Lo De Marcos Archives - La Colina Project

Bees, Bribes and a touch of Silence

February 20, 2020February 20, 2020
by Beave

It’s been some months since our bees were scared away by a particularly impressive lightning storm. We have had our feelers out ever since to attract a queen to our newly refurbished bee homes. There is talk of a swarm causing some issues in a large mansion on top of the highest hill in San Pancho. There is further talk of destroying them so we decide to intervene. It has been agreed that we go along and attempt to save the swarm by relocating the queen to the jungle. We arrive as the sun goes down when the bees gather together for the night and are relatively calm.

The mansion is huge with very high ceilings and unfeasibly large glass windows. A British guy and his 2-year-old daughter are renting the place. They breakfast outside every morning and have bees falling out the light fittings above their heads constantly. We find a ladder, set fire to the smoker and suit up. The swarm is hidden from sight in the upper eves of the house and the only access we can find is via the tiled roof. Its precarious and somewhat hilarious. We are fully suited up with limited mobility and very poor visibility. We find ourselves in the dark, inelegantly balanced on loose roof tiles on top of the highest house in the town. What could possibly go wrong?

We hold onto each other for a modicum of safety as we lay flat on the sloped roof so as not to break the clay tiles or slip off and end up at the bottom of the hill some hundred feet below. The swarm is large and only accessible by pushing a gloved hand through a hole in the wall into the mass of bee bodies in an attempt to locate the queen. It’s during this process that the bees sense something is not quite right and start taking an unwelcome interest in us.

Handfuls of confused bees have been shoved into a black bin liner which they clearly dislike. The buzzing noise inside the suit is loud and we feel a few stings on less protected areas. It has become clear that the queen is very smart and has hidden herself deep in the cavities between the roof and the outside wall. It’s a mission impossible to be able to reach her without destroying large sections of mansion. We release the ungrateful bees from our bag and abandon our positions. We transverse the roof as quickly and cautiously as possible followed by a large number of rather pissed off bees. We smoke each other until the bees back off a bit and all arrive back on the ground thankfully safe. We need to find a better plan to encourage queeny to come out and be captured. More research required. We console ourselves with tequila and engage in a spontaneous game of ping pong in the mansion basement.

Time has overtaken us again and Pauly and Emma are heading back to the frozen UK. We are grateful for their company and their efforts. Emma’s agricultural engineering department leaves us with three newly restored garden areas. Pauly has left us a repaired and well tested jungle jeep along with kitchens doors and Yorkshire Gold tea.

After dropping them off at the airport I head home through a busy area with way too many traffic lights. Stopping at lights here is quite entertaining. There are the usual car window sellers who will try and persuade you that what you need more than anything else in the world is a large map of Mexico, bin liners or a plastic mobile phone holder. While ignoring these temptations there is often some skinny lad painted silver balancing on a rolling log with one leg while spinning a football on the other while juggling machetes with a further football on his hat and another on his chin. It’s impressive stuff. All that effort for a few pesos. The lights change and I throw coins into the silver guy’s hat while accelerating away. I notice some pretty lights behind me and it takes me a while to realise they are for my benefit. The traffic police have decided to stop me for a chat. I struggle to stop the car and surreptitiously remove all the cash from my wallet and hide it under the seat. Guests have just paid me a bunch of cash and I can’t have them see it and get any ideas.

I wind down the window and explain to the podgy face under an official looking hat that my Spanish is still in process but I will do my best to cooperate. He takes off his sunglasses and tells me that not only was I travelling way too fast but I had jumped a red light. It is clear that I did not jump a light and that it is unlikely that I was speeding. The game begins. He tells me that he needs to confiscate my driving license until I return to the local police station and pay both my fines. I ask him if he would do me a great favour and save me some time by accepting the fine from me in cash right now. He pretends to think about it. He tells me that each offence carry’s a fine of 3600 pesos. That’s a total fine of 7200 pesos please. That’s 300 quid or 400 dollars. Cheeky twat. I manage to keep a relatively straight face. He is prepared on this one occasion to accept cash from me and he will return my license. I know that the actual fines are a fraction of this and so am prepared to let him keep my license if it comes to it. I explain that I am but a poor gringo despite the Toyota and don’t have anywhere near that amount of cash with me. I show him my newly emptied wallet and the 650 pesos within. I empty it on the passenger seat and give him a “take it or leave it” look. He exchanges a knowing glance with his partner and begrudgingly throws me back my license and takes the cash.

EntreAmigos is the local community centre that is does amazing things. It’s been running for many years offering education, recycling., library and support for families and children in the area. They promote ecological consciousness within the community offering workshops and classes all year. We are all rather proud of the work they do and want to support them in any way we can. Most of the funding required to keep things happening is raised in one single evening. The great and good and naughty of San Pancho gather for this fundraising evening. We are invited to join friends seated at a table. Tickets to this event are eye wateringly expensive but we agree as it’s for a very good cause.

The whole event including all food, cooks, staffing and auction items are provided by donation, sponsorship or volunteers. I am required to help set up in the morning. The venue is an almost over the top beautiful beach front club with infinity pools and stunning heavy wood chairs and tables. It’s these hundred or so chairs and tables that it is my job to remove. It’s sweaty work but we are all in good spirits. Whales are rising off shore as they head South. We watch them as we work. The event itself is very well attended and a great success. Great food, music, and dancing. The auction raises over $10k alone. There is a satisfying community feeling of a job well done.

Despite the minor irritation of the highway construction team nearly killing our friends with their latest explosion it appears that they want to give it another go. On this occasion, they give us fair warning and install a lady with a sign at our gate to prevent anyone coming within range. This time the explosion is less of a surprise and the rocks fall a little short of us.

The engineers have assured us that they will not be on our doorstep for long. Since the New Year we have had machines smashing their way noisily through the jungle every day. Only after our complaints about them trying to kill us did they stop the night shift. It is somewhat ironic that we are disturbed by the shrill electronic scream of reversing heavy machinery. One of my first ever jobs was to introduce reverse alarms to the UK. Reverse Alarm was the first company I set up and the first product I designed and manufactured. I am responsible for the existence of tens of thousands of these bloody awful things. I’m finding it difficult to blame anyone else for our current suffering.

Two sets of guests have had to cut their stay short due to lack of sleep. It will be sometime next month that the big machines move away from us. We then get some respite from the horrible din until the next lot turn up to actually lay the highway. Maybe 6 months away we hope. When the thing is actually completed we are not expecting much intrusion at all. It will be another little used toll road which is thankfully fairly incline free so we won’t be subject to the horror which is airbrakes. When the night is still we can hear the fart of airbrakes from the hill into San Pancho. That’s near enough.

Businesses in the area have all raised their games (and prices) in the past few years to service the growing tourist market here. We are blessed with outstanding Mexican food, fresh seafood and more recently some more traditional steak & burger offerings for the well-heeled Canadians and Americans. There are a couple of missing elements. We would just about kill for a good Ruby. (Ruby Murray was a popular Irish singer in the 40s and 50s and her name is commonly used as slang for curry in certain parts of the UK. ) There has been a general lack of Asian food in the area. Jayne has even been giving cooking lessons in making Indian style curries as an attempt to fill the void. In recent weeks, our lives have been significantly improved by a couple of new restaurants we have found. One is a Thai place that can actually offer authentic versions of classic Thai dishes. The other is a Moroccan offering with extraordinary delicious babaganoush and slow cooked lamb. Both these places are in Sayulita which is usually a bit too busy for us and best avoided. This changes things. Too tempting not to make the 10-minute drive down the highway and endure 30 minutes finding a parking spot.

We have been nagged for many months to burn something on a beach again. It’s about time so we agree and set a date and forget about it for a while. Time has a way of getting away from you if you’re not paying attention and we realise that somehow it’s already February! Planning for this event has been notable by its absence. There has been talk of creating a wall …… but gringos building walls in Mexico doesn’t seem right somehow. There has been talk of constructing bridges … but gringos burning bridges may give the wrong message. We always have our trusted Coconut Lady Man symbol to fall back on. We have decided to play things by ear and allow a “design” to evolve. We start the process of collecting wood and tools while roping as many people into help as we can.

The word is out and there is good level of enthusiasm which manifests into a solid crew of helping hands. We pile up all the wood, grab some string and a few tools and open the beer cooler. We set about creating our wall/bridge/Coconut Lady Man hybrid. The following day we load up a convoy of vehicles and head for the beach. We drag huge lumps of drift wood and add it to the pyre. We balance our make shift bridge on top. We dig into the sand a series of large wooden cut out letters that spell the word JUNTOS which is Spanish for “together” . We throw up a palm wall and erect our Coconut LadyMan. Design complete. The theory is that the wall will burn down very quickly revealing our bridge and the fire will glow through the cutout letters overlooked by the Coconut LadyMan which will burn last. That’s the theory anyway.

We have had a call from the local batala samba drumming group who turn up in force and start things off. When they play the drum the people come. As the sun drops slowly in the afternoon sky people start arriving. We are at the very far North end of the beach so it’s a good walk from the town of Lo De Marcos. More people arrive. By the time the sun is hitting the water and we are ready to burn there are over 150 people of all ages. It’s a good mix of locals, gringos and a few tourists. Probably twice the number who made it last year.

We fuel up the structure perhaps a touch enthusiastically as our carefully thought out burn plan evaporates as the thing bursts immediately into flame. The walls do indeed burn quickly and reveal the letters and the bridge. Almost all the letters glow spelling out the word JUNTO which is actually a 17^th century British political faction but we assume that no one will figure that out. The bridge falls followed by our magnificent LadyMan whose coconuts burned off rather rapidly. The whole crowd watch the whole burn in absolute silence. It was a great spectacle for everyone and very emotional for some. There is magic in that silence.

We danced around the fire until late into the night. Thankfully everyone was incredibly respectful of the environment and took all their things back with them. The next morning there was not a single beer can or spot of trash. The official environmental assessment after the event was that we left the place in better shape than we found it. That’s a very good thing. Gives us great hope and inspiration for next time.

YOU are indeed exactly where you are supposed to be

Jungle Journal

Snake Tricks & a Flying Robot

August 19, 2018August 19, 2018
by Beave

The trees are magnificent. Empowered by rain they wrap around each other for support while extending branches of thick foliage across the sky. Perfectly lovely if you are not a solar panel trying to avoid shade. A group of electric guest fans, a couple of fridges and some cloudy days have taken their toll on our batteries. The fact we have a very limited sunshine window and growing tree shadow is less than helpful. Our heavy generator is brought into the battery house and plugged in to top them up. The trees around the panels are getting careful attention as we decide which of the branches 150 foot off the ground are going to get it. There is lopping in our future. We put the word out for someone brave and daft enough to take this on.

We have been gifted a number of obscure objects over the months. Amongst the haul are two very distinctive shaped machetes from the Revolutionary Army in Columbia. They are considered less tools than considerably effective weapons. Originally they were part of the FARC armory before there was a weapons amnesty. Subsequently and corruptly the collected weaponry piles were sold on to buyers in USA. We were gifted them as an American friend headed north. We have found an alternative use for them. When sharpened the heavy multi-faceted blades are very effective in destroying the endless growth that is overtaking us. Our standard machetes will take off the leaves and shoots but leave the roots. We are effectively pruning the buggers and making them stronger! Our FARC versions take the whole of them out in one go and scatter them elsewhere. Brutal but effective. Good luck coming back from that! Everyday I carry one with me wherever I go and, poco a poco, the paths are clearing up and the jungle is, for a very short period of time, tamed. False sense of achievement I suspect.

During one of my slow journeys through one of the jungle paths I am slowly clearing the worst of the greenery that is right ahead of me. I scatter a few tiny palm start-ups into the bush, which in the corner of my vision moves in a very familiar way. A few feet away from me is a dark green snake of significant size. Its black and white head is a foot above the ground and very still while looking straight at me. In contrast there is a whip lizard flicking its body wildly around as it vanishes at great speed down the snake and is rapidly fully swallowed with the exception of the very end of it’s tail that stick out the side of the very contented snake’s mouth. We stare at each other motionless apart from the odd twitch of the lizard’s tail. I reach for my phone to take a picture but I don’t have it with me and for a fraction of a moment I divert my eyes. The snake vanishes. It was right there and now gone. The bush moves slightly directly in my vision and the snake reappears like a vision. Exactly in the same place and in the same position. It hadn’t moved but had vanished and reappeared right in front of me. A snake with an invisibility cloak?? How do they do that!!??

I have watched snakes do this a number of times here. I found a modest size python curled up in the pool house and because I had thick gloves on and was hot and sweaty and in no mood to be buggered about by a snake I picked him up and threw him out into the bush. I then watched as the thing uncurled itself to its full length and make a slow movement by which it dissolved into the ground and vanished. I looked for it for a good while before giving up to extraordinary camouflage.

I am at the pool and I hear Jayne making noises from the tree house that sound a little distressed. Nothing too panicked but certainly some form of unhappiness. As I get closer to the source I hear the word “snaaaaiyke”. I get to the balcony armed with traditional long machete and see a good size green, blue and black snake poking its head out of the plants with a surprised looking frog in its mouth. Half the frog has turned a disturbing yellow colour so the snake is most likely poisonous. I put the end of the machete blade under the frog and lift the snake’s head upwards. I follow its body through the plants and can see that most of the snake is hanging over the side. By lifting its head its weight shifts backwards and both snake & frog fall off. I instantly look over the side and see absolutely nothing. I return to underneath the house exactly where it fell. No sign at all although at all times my machete is very much at the ready.

Bananas have ripened and we are ready to create all things bananary. Jayne is less than delighted.

It’s officially over 25 years since there has been so little water falling from the skies in mid August. In 3 weeks time we will have been in Mexico for a whole year. At that time last year San Pancho had a foot of water flowing down the streets and the arroyos (rivers) were full enough to stop us getting out here to our land for a month! Today there has been no rain at all for nearly a week. No gut wrenching thunderstorm for many weeks and all the rivers are dry. There is ground water. Thankfully our well is full enough and our new pump delivering up to a tinaco full a day (which for us is outstanding). For everyone without a well this is not good news at all. Unless we all start the dry season with full wells and good water flow in the rivers there will be huge issues down the line. We are dancing for rain right now.

While we make good with our water and fill up all our tinacos there are some repairs to do and some pumps to install and general maintenance stuff on the to do list. There are many thousands of large biting ants in endless marching lines that criss cross the jungle floor. They regularly chose to march exactly where I am working and bite my feet to make some territorial point. It proves how humid it is that even the shortest climb into the jungle is so completely exhausting. I return from very light work completely bitten and scratched and mucky with sweat. I have found an added fun experience to avoid. The ground has hidden within it large and very strong thorns. I managed to get one to go entirely through my sandal and half and inch into my foot mid jungle climb. If a ginger man screams abuse in the jungle and no one is there to hear does he make a sound?

Sister Allenby has followed Sister Flowers into the chicken jungle black hole. We are down to three jungle chickens. Jayne insists they have both fallen in love with local roosters and eloped. My theory involves slightly more violence and a snake and/or an eagle. The remaining brood are properly freaked out so have likely witnessed something traumatic. We need to encourage the survivors to nest in their house and not the trees. It’s safer and I’m not climbing trees to collect eggs that may or may not appear in the future. We relocate the house in a clear open spot and after much buggering about mange to get them locked in. A few days of house arrest should reeducate them, google has told us.

There is a common effect of coming out here and staying with us for a while. Be warned. Folk don’t want to go home. It’s slightly more than end of holiday blues. The space and pace here are seductive. Returning to an overpriced, overworked society where ones values can’t be expressed and ones expressions are undervalued is not easy. The politics above the wall doesn’t help with motivation either. So we get a good amount of good people wanting to be our neighbours.

The search for land/property is a well trodden path here but it’s not easy to navigate. Almost everyone has a story about buying land and some of them are sadly pretty tragic. There is a real need for independent honest trustworthy guidance to get through the red tape of owning property in Mexico and not get screwed. Estate agents work on USA style commissions. They get a whopping 4% of the value of the sale from the seller and a further 4% if they act on behalf of the buyer too. That’s a big lump and so the temptation to get sales complete at any cost is strong. There are many locals (Mexicans) who do not trust the system and sell directly. Anyone can act as agent in any sale in Mexico. No training or qualifications required.

In our time here we have been offered many plots of land and have quite a portfolio that had developed without trying. We also have a growing list of potential buyers that know and trust us. We also have very effective contacts that we trust in the industry that can get us all the information any buyer needs (but doesn’t know they need) faster, cheaper and more accurately than by any other means. A team of us are in discussions about how to offer these services that we are finding are greatly needed.

This coincides with a change in the way things are generally administered by officialdom. In the past week the six officers in charge of agreeing building permits in our area have all been fired. It’s not uncommon for building permits to be agreed with the help of a donation and the paperwork issued but not registered. In these cases the building work does not have genuine permissions and the documents are useless down the line should there be any real inspections. Expensive business corruption. The new AMLO anti corruption promises appear to be happening. Proper officials are being employed to do official properness in Mexico! Now it’s not who you pay donations to but more who you know that’s important. It’s a well needed and popular change.

Drones bloody drones. Drive me nuts. Whining, buzzy, oversize flying pests invading your privacy unannounced, without permission and unwelcome. They appear on the most deserted beaches and idyllic spaces just to make the experience worse for everyone except the entitled twat who is making his video.

That said with extreme reluctance I have to accept that they have become quite amazingly evolved bits of robotic engineering and they can take images that are highly impressive. Our mate arrives from South Africa via the rest of the world on a very large motorbike with very limited luggage and a brand new drone. It’s compact, sexy mate black, sleek and has anti collision lasers and remote self steadying probes installed in every orifice. It has the invaluable added feature of being reasonably idiot proof . It takes flight and hovers in our faces a few feet from the balcony. It won’t come any further as it has sensed idiots and won’t land at our feet. I reach out and grab it to pull it in. It’s motors and rotors rev aggressively and the thing pulls away from my grip in an escape pattern. Idiot proof.

It takes a surprisingly short time to use up all the battery life and the SD card with images taken from a few feet to many hundreds of feet away. We respect the thing for its elegance in flight and for clearly being a lot smarter than any of us. With a good number of edits and a search for un-copyrighted music we can use in the background (there are algorithms on social media that catch you using copyrighted music they tell me !!) our mate creates for us a short video introduction to La Colina. We like it a lot. I still want to train hawks to take drones down on every beach but this little flying robot was a lot of fun for while. https://vimeo.com/285364199

Digging in 90% plus humidity is a short lived activity. I get motivated to create or modify a drainage trench and set about it with shovel and pick with as much energy and enthusiasm as can be mustered. It’s usually about 10 minutes into smashing the rock filled earth that the dizziness sets in. The warm soupy air that I’m gasping for seems to contain more damp than oxygen. I breathe the wetness hard into my lungs as all the fluids pour quite literally from my body soaking the ground around me. Enough. I stick my sodden shirt to the balcony to dry and limp to the shower where I exchange my sweat for fresher stuff. I put a towel on the bed and lie down aware of the itchy burning heat on my skin mixed with the entire lack of energy or enthusiasm. Mausetrappe jumps up and grabs my legs while chewing at my feet. She is also overheated and slightly crazy. The largest electric fan we have is directed at the bed and revives us both very very slowly. This process can be repeated many times a day.

We hear again of a dear young friend who has passed this week. Died at his home in California of a seizure after a weekend surfing with friends. It’s very sad. Counting our blessings everyday.

Our favorite pub/bar that is currently open closes next week till mid September. Endless Summer is a bar in Los De Marcos about 10 minutes up the highway. It’s a Canadian branded place with lots of TVs showing all the sports the Canadians care about (hockey) and does a passable Poutine. For non Canadians that is the posh French name for a plate of chips and gravy with cheese. Authentically cheese that squeeks audibly when you bite it but that is a rare thing outside of Montreal. It has a dartboard with terribly bent darts with loose flights so that’s traditional. This bar has the major advantage of having a very high concentration of good people so the lack of draught Guinness and premier league football is forgiven. We are on our way there now to offer our support and assist with reducing the stock levels.