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

Find Older Posts

Recent Posts

  • All Good Things February 27, 2025
  • Death of a cone, birth of a Temple and Tourette’s flu. November 4, 2024
  • A little madness now and then ….. October 26, 2024
  • Mostly Different May 30, 2024
  • New Year New Bananas February 9, 2024

La Colina Gallery

A beautiful lotus growing in our pool
Currently more of a pond…
Jungle Journal

Six Months in the Jungle

  • March 25, 2018March 27, 2018
  • by Jayne

Living in a treehouse, clearing and cleaning jungle out of living spaces, the swimming pool and everywhere else, close calls with trees and bees, gaining a Maustrappe and losing weight… A lot has happened in just six months.

Maustrappe the jungle cat.

It’s been just over six months since Beave and I applied to become Mexican residents and moved to Mexico. It’s been just under six months since we took possession of “La Colina”, and started living in 3.5 hectares (8 acres) of jungle just outside San Pancho, Nayarit.

We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, and we’ve worked very, very hard.

Jayne and Beave being the gate to La Colina in Sept 2017
Welcome to La Colina – March 2018
Cleaning out the sky casita in November 2017
Inside the Sky Casita now

 

The bodega and sky casita in Sept 2017
So much jungle!
All cleaned up!
Washroom before the renovations
…and after

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Checking out the well when we first arrived
Now pumping water!
The pool when we first found it
That’s better!

 

Back when it was just a Brick Sh*t House

Now a three bedroom open air glamping jungle retreat

And we made it into this
Viewing deck for stars and birds
Outdoor kitchen
One of our glamping cabañas
Quiet and peaceful

 

Our intention of building a place using sustainable methods and materials, permaculture principles, full of art, which will be self-funded by hosting guests and creating value on the land is becoming a reality much quicker than I had thought possible. Back in the summer, as we packed up our lives in England and prepared for the unknown, I’m not sure where I thought we’d be now, but it wasn’t with five cabañas and casitas rented out and living fully off-grid with solar power and hot water showers from our well!

We moved to La Colina at the end of rainy season. The palapa roof on our house has three major leaks. We learnt to put buckets in the right places. We had no power. Just a few headlamps and solar lights we’d brought from the UK. We bought brighter lights, and a generator to charge them. At first we used a small cooler with ice to keep a few things cold, and soon upgraded to a chest freezer with the bottom filled with ice, it was clear that a more permanent (and much quieter – that generator is LOUD) solution was needed.

We were introduced to Frank, who is a retired firefighter from the USA and now installs solar systems in Mexico, where he lives with his wife and twin children. Frank designed us a solar system and we took the (very expensive) leap in October. We ordered 12 solar panels and a space age set of batteries, inverters and controllers from Outback.

Then we waited.

We’d been told that the hurricanes in the Caribbean and the associated “disaster dollars” had bought up all the off grid solar systems in stock.

So we waited.

My dad came to visit for three weeks and helped us wire up our house ready for the arrival of the fabled solar power.

Christmas came. Christmas went.

And still we waited.

We bought a single solar panel and hooked it up to this Amarine-made 24V Submersible 4″ Deep Well Water DC Pump we bought online. Best $125 we’ve spent. That pump pumps water up a massive hill to fill 2500 litre tanks without missing a beat. When it’s sunny, it’s pumping. Now we just need to see if our well goes dry before it starts raining again…

Wiring up the solar panel to the well pump
That time when we made water flow uphill!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And still we waited.

Our friend Alex came to visit and started building our composting toilets, Beave and my sister continued the good work. We had learnt from seeing raw sewage flowing into the ocean in Sayulita and having to lug all our water up the hill to our house, that using water to flush poo down the drain is not the way we want to live. Inspired by The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure, we built ourselves five wooden boxes with toilet seats on them, into which we place buckets with a bit of sawdust in the bottom.

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

These are what we, and everyone who visits La Colina, use to make our deposits. After each use more sawdust is added to cover the business and keep the smell away. When the bucket is full it is emptied into our compost bin, and the cycle begins again. In a couple of years we will have beautiful compost for our gardens, and no sewage will have polluted the local rivers or oceans. The cycle of life, looking after our planet.

And still we waited.

Since the day we moved to La Colina, our neighbour Rogelio has worked with us. We would not be where we are today without him.

He and his son (also called Rogelio, but lovingly referred to by his family as “Burro” (Donkey)) help us with pretty much all aspects of our land. In particular Rogelio Sr is a genius with a chainsaw. He made our gates, stairs, and so much more with just a chainsaw. We feel privileged to call him our friend, and to help provide his family with a living. It’s what La Colina is all about, providing abundance for us, our friends, and our community.

Our man at work
Rogelio y Rogelio Photo: John Curley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My sister arrived for a visit, followed shortly by my parents and then my brother and his family. At one point in January we had nine people visiting at once!

And still we waited…

The Davidsons and Co in the jungle

One of the reasons we wanted to live here is so that we can welcome our friends and family to visit us. Having so many visitors is both a great pleasure and a jugging act. It was wonderful to spend time with my family, who I don’t see often. The number of visitors we have means that we need to have online forms to collect information about when people want to visit and what skills they want to share, and to keep a calendar of who is here when, and where they are going to stay.

It is also a balance between being very social and having time at home to ourselves. I find that if I spend too many days and evenings out working hard then socialising I run out of energy and get grumpy (poor Beave takes the brunt of that). I am learning to make sure I get some evenings at home, spending quality time with Beave and looking after myself. Sometimes this means leaving our guests to their own devices for a time, which is not always easy. I’m working on learning how to get the balance right and not upset anyone in the process.

Mid way through February we swapped my family for Beave’s. Over the space of a few days my family left and Beave’s son arrived with his girlfriend and two more friends. We installed them in our newly built palapa roof cabañas and put them to work.

Miguel sanding
Varnishing the beautiful parota bar
Jake Tending Bar
Location of the La Colina Grand Opening Party
The New bar at La Colina

We’d been in touch with our solar designer throughout this time, and now, four months after we’d ordered the system, there were finally rumours of our equipment being in Mexico.

After overcoming some issues with the frame for our panels not being quite level, the panels were installed.

Aren’t they beautiful?

We met some wonderful new friends who offered to come help us. We put them to work laying hundreds of meters of cabling and conduit from the batteries to our treehouse, the bodega and the cabañas. This is backbreaking work, and we can’t thank them all enough for their help. Even Nicky, one of our first ever paying guests, helped lay the cabling!

Some of our stellar cabling crew

It was the 22nd of February, 2018 when we finally switched the solar power on. We had silent light in the treehouse. We bought a fridge the next day.

After such a long wait it was great to finally have on demand power. There was also however a feeling of loss. The days of living by the rise and fall of the sun, of candlelit evenings, of a simpler life were gone. It was an important lesson to us both that living without modern day essentials is not only possible, but very enjoyable.

Recently we’ve wired in power to the Sky Casita (thanks to our good friend Kevin), the Las Palmitas Cabañas and the Jungle Cabin. I felt the most proud of myself I have in a long time when I switched on the power to what is essentially a three bedroom house, that I had wired myself, and it all worked. I am very grateful to my father for teaching me electrics and so much more in life.

One of my favourite aspects of living in the jungle is achieving tangible successes. Picking a chili off a plant I’ve grown from seed, watching a tank fill with water on top of a hill, plugging a light into a socket I’ve wired and having it work – these give true feelings of achievement. I can’t help but feel that the lack of physical, tangible achievements in so many office jobs is part of the reason so many of the people I care about are feeling disenfranchised and disillusioned. Getting your hands dirty, learning new skills, and enjoying the fruits of your labour are fundamental parts of being human.

I invite you all to visit La Colina and experience the joy playing in the dirt can bring.

These have been some of the most fascinating months of my life. It is amazing how rewarding building, making things work, welcoming guests, living in nature, and settling down in a beautiful jungle paradise (full of biting creatures and falling branches though it may be) has turned out to be. I am so fortunate to have Beave as my partner in this endeavour, we make an excellent team.

It is difficult at times to be away from family and friends, and to balance “work” with “me time” while living and working in the same place. It’s a constant act of juggling relationships, friendships, responsibilities and relaxation. But really, we all have that same juggling act no matter where we live, or what business we are in.

At least with this home, and this way of making a living, we can invite others on the journey with us. Our guests, our family, our friends, our community, our volunteers and our staff are all so important to us, and they all benefit along with us.

Come play in the jungle with us!                photo: John Curley

 

La Colina Project

Who Flung Dung? By Linda (Jayne’s mum)

  • February 20, 2018
  • by Alan Davidson

Jayne’s Mum, Dad, Brother and Sister all came to visit La Colina in January. Here’s a guest post from Jayne’s mum Linda.

———————————————————————————-

 

After driving 4595 km from Calgary, we arrived at La Colina late one January afternoon, Alan and I were hoping to surprise Jayne and Beave as we were one day early. Instead, they surprised us by not being there! We set up camp.

Following closely on our heels, were Sam and Taryn, the motorcycling duo from Australia.  We had hosted them in Calgary as couchsurfers last July. (rideto-theend.com)

Our daughter, Heather, and a Romanian from Switzerland, Andrei, were already here. Then Philip, Kelly and SnakeJaguar flew in three days later, so now we were nine camper/volunteer workers enjoying a reunion with each other and Jayne and Beave in the jungle.

Lots to do and we all sweated the days away woodworking, plumbing, sewing, painting/varnishing, cleaning buildings, fixing the truck and generator, and preparing for, and erecting, solar panels. The busy days were often followed tasting Mexican fare in the little town of San Pancho, or neighbouring town of Sayulita.

 

Sewing Cushion Covers

Heather’s Banjo Bathroom Counter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Playing with SJ

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mr. Fixit Philip working on Truck Brakes and Generator
Solar Frame Installation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heather’s boyfriend Julian and Kelly’s sister and family joined Beave and Jayne and the whole Davidson clan for an evening out in San Pancho.

No sign of scorpions, snakes or other scary jungle creatures (except for Beave in his baggy work pants!), but there are beautiful colourful butterflies and birds in abundance at La Colina.

One of the Mexican workers caught an armadillo one night and his son brought it to show us, carrying it by its tail!

 

 

 

After a few days of cold, outdoor showers (which Beave assured were good for us!) Alan hooked the shower into the Bodega’s tankless hot water system and we all became instantly squeaky clean. Philip, Kelly, SJ, Alan and I, set off for town in the Razor ATV.  Part way along the dirt road, we came face to face with a cow which couldn’t make up it’s mind which side of the track to allow us to pass. Finally, it chose to turn sideways, completely blocking our path! Continuing on, Philip drove through a fresh cow patty – a gift left by the obstructing cow, no doubt! The newly cleaned Razor, Kelly, and I, got completely splattered in dung. We were not amused!

 

Jungle Journal

UK Surf & Stings

  • February 9, 2018
  • by Beave

It’s been five months since we first arrived from Manchester airport and only four months since we bought the land and started this project. All things converge and conspire to humble, surprise and delight us in equal measure pretty much every day. We have had, as expected, a hectic January with many comings and some goings. February is bidding fair to be equally mental.

Jayne’s parents arrived middle of January to join her sister and they have all been dutifully deployed ever since. They drove all the way down from Calgary pulling a tent trailer packed with all the stuff Jayne left at their house before she left on her motorbike 4 years ago. Our house now has posh cups and plates. All the notably jankier bits and pieces have been replaced with things from Jayne’s time in her flat in London. Proper upgrade.

For the past few weeks there has been much cleaning and fixing and creating delivered with great enthusiasm and skill. They head on the long road home again next week in time for us to have a couple of precious essential days of space to ourselves to restore our aching sanity and make plans for our next influx.

We get a sudden instant booking for the jungle cabin. She arrives the very next day. We kick out the current tenant (Jayne’s sister). Much busyness cleaning and making good all the things. Gas is plumbed and sheets are laundered and floors are swept. Cushions are sewn and counter tops are lined and lights are hung. We await the arrival of the girl from Bristol. She doesn’t show up. Much confusion until we check and discover the booking is for next month.  Not the best start at hosting… Anyway the place is in good shape for our next lot of visitors arriving the next day.

   

We acquire a number of outdoor tables and chairs from town. They are much needed but are bright red and coca-cola branded . We de-brand them & deploy cans of Copper and a CP3-0 gold spray paint . Works rather acceptably. They are much used.

Jayne’s brother, who she shared her motorbike adventure with, arrives with his girlfriend and insanely cute one-year-old daughter SnakeJaguar. I will leave the story of how she got such a kick arse cool name to Jayne. I’m sure she will get the time and energy to blog soon.

 

There is a strange legacy that is manifest on our land from an experiment to introduce citrus fruit to this area. In the 70’s the Mexican president who had great affection for San Pancho (and his mistress who lived there) made a deal with a large Japanese company to introduce orange , lime and lemon trees to the area. At the time the local crops were predominantly Mango and Palm Oil. The Japanese built a series of warehouses that still exist (now community centers) and started growing citrus trees. What happened in those warehouses is not fully explained but things got a little mixed up. The result is that we have trees here that bear strange fruit. Oranges that taste and look lemony. Lemons that look like limes. Limes that give lemon juice. There are advantages. A slice of orangey-lemon-lime in a gin and tonic works a treat.

As the Swiss family Davidson contingent here expands further we are also joined by an Aussie couple on the same motorbike journey Jayne took with her brother. Alaska to Argentina via La Colina. Both are engineers. He is a civil engineer and she is clearly an uncivil one. Poor sods park their bikes and are dropped right in the thick of it.

Our solar frame needs concreting in at exactly the right angle of the dangle for the maximum photon catching efficiency. The ground on which it sits is at a different angle in all directions. The frame itself has legs at 3.6M to 2.6M all of which need to be dropped into accurately placed holes of different sizes and secured permanently at an angle of 17 degrees to the sun. All this and leave enough room underneath to hang hammocks in the shade.   They agree to take this on and create sums, drawings, formula and numbers, string lines and marks. We bring in our concrete guy who now has the whole plan translated for him. Chances are this might just maybe work out OK. Perhaps.

 

Our Romanian friend arrives in the night. He lives in Switzerland. We have known him for many years from the Nowhere Festival in Spain. He brings me Slivovitz in a plastic water bottle smuggled from Eastern Europe. This stuff is an extraordinarily efficient plum brandy that has been known to considerably shorten many of my favorite days (in a good way). I’m saving most of it for when there is a smaller more appropriate audience. He delivers Swiss Chocolate to an excited Jayne and pitches his tent. We spend some good days balancing work and sunsets. He and our Aussie bikers are inspired to dig up a mountain of rocks behind the cabin and create an outdoor en-suite toilet area that we designed but hadn’t quite got around to building yet. Looks fab and will make staying there a whole heap easier.

Our concrete guy is still finishing the concrete floor of which we are now unable to speak about without making a bad face. It’s taken a huge amount of time and money and stomach lining to get it this far. It’s level and brownish but we are over it. So very over it. Our man spends 3 days cleaning the thing and sealing it to make the best of what we have. Stairs are reinstalled and we move on.

Photo: John Curley
Photo John Curley.

Concrete man’s wife is very grateful that we have taken her man on. She has a number of his ten or eleven children (he is not sure how many he has) and so any income is greatly appreciated. News is that she has been making cookies and edible Mexican delights for us for days. She arrives with some of the kids and delivers boxes of cream, strawberry, pineapple & chocolate treats. She and the kids stay a few days on the land happily sleeping on the shelves in the battery house (cell). We count 15 people living on our land tonight.

Photo John Curley.

Excitement. We find out that one of my favorite photographers ever has arrived in San Pancho. We have met a few times briefly at Burning Man so I make contact and agree that he and his girlfriend visit us here. He is retired now and looking around for further adventure. We spend a great day inspiring each other and I have a spot of hero worship as he brings out the camera and starts capturing what we see everyday with his unique eye. This blog includes many of his photos. If it’s a good one it’s almost certainly one of his. Going to see a great deal of each other in the future. Good news.

Photo John Curley.

I spoke to my Dad on the phone. Good to talk to him. Afterwards I make a sudden and important decision to take a flight home. The week in the UK was stunning for a number of reasons. The first was the January cold that came as a considerable shock to my now soft and timid constitution. My furriest and warmest of bikinis are no match for January in the UK. My clothes that we put aside to cope with such an eventuality are packed in a hurry and I soon discover they are 50% mould. I do not smell the best.

I am collected from airport in Manchester and after an essential top up of Guinness for breakfast I’m deposited with an especially naughty friend who I have arranged to cut my hair. I have been cutting it myself and I think I’ve done a great job. She does not agree. I am told that I stink and must immediately have a bath and only then will she mend my head. My first bath of the year. Absolute bliss.

I have a few  jet lagged happy days in Darlington. I visit  my house, which is rented out, to prepare for new tenants and collect essentially important things we did not have space for first time around. These things end up being lots of art, some shoes and a hat. I notice that my love and attachment to my old home in Darlington has faded. It holds all the memories and still a load of our stuff but now is just a house.

Really good catching up with so many proper friends in such a short time. I visit my brother, my nieces and my folks and go to my first ever funeral. I stay with my daughter and more proper friends before heading home. I have two new mould free shirts that were hurriedly bought for me while I  was in the pub as the mouldy look apparently just wasn’t cutting it. My poor mother has spent many hours removing every last spore from all my remaining things. I have managed to squeeze in a further two baths and my suitcases are full to burst with my full luggage allowance of art, shoes, a hat, Yorkshire Gold Tea, Marmite, Strong Cheese and HP sauce. I’m sorted.

 

It is somewhat interesting to note that I do not feel that I have been home for a visit. I feel that I left home on a visit. After only 4 months here that is a surprise.

Home again and straight back to it. I am immediately in a Materiales buying lengths of steel to strengthen the solar frame. I arrive back to see Jayne’s brother carrying a lump of metal across a field onto our land. I have gatecrashed a project to raise the water pump solar panel up high on a gate post. One of the bigger jobs on our list. The old solar frames in the neighbouring land have been taken down, dragged away and recycled into something that will work. Task achieved and tested. We have a functioning water pump and we now don’t fall over the solar panel propped up against a rock.

 

Jayne’s brother and clan are leaving for a few days down the coast. Back for one day later this week. While I was away the truck broke again and he thankfully fixed it. We now have a hand brake and the gearshift sort of works. Result. The truck is now officially called “Limonada”. When life gives you a lemon ….

 

Couple of friends arrive from Calgary for a week in the jungle cabin. They are also engineers. They also are dropped right in it as they arrive. The solar panels were concreted in nearly correctly. The nearly bit is costing us a heap of cash in additional leveling bits to fit the panels. The solar panels are now in the battery house (cell) where our concrete guy is no longer. They require a perfectly flat space to land on. Our frame has one leg two inches too high and that is not good enough. Our new engineers and I set about cross bracing what is there and repainting it to look as sexy as we can. We also repurpose some 25 feet lengths of water pipe we found in the jungle and plan to trench through the rocky ground to create conduits linking the frame with the battery house (cell). Solar panels will be launched in just a few days time.

The casitas are coming along really well. The BrickS*House is plumbed in with a shower and sink on it’s way. That whole area is going to be stunning. The casitas are rustico but rather pretty. Their shaggy drying out roof fringes overhang the palm bark walls and large mosquito screen windows. The views are beautiful. A new walkway through the jungle from the BrickS*House area to the front gate has been cut. We will build composting areas here next week. We have met some new friends from Oregon who have just moved down here who get what we do and are keen to help. Not sure they will love us so much after digging rocks out of a composting hole for some hours. There is a phenomenon here that whenever you dig a hole 2 feet deep you get 10 feet of rocks out of it. Magic.

  

Had a surf this morning in Sayulita with Jayne’s brother. So good for my mind and soul and perfectly timed. I’ve been living at such a pace that taking the time waiting for waves and feeling the ocean again was a real gift. We both caught a few good rides. I arrive home irritatingly self satisfied. That did not last long.

We decide to suit up and burn some cow poo and go collect honey from the hives. We go back to the source of the bees to collect more hive parts, pollen traps and other beekeeping useful things. I am, this time,  all in white and armed with cow poo smoke and a real head cage. I approach the hives confidently even after being warned by our man that the bees were feeling “brave” today. Brave indeed they were. Each of the very many tiny black grip-dots on my whitish gloves had a bee on in in full attack mode. I am stung a dozen times on each hand in no time at all. It hurts. I bugger off.

I make it back to the pool and remove my head cage and soak my swelling hands in the water. I take a breath and watch Jayne and her sister both suited up in pro-bee suits walking past me and both covered in bees. The bees are not getting through the suits and decide I am a much easier target and attack. I am instantly surrounded and stung countless times. They are in my hair and my head is getting very sore. I move for the smoke but this just pisses them off and they go for me again. I make it up the hill in a smokey cloud of poo and bees and into the house quickly. Inside I find sanctuary behind the mesh doors. I remove the remaining bees from sleeves and hair. I take an anti-histamine, reach for the Mezcal and declare no further interest in honey. They can keep it.

My son Jake arrives from Dublin with his mighty girlfriend and a grand mate very soon and we are preparing as best we can for that. The diary is getting packed. Our modest little cabin has a number of Airbnb bookings now, and we have a fairly continuous stream of visitors booked through to April. We will be adding three casitas and the apartment onto our Airbnb portfolio very very soon so that will make for extra fun and games juggling friends and paying and non paying guests. This is what we have created so there is no moaning about it that anyone wants to listen to. It’s a touch overwhelming but it will be good moving into the guts of a tourist season to see how we fair. We have a lot to learn .

Photo John Curley

                               .

Previous posts

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

Copyright La Colina Project 2018
Theme by Colorlib Powered by WordPress