of bed to make some sense of it all.

First development is that JJTSCM texts to tell us he is feeling unwell and is hospitalized with chronic apathy. We are thankful we don’t have to fire him. The new guy is a friend of our man’s who we met briefly at a bus stop waiting for our solar frame to arrive. Someone mentioned the floor to him then. He recognised me at the Oxxo while he was on his way to another job for a local dentist. Well the dentist hadn’t paid him so he chanced his arm, sacked off the dentist’s job and jumped in with us. He agrees to return the next day with a crew and skill and enthusiasm and have the floor and tiling done by the end of the week for a fixed price.

We take a breath and recognise that JJTSCM effectively fired himself today and has been replaced with a much better option without us consciously doing a thing. All by 9.30am. We retreat for tea.

Our friend has arrived from Reno and we set out to show him Sayulita and meet up with our favorite Yoga/Pilates instructor who we met on the bamboo course. She meets us and a few tequila based refreshers. Later we go look at the surf. Our Reno friend tried surfing for the first time today and hasn’t quite got the hang of it yet. He blames the board which makes him sound like he’s been at it for years.

We watch too many people not catching waves as the sun sets. It is a glorious evening. I hear my name shouted. It’s definitely my name. I am confronted by an excited guy in hippy pants & sunglasses that I recognise as a friend that I met first in New Zealand, then Israel, then USA, then Spain, then South Africa. He is in Sayulita with his wife who has extended family who have been here since it was a village and own extraordinary seafront property on the hills around us. Sayulita is 10 times the size on San Pancho and packed with tourists so this chance meeting is very random. This day is getting weirder. We arrange to meet him and his wife later for dinner and take an adventure tour around some secret places we are introduced to.

The next morning starts early getting the new concrete crew set up and away. They are strong and fast and have already surpassed JJTSCM’s efforts in the first few hours. Good news.

Today we have a constant stream of visitors. I collect our newly found friends from their stunningly luxurious buildings above the Sayulita sea. We remove them from luxury and add more Rustico. Our favorite friend who smuggled us in shoes and my water pump from Colorado joins us. He brings 5 of his 6 kids, his wife and their St Bernard puppy, which is 9 months old, and the size of me. They bring cocktails and a good touch of disruptive enthusiasm that only a bunch of kids with machetes can do. We manage to remove the machetes from the kids, check them for obvious wounds and off they go exploring. I escape and head to town to capture our Texan friend who owns a restaurant near the beach. She has wanted to come out and see us for months and we have promised her own area of garden to nurture. In the process I collect a very welcome gift of accurate, proper and perfectly simple tequila glasses from dear friends.

We leave for dinner in town as the sun drops to discuss gardens and concrete and friends lost and found. We return to a dark tree house and try out the glasses. They work a treat!

Things calm down a touch but there is a welcome development. We have received our first rent. Our Reno friend has contributed to proceedings in appreciation of the place (and our loveliness clearly). It’s a strange and welcome thing to have a “money in” section in our books. And so it begins.

During the past mad busy few days our man has been noisily attacking our Parota chunks under clouds and mounds of sawdust. What has appeared is very impressive. The wood is now alive with smooth texture & deep colours. Our Parota kitchen counter is ready for the beaten copper bucket/bowl that will be the sink. Our huge round slices of tree/outside tables are ready for setting on logs refined as legs. There is so much beautiful drying Parota we are spoilt for choice. We were in PV stocking up and found similar wood lumps (untreated) for sale at stingingly silly prices. We done good. It’s all going to look epic.

It rained hard again last night. The bouncy splashy wet type for many hours. We are assured this is very very unusual for December. We were caught out and much is wet that shouldn’t be. The vehicles throw films of mud over everything including us. I have a cold. I probably have a touch of ebola mixed in too. I’m being very brave.

Our new concrete man has turned out to be a right character. He is often found a hundred feet up a tree he has climbed just because. He catches huge fresh water shrimp from our streams and juggles scorpions .If he gets stung by one he tells us the cure is to eat it. He has philosophies about pretty much everything and we have a strangely comfortable bond developing. His English is worse that my Spanish and he is, I am told, still fairly incomprehensible anyway. He is a good looking young man, exactly the same age as me, half my weight and twice as strong. It’s a touch depressing.

We are getting regular visits to the land from new people we meet in town and further chance meetings with old friends. We have had South Africans arrive I haven’t seen in years and a friend who I last met ten years ago in New Zealand. She just happened to be staying in town. There seems to be a heap of people from Calgary here too. The waterfalls are becoming a popular destination walk and we are easy to find on the way out so there is a steady stream of folk that happen across us and want to know what we are up to. Our tours of the land are getting practice. It is interesting to see the place through fresh eyes and new perspective. It gives us confidence that we are creating a place and space that others will love like we do.

Plans are afoot. Now the Bodega apartment (Selva Vista) is on it’s way to being finished the BrickSHouse area is our next focus. We can get water there from the top of the hill and revive the shower and install one of our newly built composting loos. We have researched acquiring a number of large glamping style bell tents that can be located on platforms and house queen size beds. There is a contact that has a supplier in China and the budget is not too bad. The idea gains some traction when we realise that our man is offering to build us small casitas with palapa roofs from locally foraged materials for much less and very quickly. We calculate that this gives us the best chance to offer something unique and funky and make decent rent in the shortest time.

We have lost our desire for concrete gate posts and that has moved things along considerably. We now have a gate. It was a tree and now, thanks to chainsaw and skill, it’s a fabulous gate hung between wooden gate posts. This gives us a boundary and entrance to our land for the first time. It’s located at the first entry point to the South side and is a great addition to the mix. Love it.

Our orange toilet block has been bugging us. We have revised our plans to revive the shower and tile the floor. It’s a large space. Too large we think for single loo and a shower. We have, therefore, applied a touch of rethink and have created an outdoor shower on a nearby tree. It’s surrounded by a spiral of palm bark planks from downed trees around our solar array. The remaining blocks of palm will be terraced into the earth to create planting zones. Palm wood does not last long out here and disintegrates quickly into fertile planting goodness. So we will tile the floor and chuck in a few beds and boom! … the orange block becomes another resting area for weary volunteers who need a budget option. The outdoor shower is looking very sexy and set to revive the hot and sweaty by dispensing authentic jungle temperature waterfall.

Xmas eve is spent borrowing an oven to cook pumpkin pies (strange looking squash pies actually) and watching sunset at our favorite beach bar. There was a set from a jazz guitarist & drummer from the town. A professional trombonist happens to be at the bar and joins them. They improvise on John Coltrane tracks. Perfect.

Xmas day comes and goes with minimal fuss. My present is a hand drawn card and I stun Jayne with a parody version of Merry Xmas everyone by Slade on the Ukulele. “And here it is …. our first Xmas in the jungle with a cat. If you’re looking for the perfect life it’s exactly where it’s aaaah-aaaah-aaat !“ …. I’ll save you from the verses. We eat well with friends old and new in town after a particularly lazy morning catching up with family on Skype.

The new bee location has been discovered by at least one Coatis. I saw one on these sticky pawed buggers this morning looking rather pleased with itself. These large raccoon type creatures get into anything and apparently like our honey. They have moved heavy rocks on the beehive roof and taken bites out of the honeycombs. We are repairing and securing them as best we can. The bees are unsettled and one of the smaller hives looks like its been abandoned. We are working on making the place more queen bee friendly and less a honey trap for Coatis.

We have had a very strange and shocking accident. We were in the Polaris returning back to the house from plumbing the apartment. It’s my son’s birthday and he is on face time with me following the journey from our phone. There is a sudden and startling loud crashing noise and something hits my head hard and bounces painfully off my leg. We come to a sudden stop and there are very huge chucks of wood everywhere. We check each other. We are somehow not injured. Jayne runs to a spot less likely to be fatal as I look up and around to assess what has happened. A huge branch has fallen directly onto the Polaris roof directly above my head, which was saved from being crushed by the strength and build quality of the roll cage. The bar above my head has a significant dent in it. The rest of the vehicle is bruised but in pretty good shape considering. The offending log of wood is lying in front of us covered in over a dozen quite stunning Bromeliads. It was probably the weight of them that sent it ground wards. When I’m sure nothing else is coming down at me I haul it from the road. It is very heavy and takes all my strength to move. There are smaller large logs all around us that have broken off the main branch. We look up and see where the branch started from and it’s very very high up. The chances of this happening are probably a fair bit less than being struck by lightening. Our luck being directly under this thing as it landed is questionable. Our considerable luck surviving with no injuries at all is not. We are grateful, humbled and both pretty shaken up.

My son and his friend have watched this happen. They are wondering if it was a set up just for them. We are all delighted that his birthday did not include seeing his Dad squashed flat live from the UK.

We take the rest of the day off. The sunset looks particularly pretty and the margaritas are just that extra bit delicious.

Our plumbing is done and waiting to be connected up to a tinaco and our new hot water shower looks well posh! The concrete battery house is nearly done and there is so much in the pipeline for the next few weeks. We have three new palapa roofed cabins in production and a crew from Sayulita (our first real work party) arriving after New Year to give us a full week’s work on the white house. The apartment is getting there and on track and we will be offering the “gypsy cabin” up for AirBnB as soon as the paint drys . Progress… poco a poco.

San Pancho is full of folk now. It’s in post Xmas full swing. Sayalita is unbearably busy we hear. People enquiring about renting the Polaris stopped us in the street. We are mending the bits that the tree broke and have added a “rent our Polaris” page to the website and are sorting out the web of knotted red ribbons which is Mexican commercial car insurance. It’s looking a lot more likely we will actually get a real live punter soon!

Amongst our discoveries when clearing up all the places here are filthy old note pads, drafts of books and a roll of various architectural plans for septic tanks and buildings. It is fascinating to read lists of costs and materials from 8-10 years ago that are so similar to the ones we are creating today. Amongst the bat guano stained pages are letters to guests/friends who have outstayed their welcome and hospital bills for treating Scorpion bites. This bonds us to the folk who were here before us. It reminds us that others had dreams for this place and some were realized. Locals have told us that when Richard (an ex NFL player) was building the tree house and the pool he made the whole place incredibly beautiful. All to attract his wife down to visit from California. He died here but left a strong legacy, which we greatly respect. His carpentry work that remains is outstanding.

We discovered that five years ago a girl called Mary setup a treatment retreat for recovering drug addicts here. It was based on the premise that taking a locally strong hallucinogenic called Ibogain cured addiction. There is much written in credible scientific journals about the effects of Ibogain C₂₀H₂₆N₂O (originally African in origin) to help heroin addiction. We continue to learn how that all worked out. It was a controversial venture that did not win unanimous local support or sympathy we hear.

We both are looking back at how our own lives have played out these past few days, weeks and months with some incredulity. This year we have been around the world at least once and have had some extraordinary adventures. We returned to UK in July in time for the Glastonbury Festival (my 27th time and Jayne’s first). We then decided to pack up our lives into 11 bags and a surfboard and move into a tree house in a far away jungle. This was not the plan when we woke in San Francisco, USA on New Years Day a year ago planning to build another temple at Burning Man. That feels like two lifetimes away. I have been in Mexico now for coming up to 4 months. This is the longest I have been in one place since I can remember. It’s a very good thing.

Happy New Year.

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.

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

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

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.

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.