rain Archives - La Colina Project

A beautiful lotus growing in our pool

Currently more of a pond…

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

Nature, Idiots and Bloody Nora.

September 1, 2021September 1, 2021
by Beave

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jungle Journal

A Dream Gift & High Tide Burn

June 30, 2021June 30, 2021
by Beave

The Cirque de los Ninos is showing signs of life again. The circus school in San Pancho has been supported by the mighty Cirque de Soleil for many years and has been spoilt by being given access to world class equipment, training and resources. The world has changed, of course. Cirque de Soleil has just emerged from bankruptcy post –pandemic and has been sold. Its future is uncertain. A much-anticipated massive Cirque de Soleil theme park construction is currently on hold 40 miles away from us in Puerto Vallarta. No idea what the future holds for them but our little town’s little circus has somehow survived so far.

The kids’ extravaganza show has again been cancelled this year but hope is that it can be revived next year. For now, they are offering acrobatics and circus skills training open to anyone a few times a week. Jake has been sucked into their circus ways and is training to throwing himself around like a champion. We are also presented with small community shows. A few wildly bendy contortionist dancers hypnotise us for an hour of swinging about and contemporary dance moves. It’s all highly impressive.

As Jake is chucking himself about I am lured into the community gym which is sited right next door to the circus venue. Within are a few local boys who are properly skilled Thai boxers. The fastest of them is a highly skilled fighter and coach. In my distant past, I did a spot of martial arts. Amongst the many and varied bizarre adventures in my youth was a spell fighting in the streets of Bangkok in staged Large Farang v Tiny Thai bloke street fights. It was a betting game and fixed outcomes but we put on a good show. Invariably the win was to the little guy. The Thai boys and girls and especially the boy-girls were incredibly skilled and fit athletes with shins like iron bars. They regularly broke full coconuts hanging from trees with stunningly powerful and accurate flying back round house kicks. You don’t want to get your head in the way of one of those. I’m distracted by such memories and in a fit of nostalgia somehow agree to train Muay Thai amongst the younger, fitter and faster.

I turn up at the hot humid gym with a feeling of impending doom. It is with some relief that I find there are large professional pads that we will use to avoid breaking each other. In my head things slot into place easily and I’m kicking and punching away in no time. Body, however, appears to be unable to get up to speed. Within half an hour my arms don’t feel like they are part of me and I’m unsure how I’m still standing up. It’s at this point I get to hold the pads for three, three minute rounds of getting battered by someone half my age. Lucky me. The pads absorb a good percentage of the power but there is enough left to whittle me down. Then it’s my turn.

Three minute rounds. Full power punching and all the kicking. One torturous minute after another then another. Three of them. Half a minute rest. My body is leaking all of its senses, I’m sucking in air noisily, attempting to drink water with shaking hands in a foggy haze. Round two. It goes on. And On. Another half minute to try and make sense of all the spinny things then round three. It ends. I am stunned into a deep silence. Not sure I could speak if I wanted to. My arms don’t work. I can’t reach up to scratch my head. What I truly know is that the older I am the faster I was.

I am often asked what I miss about my former life in UK. It’s a good question. People aside, for a moment, the first few obvious ones are Draft Guinness and Greggs Steak-bake. Less obvious but equally true is the loss I feel by not having a bath in my life. Baths, for many precious years, were my sanctuary. Bubbles and candles, a duck or two. Pile of Sunday papers. Radio and importantly no water shortages. Endless top ups. I miss that for sure. Baths are not a thing here. We tried and failed to check into a hotel with a bath (just to use the bath) but there are no hotel rooms with baths. It’s a limited water, hot humidity, swimming in sea, shower culture. You don’t see baths very often but when you do…

When I saw the bath in the flat my mate Tommy is living in I went a bit daft. It’s a free-standing claw foot enamelled bathtub with high round back. It’s also very deep. I have a fighting chance getting very wet in hot soapy water. I spend a long time and lot of effort dropping way too many hints that I need to try the thing out. Tommy is away for a few weeks but on his return, I’m booked in. BYO bubbles.

It’s raining again. As soon as we drop in the cistern and fill her with water the rains come. Typical. Tropical storm Dolores comes at us full force then changes its mind at the last moment and heads West. Missed us by 8 miles which is close enough. The wet is, however, upon us. The cicadas scream their wee heads off at sunset, the pressure drops and it rains. We have seen our very first firefly. His zillions of mates are on their way. Can’t wait.

We have had mixed success with keeping the rain away with roofs. Our new treehouse roof is fabulous and we are only damp due to our humid sweating, our stuff remains dry even when the weather gets proper knarly. The rest of the ageing palapa roofs are less efficient. One has a hole in it, another a sneaky but significant leak, two others have further sneaky leaks and one we are assured is OK. By balancing on ladders and origamiing black plastic sheeting with dry palm fronds we mend the leaks and patch the holes as best we can. We smugly retire for the day and wait for the rain. Our leaks are clearly solved.

The next morning we hear that the cabana who’s roof was reported as OK has had problems after the latest overnight downpour. It’s the one we didn’t get to climb over. Probably best we didn’t. By some misunderstanding our Mariposa cabana has not been checked for termites in a while. The result is a few million fat termites and a roof where half the timbers have the tensile strength of toilet paper. The termites have scoffed the lot. It’s not a terminal termite lunch but near enough. The rain has made the old absorbent palms very damp and very heavy. The whole thing could collapse given a slight nudge. It’s clear our Argentinian friend needs to change location until we can get a team in to fix it. This is the incentive she has been waiting for. Guadaloupe, our live-in gardener girl, has decided to move back to the land of flushing toilets and windows. She has moved into a place in town… with a boy!

Further, more careful, post rain surveys make it clear our roof situation is far from useful. Despite painting the wood with nasty goop to keep the buggers at bay, the termites have stubbornly found their way into all sorts of hidden roofy places. A close pass from Hurricane Enrique throws enough water our way to prove beyond doubt that all five roofs we have (other than the new one on our treehouse) need proper attention. One requires completely replacing, three need reenforcing with plastic sheeting and fresh palms and the other needs a few more of our origami leak fixes. We don’t have the luxury of our usual prevarication and get on with the jobs as fast as the gaps between the rains allow.

Much as the world is wet our lives have become surprisingly dry. It’s a very natural thing here to take a tequila offered in welcome when you see your mates. It’s rude not to have a cold beer after doing sweaty work. Sunsets have margaritas attached to them. It’s an almost compulsory accessory. For reasons, I’m still not sure of (as I can’t quite remember how we got into this) we have all decided to be aware of what we drink in June. Or not drink alcohol. Or drink less alcohol or something like that. I approached the challenge as I did when I decided I was smoking fags too much.

I was getting on a flight from LA to London and realised I was unable to smoke for a lot of hours. I had just got back from nearly two months in the deserts of Nevada where I had been busy and awake for most of the time and smoked constantly. After a good few too many hours I notice I have had no cravings at all and my body was actually enjoying the rest from inhaling smog. This surprised me greatly. On paper, I was supposed to be climbing the cabin walls by now. I made a deal with myself that if I wanted a fag I would have one. But I would really have to want one. Not just smoke habitually.

I haven’t wanted a cigarette enough for over 8 years now so I make another deal with myself. If I want to drink I will have a drink. Anything I want, whenever I want it is OK. But I must really want it. Not drink by habit. I haven’t wanted an alcoholic drink enough for 29 and three-quarter days so far. Extraordinarily I am not missing it that much. That’s odd. I’ll see how it goes. No pressure.

Due to not learning from experience and having a VPN on our phones. We have been drawn into watching Euro 2020 (delayed) football. We see England win a game for a change and stupidly we take the bait and set out for an amazing day watching further football. By no logic and not much critical thought we decide Scotland v England has to be a good game. We waste that part of our lives drinking ginger beer and watching a bunch of Americans in a bar watching and commenting on football. It is far more entertaining than the match. We lose the will to live and remember the feeling of anticlimax and mild disappointment that is the feature of supporting most teams. Certainly England. No more football. That’s a lie.

Unbeknown to me Jayne gets a telephone call when she is in town by herself. This gives her the opportunity to make further calls and organize what is to be a memorable afternoon. She arrives at the treehouse and gathers me to go on a mystery tour. I am curious but also deeply suspicious of this behavior. I almost reluctantly get into the sub. We collect Jake who knows more than he is letting on. We then end up at my strange mate from Preston’s house on the beach. He takes us all into his new posh big V8 truck and then off the Pemex to collect Emma who has travelled in from Sayulita. I haven’t got a clue what’s going on but it’s clear I am the only one.

We find ourselves at the security barrier which protects the gated community where a number of our mates live. We park up and all walk towards Tommy’s place. Tommy and his son meet us and lead us up to his apartment. The owners have sold up and the new folk are due to move in soon but are having the whole place renovated before they do. I’m led up to his apartment with floorboards ripped up and the bathroom gutted. Tommy stands me in front of beautiful shaped thing wrapped in cloth. He removes the cloth and presents to me his gift of the bath from the apartment. Somehow, he has negotiated with the builders and acquired this lump of delight, to gift it to me. He is a top, outstanding, handsome, kind, lovely, splendid bloke. Absolutely my absolute favorite. To be fair, I kept making such a bleating fuss about the thing he probably just wanted to shut me up.

It takes five blokes and a good smattering of expletives to lift the immensely heavy iron casting to the huge V8 which transports us into the jungle where my bath is heaved to rest onto blocks we have laid out in front of the treehouse. There is much celebrating. Every time I leave the treehouse I am presented with my bath. My beautiful, beautiful bath. I can’t wait to buy bubbles, candles and ducks.

Summer Solstice is here again. Our compulsion to burn things on beaches started 3 years ago on this very night. There is a break in the weather and we are blessed with a day without rain. It’s enough time to transform another of my failed chairs into something resembling a janky coconut lady man. A matching janky base is masterfully constructed. Precious dry wood is collected. Fuel accelerant is stashed away. We decide to construct something pretty on the rocks in front of Tomatina’s bar in Lo De Marcos. We load everything in our cars and head beach-wards.

Again, our plans are somewhat thwarted by nature. It’s a high tide. Very high tide. The beach is getting eaten away at great pace. By the time we are considering unloading our dry wood the sea is at our ankles. Everyone has been washed from the beach and the beach itself has all but vanished. The sand sucked away to return another day. Not only are the rocks impassable but there is not a dry spot on the entire beach. High tide comes at us hard and dents our hopes of burning anything.

We return from scouting out alternative less accessible dry sand but find very little. There is a spot but it’s a hike. Especially carrying a janky coconut lady man, his/her base, fuel and a bunch of dry wood. A glimmer of hope appears. Thanks to a beautifully executed charm offensive by Jayne, Tomatina’s owners agree that we can set up our burn kit directly in front of them on where now a receding tide is threatening to leave our dry wood dry. It’s well after dark before the sea and tides look trustworthy and we have the confidence to assemble our solstice offering.

Its dark. The sea is far from peaceful and continues to threaten to disrupt proceedings. The fire is going well but a random wave could easily snuff it out. The long foamy fast waves race up the beach towards us getting mockingly close. The water is almost touching the fire. By sheer Canute telepathy we hold back the tide with pure will. The sea retreats and our latest Coconut Lady Man is silently consumed by flame. Perfect.

Photo Credit : John Curley

Jungle Journal

Touch of rain

October 30, 2019October 30, 2019
by Beave

In the past months, we have dealt with a high number of infrastructure issues, the jungle jeep, the burglary and its aftermath. Whatever has needed attention since Jayne left in the past months has , of course, been down to me . I’ve spent what I considered was a surreal time in Toronto until I spent the best part of a month at Burning Man. Most of the time in-between I have been dealing with preparations for what comes next and firefighting what nature has decided to throw at me. It has become apparent that I have been considerably busier than I have realised. I have made a pact with myself to slow down a bit. Smell the jungle. Watch the butterflies. See more sunsets.

I let myself down pretty quickly. The solar system is running terribly and keeps cutting out during the night. It’s 4 am and I’m awake. I’m hot and sweaty and breathing in the thick warm air. It’s impossibly humid and pitch black. The lights are out but worse, much worse the fans are off! The sweat flows slowly and constantly down my body. I am miserable in a warm puddle of myself for long enough to realise I’m not sleeping again and grab torches and clothes and head out to put on the generator.

It’s a good rule that we don’t walk through the jungle at night. We are too low down the food chain when the sun goes down. My understanding of this is overruled by my need to sleep and breathe. Walking very slowly and carefully through the overgrown pathway to the solar battery house focuses the mind beautifully. I can hear every noise and my eyes are straining to catch any movement. There is no moon. It’s very dark. I manage to walk into a few spider webs. The webs here are vast and sticky . They cling to your head glueing their contents into your hair and face. I spit the bits out and carry on. The ground is soft from the rain. Thin strong vines are everywhere and wrap around my ankles in an attempt to pull me over. It is with great relief that I arrive at the battery house door without being eaten.

I pull out the dead weight of the generator and fill it with fuel by the light of the torch between my teeth. Everything is plugged in and ready to go. I grab the starter cable and give it a strong yank. My arm flies backwards and I end up on my arse in the jungle with the handle in my hand and my torch some feet away in the dark. It’s somewhat disorientating. The starter unit is busted. I recover myself and work my way down the steep slippy hillside to the Bodega to get tools to fix it. When I finally work my way up and over the hill again I am soaked to the skin with warm sweat, covered in vegetation and a good quantity of fair size bugs attracted by the torch light. I remove the starter cover and duck sideways as a long strip of metal fails to hit me in the face by not much. My motivation to struggle on in the dark is leaving me. I gather all the parts I can find that are now scattered far and wide. I struggle to lift the fuel filled generator back into the solar house and head for home to better assess the situation.

Missed me by inches this horrible thing.

Dawn is an hour or so away but the air is no less thick and warm. I try and rewind the sharp metal strip spring into its plastic housing with absolutely no success. It’s effectively impossible. I give in and take a series of showers to survive the heat until daylight.

The morning is spent finding a generator starter-unit fixer. There is tell of such a bloke outside La Penita and I drive up to find him. I find a ramshackle shop stacked with mowers and generators and chainsaws. A very tiny, dirty young guy called Alan greets me nervously. He explains in great detail that the handful of part I have brought him are stuffed and he needs to see my generator. This is communicated mainly but the medium of mime as his Spanish accent is unique and delivered at incredible pace which I use as an excuse for not understanding a word. In the weeks since this first meeting , he and his identically tiny, dirty young brother have fixed two generators, a chainsaw, a mower, a water pump and two weed whackers for me. All for a handful of beans. Alan is my new superhero.

Caitlin our Australian caretaker has moved on. Probably the inability of the Australians to beat Wales at Rugby again that finally did it. It’s not the easiest to follow the Rugby World Cup in Japan from Mexico. Kickoff is usually 3 or 4 am so you have to be keen. After the match, it only took her a week to find the strength to leave Mausetrappe and head South.

She has somehow managed to ingratiated herself very effectively into the local community and a band of mates turn up in the jungle to give her a sendoff. It starts to rain hard and we all congregate in the palopa next to the bar and around the orange block. The trees are lit up and there is a DJ playing till the solar system finally gives up. Inside the tightly packed palopa a large piñata shaped as a beer bottle emerges and Caitlin lays into it. To her and (almost) everyone else’s surprise the whole thing explodes and covers the damp, tequila filled crowd in flour.

September has been unseasonably dry. The good news for me is that the roads & rivers have been passable so getting in and out has been as easy as it ever was. A year previously we were crossing raging rivers on ropes. I have been quite concerned our well would not fill and we would have to make contingency plans to gather enough water to get us through the dry season. I need not have worried. October started with hurricane Lorena followed by a tropical depression Narma. Much as Lorena came close enough and dropped a steady 20 hours of moderate rain upon us Narma properly moved in.

A tropical depression sounds like a tough day after too much tequila rather than a scary hurricane so we didn’t really have the usual precautions in place. It’s about 4 pm. I’m pottering around when it starts. It’s a sunny beautiful afternoon filled with bird song and butterfly’s then the sky darkens almost instantly. Within minutes blinding lightening is striking very close all around and the intense crashes of thunder are shaking the treehouse. The amount of water than is dumped is impressive as hell. For the next many hours, I can see only a few meters out of the windows through what looks like a vast waterfall. I can just make out a proper brown torrid river flowing down our hill. The noise is deafening. Despite my best speakers on full bore I can hear little else but the rain hitting the roof. This is as much rain as I have ever seen in one go. I didn’t think that was possible having been through monsoons in India and Thailand. Mexico for the win.

It’s not till much later the next morning that the intensity of the rains stops enough that I can leave the treehouse to assess the damage. There is a full-on new brown river running past the house. I am wearing rubber wellies to my knees but that’s not good enough. I’m slopping around ungracefully with wellies full of water in no time. I’m nearly taken off my wobbly feet a number of times. I struggle to reach the casitas that have thankfully survived well. Somehow I stay upright in the fast-moving water. As I move past the casitas I find my water trenches overflowing with silt and half the road down towards the gate washed out. Deep striations filled with new foaming river. The tiny stream that was dry a week previously and usually meanders slowly in front of our gate is now unrecognisable. Its meters wide , fast , deep and raging. There is no way across. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.

I work my way to the gate side and note a large number of broken branches scattered around the place. The lights that were suspended above the round parota tables are on the ground and are in a sorry state. I look up. The landscape has changed. The orange block roof is covered in huge branches. The outdoor shower is completely obscured although clearly in many pieces. Something dramatic has happened and it’s hard to work out what exactly. There is no way up the hillside which is covered in downed trees. The ground has a coating of leaves that reach above the knee when I try and walk through. The big clue is that there is a significant lump of brand new sky visible at the top of the hill. A 20-foot shard of wood has appeared pointing to the sky. I manage to climb around the mass of downfall and reach the hill top above the solar panels.

The first thing to greet me is our internet cable that was previously buried beneath the path . It is now entirely pulled out of the ground. The huge new wooden shard is in fact a root from a massive tree that has toppled down the hill landing just a few feet from the orange block. Our cable is now attached to the highest point of the root. Way out of reach. This beast of a tree is lying on the hillside. When it stood it was around 100 feet high. Its size and mass has destroyed half a dozen other trees on the way down. Some of these are big enough to have had their trunks smashed in half but still stand. Others are on the ground with branches contorted at all angles. There are two that are worryingly sizeable that are suspended many feet above the ground. It’s not a safe place to be.

Thankfully its only me trapped out here. If this had happened 24 hours earlier then this would have landed on Caitlin’s party. Doesn’t bear thinking about. Tragedy averted. No flour dipped bodies to recover.

Orange block battered and shower smashed

I share photos of my little incident and the raging river outside my gate with friends in town. In return, they send me images of San Pancho entirety underwater. People literally floating down the main street! I am lucky enough to have adequate stocks of essentials and settle in for a few days of solitude.

It has taken a couple of weeks to chainsaw my way back to relative normality. The flattened shower is uncovered and awaits repair. The damaged water lines are fixed and internet has been restored. The hillside has been cleared enough to get access to the solar panels and batteries. The solar rig has been refigured after finding a few dodgy batteries buggering up our system and is now working well again…….time to relax ?… maybe?

It’s October in the tropics. It rains pretty much every night. It gets horribly hot . The humidity is famously inhuman. There are however many distractions. Dozens of fire flies dance around the mosquito net at night. Impressive to even the most jungle weary . The quantity and variety of butterflies are stunning. They follow me around apparently attracted by the salt on my skin. On the other hand, I’m coming across the occasional less sexy creatures. There are snakes coming out of the wet undergrowth, a few large hairy tarantulas crossing the path in front me, remarkably huge scorpion eating whip spiders and hornets. Hornets. My least favorite of beasts. I’ve spotted quite a few hornet nests and dealt with them but the sneaky buggers have had their revenge.

Stunning varieties of butterflies follow me around . Found a number of this type in the treehouse.

‘Canklays” Whip Spiders: Our Scorpion eating friends

Bad news. The lightening has scared away our bees. The hives are located in a clearing a few hundred meters from our house close to the casitas. I have had lightning strike very close to me a few times and embarrassingly have dived for cover (far too late) more than once. A friend from town has asked to relocate two swarms at our place. I check out the area and all seems well. Happy bees. We arrange to meet up and add to our bee stock. Two days of storms later and I get a call to say both his swarms have vanished. At least twice I have seen hits very close to the hives so I go and check them out. They are abandoned. Not a single bee left.

There will be other swarms in our future so I take the hives over to the parota tables and spend some time slowly preparing for new residents. I clean out the wax and repair the wires. It’s a satisfying job only made painful by being stung by a hornet in the leg. Hornet stings hurt. A lot. They only sting if threatened and almost always protecting their young in their nest. If you stay around the nest they keep stinging you till you get the message. The correct strategy is to run as soon as you are stung to get out of the sting zone. I leap from my chair and start the hunt for the nest. I check under the table, around the bar and scan the trees. Nothing obvious. Slowly I retake my seat and carry on with the job in hand. My leg throbs.

I get up again to reassemble the newly renovated hive. This time I’m stung twice. In the same leg. I swear loudly and swat the general area with my hand and connect with one large hornet. There is another on my foot. Another circles menacingly around my head so I limp away as fast as I can. I return cautiously and kick over the chair I’ve been sitting in. There it is. An active nest under my seat. For the past hour, I’ve been sitting on top of a hornet’s nest full of hornet grubs. I deal with it aggressively.

After considering my luck that I have not been more seriously attacked (or lack of it having sat on a nest in the first place) I set about cleaning up the bar area of broken branches, leaves and weeds. A few minutes into the job I am stung four more times. Too quick for me to hop away. Two on my good leg and two more on my sore limp one. I use my machete to upturn all the dozen wooden chairs around the tables. There right in front of me, under another chair, is an even bigger nest again full of hornet grubs. I make my way to the Bodega and collect a poison spray that I save for very special occasions such as this. My legs are dysfunctional. They carry me around like broken candle sticks. I deal with the hornet nest without mercy and call it a day. The hornet poison is making me feel very odd.

The signs are there. I need to slow down . The hornets stopped me for a day or two. I’ve had over a week out of sorts with a irritating ear infection & the added joy of food poisoning that felled me. It’s the first time I’ve had to deal with Mexibum for a long time. Our Jungle jeep is threatening to be ready soon with new roll cage and bull bars and even seat belts. Everything important here is working again. I can’t do much more now till the rains stop. I’m allowing nature to set my agenda which in many ways is a blessing. Let’s see what she has in store for my immediate future. Hopefully not a lot. Jayne is back in one month’s time. That gives me a month to stop charging around so much, deal with the oppressive heat and rest up. It’s what October is for …. I am learning .. slowly.