The Pyramid Project
The Pyramid Project |
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Daily News - December 2007
29 December 2007 Carpenters Progressing Well The site this afternoon...
Everyone has got their heads down and are working hard. With Matthew back in the States for 6 weeks I am back on the News Reporting. I might not get as much time on this as I would like but I will continue to present the main facts and project progress every other day - Julio
27 December 2007 Work begins on Central Structure Today the first 3 carpenters started work, tomorrow 2 more of their colleagues will join them. They were keen to get started and are very competent individuals. Below we can see them working with a few other guys I have on site. They were moving the beams and finding where exactly to build the Pentagram Swimming Pool...
Sometimes I sit on the beams and think of all the people swimming in the swimming pool when it is built. If you swim out the middle of the pool and look up you will see the very top of the pyramid such is it's design In other news, 150 more Topa arrived in the night followed by 50 more at lunch time today
25 December 2007 Merry Christmas Here from the Pyramid Project, we just want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. This time next year we will be having Christmas dinner in the Pyramid Restaurant...
...and you all are invited!
24 December 2007 Shaving the Remocaspi We lifted the 7m Remocaspi out of the water and stripped the bark revealing the beautiful wood underneath. This wood will eventually be used for the Swimming Pool Pyramid. So far the Pyramid Project's construction has been focused on the building of rafts. Now that we have enough rafts built and tied together the construction process is ready to go vertical!
We also purchased tools for the carpentry that will be needed for the next steps. With three maestros and three apprentices we are ready to go
23 December 2007 Noise Campaign in effect Today we were cutting the Masaranduba trunks (See Nov. 20 News) up into 6"x6" uprights ready to be used in the platform with our chainsaw. Well, the chainsaw must have been making too much noise because the next thing we knew we had four police officers present on the scene wanting to know where all the noise was coming from. We apologized to the officers and moved the operation to the other side of the river where no one would be bothered. Making too much noise in Iquitos? Go figure
20 December 2007 Promotion nearly finished The Pyramid's Shamanic tour website is all but finished! Other than the preparations page, which will be finished tomorrow, everything else is ready and online. If you are reading this you can just click the "Shamanic Tour" button at the top of the page and it will direct you there. With that said, we were also lucky enough to secure the domain name www.shamanictour.com which directs you to the same place
Maestro carpenter Orison Aluan Preciado made his debut today. We look forward to all the contributions he will make to The Pyramid Project
19 December 2007 Iron workers back on track Slight hiccup yesterday after discovering the iron workers were not using their template (we carefully made) to make the holes in the iron. Instead they were simply using the last piece of work as a template which means errors get exaggerated over time. After a sharp visit, they were soon back on track!
18 December 2007 Items from Lima arrive The items we purchased from Lima arrived last night (See Dec. 12 News). Walter was very pleased with the performance of the new drill (pictured below). We can now drill 500 holes a day speeding up the iron work immensely. The old drill that we purchased would become to hot to use after just a few holes
A nice shot of the construction site below. The main 4 by 4 super raft is in the upper-left. Note that there are 9 rafts going up through the centre of the picture... add just one more in your mind and you can visualise just how wide the pyramid is going to be...
In the bottom left of the picture is our new raft building launching system which had to be built because the water has dropped and the old one is too far out of the river now On Thursday Orison and his partner will start working on the project. We should at last see some vertical progress!
17 December 2007 Visiting the Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm We went to Padre Cocha today to meet Gudrun Sperrer (pictured below with Julio) and take some pictures of her wonderful Butterfly farm for the Shamanic Tours promotion. While there, Mendel from Holland interviewed Julio about the Pyramid Project for his upcoming documentary
15 December 2007 New Pyramid Painting Artist Lammda showed up today with the second promotional painting. We asked him for a slightly more esoterical rendering this time around
Super Raft finished It's taken a few weeks but the 16m² Super Raft is finally all fastened together. Now we can use this as a base to build the Pentagram Swimming Pool Pyramid of the central structure
The 7m Remocaspi being used for the Swimming Pool Pyramid have been submerged into the water. After a week in the river the bark will be soft enough to strip off by hand revealing the beauty of the Remocaspi
14 December 2007 More Topa Arrives Today Hector and his gang showed up with another 120 Topas
The 16m² Super Raft is nearly complete and it's almost ready for the Pyramid construction to begin. Yesterday the Masaronduba was hoisted out of the water and today was inspected. Unfortunately 5 of the 14 beams will have to be rejected as they are outside of specification. (This was our old wood supplier previous to Hector)
13 December 2007 Raft Building Today there were problems because the water level is unexpectantly dropping. Two of the launched rafts were distorted because they hit the river bed too hard and they will have to be rebuilt. To combat the problem we made some changes to the launch station and by the afternoon shift things were back on track. We have nearly built the 4 by 4 super raft...
Today we had 12 men working, 4 extra because we needed to lift the Massaranduba beams out of the water. A team of us had to do a lot of swimming and diving down up to 4 metres deep
Quistacocha Promotion Whilst we were all slaving away in the river young Matthew was out and about snapping shots for the Shamanic Tour promotion. He went back to Quistacocha to take some shots of the beach because this time it was a sunny day!
12 December 2007 Back from Lima Wilder and I got back from Lima yesterday evening, thanks to Matthew for running the show whilst I was gone and keeping the guys fed, paid and happy. In Lima we bought another big drill for Walter's iron workshop. We bought special Cobalt drill bits, 20 hard green hats, lots of rope and a great pulley system. These items are being flown into Iquitos, hopefully before Monday. We have also lined up the supplier for the iron and found a great team to make the 5,200 nuts and bolts we need. On testing one today with Walter I decided to go ahead with this order tomorrow
10 December 2007 - 11 December 2007 Wilder and I fly to Lima Unfortunately there will be no News updates or any Internet changes whilst Wilder and I are in Lima. The purpose of this trip is to buy all the iron for Phase One and have it shipped to Iquitos. That's 14 tons of iron! Remember we are aiming for this by March 2008 so that is only 10 weeks. Yikes, I'd better get my skates on!
09 December 2007
Pyramid Forums go live! Thanks to some great work from my old friend from England, Craig Salter, the Pyramid Web Forums are now live. There are no postings there yet but theoretically there is no reasons why people cannot start to leave messages if they want to. The forums are here and on the menu above. We expect the Forums to pick up users as people start to come out on the Shamanic Tour and want a place to discuss their experience and stay in touch with their friends
Shamanic Tour Promotion Some great work from Matthew this week on the Shamanic Tour Promotion. We have nearly got the web site done and you should see that will be up in about one week. (At the moment the Shamanic Tour menu is still not finished as you will see if you check it, in fact most of the work isn't even on this site yet). Also coming is a great article about Iquitos so our future visitors know more about this jungle city
Gina doing well Gina is going strong with her work on the architectural drawings. We have already made one pass on all of these and got them into AutoCad. However Gina is going over them all again and adding her welcome touches. She has made some great improvements and I hope to add a whole Design section to this Internet site within 2 weeks. I'll be including a section on Sacred Geometry and letting you into some of the secrets of the Floating Pyramid. Also there will be an article discussing some of the other modern pyramids such as the one in Le Louvre, Paris, The Arena Pyramid and of course the Luxor Hotel pyramid in Las Vegas
U.S. Promotion Matthew's brother Michael has been in town this week and he is keen to help us with a U.S. promotion. That would be fantastic Michael! Our policy on promotion is simple, if you think you could help us attract people on either the Shamanic Tour or as visitors in the Pyramid then you will get 4.5% commission. If we are happy with your promotion then we we will give you a unique promotion code that you pass on to your clients. When they book there holiday with us and enter the code you get paid and we also give them a 4.5% discount. Everyone is happy!
08 December 2007 Congratulations Walter! The Iron Man came up trumps today delivering the first assignment of joints. These metre long joints will be used in the base square of the pyramid where the corners are cut off to give extra strength. Now Walter has been given his second assignment
The green paint is a special combination that protects iron form the elements. Below you can see where the 8 joints will be used. The holes are to house the 1/2" bolts. The diagram below represents 38.39m²and is a plan of the platform. For more information see Construction Phase 4....
07 December 2007 Wow, thanks Lammda! The thing I love about this impression is that it conveys just how natural feeling the building will be; the flower beds, the thatching and the wood work. Lammda listened to every detail, even the way the colours of the plants change on each of the pyramid's levels. These seven levels represent the chakras of this living building, working through from the root chakra of the ground floor right up to the crown chakra of the Meditation Room
Lammda working in the street...
06 December 2007 Walter's iron work coming along Today I stopped at Walter's place to check on the 8 iron joints he is making. He says that they will be finished tomorrow which is great news because we have plenty more work waiting for him. Next he is going to make the joints around the swimming pool
You can see above how Orison's carpentry is helping these guys get the angles right when they do their welding...
New Design Flops! The new design to try to make the rafts a lot faster by using iron supports failed today. We lost a little time and money but now we are much more confident with our original design and the guys are mastering their work, especially getting tension in the rope. Oh well, at least when the Gringo Shaman stops by on Saturday we can say we tried to use the iron. The double shift pattern is working well apart from a noise complaint from a neighbour. Also from tonight there will always be someone on the site to guard wood - so we kinda have a 24 hour operation
Teachers Marching again Garcia is the president of Peru, I guess they are not so happy with him at the moment...
Pyramid's Finished Impression Completed I was bowled over this evening by the work of the new artist, Lammda. You'll have to wait another day to see his impression of the pyramid because Matthew needs to photograph during the day's light. We will be doing a promotion of Lamda's other work to show you. His impression of the pyramid is fantastic - You'll see! (He we are discussing the masterpiece)
05 December 2007 5 Rafts in the water The splash down of raft number 5. The guys have mastered the design and the tension in the ropes has improved. However with only 1.5 rafts being built a day I decided to create a double shift pattern. Now 3 guys work from 6am to 3pm with dinner etc. and the other team come in at 3pm to 12pm. This way we double the output capacity, work cooler hours and hopefully get the output up to 3 a day which means 100 get built in less than 5 weeks
All that said, it is rumoured that Project Mentor, The Gringo Shaman, is cooking up an alternative design that will save us hours of labour and money. Spies in the field, Matthew and his brother Michael (who has just flown in to Iquitos for a visit) rumour that the gringo believes that we could use 2 x 4m iron bars instead of rope. Apparently he's gonna stop by on Saturday and dazzle us with his physics. But guess what? Tomorrow we are gonna steal the design, test it's feasibility and then have all the rafts in the water ready for his arrival. Nice job agents!
Anacaspi and Remocaspi That lovely twisty wood, Remocaspi, which will be used in the central pentagram pyramid - it comes up from the swimming pool and then through the entire 7 storeys of the pyramid - well, it's now piling in thanks to great work from Hector and Wilder. Here we see the guys lifting one of the 11 metre trunks. These trees were cut with the Harvest Moon and we bless them for their sacrifice to the pyramid. Also Anacaspi, the yellow wood, is coming in. These form the sides of the stairwell
If you want to know more about the stairwell construction click here
Shamanic Tour Promotion Matthew has been out and about, this time to the Gringo Shaman's to get some shots for out Shamanic Tour Promotion...
Here's my favourite photo he got of the fountain in the central "Plaza de Armas" square of Iquitos. I hope you begin to see the beauty of Iquitos, something wonderful is starting to happen here
New Artist... We have a new artist on board who has been commissioned to give us a glimpse of the future pyramid. I saw the picture he is doing for us last night and his work is genius, you'll see what I mean just as soon as we can get his work up here. (Matthew is going to promote him on this site). The guy is a street artist and he uses spray paints to create his art. Our previous artist, Moises, has been too busy to get a piece finished for us
Book Donation... Today we had our first book donation to the pyramid. The vision is that all our visitors will donate a book that they consider to be important. That way the pyramid library will contain great books for everyone to read during their stay. So thanks Matthew for "Supernatural" the new book out by Graham Hancock
03 December 2007 Splash!!! Today was a momentous occasion because our first raft splashed down into the water...
It took 3 hours to get it to release because of the shear weight and when it finally went so did I. (The raft was named Sweet Melissa).
The guys are learning and the second raft launch was a lot smoother. We hope by the third launch tomorrow we will have it off to a tee. I told the guys that they will get paid more per raft built. If they manage 3 in a day they get even more for that 3rd raft. Two every day means we get our 100 rafts in 7 weeks. Lets hope the water level stays down to give us time to use the raft building
The second raft splashing down Hey who's that who stopped by? It's the Gringo Shaman! Actually, Matthew is at his place tonight to get more pictures of the Gringo Shaman's set-up for the promotion. The Internet work is going well and the Donations Page is now working, Craig even donated a dollar to test it - thx again Craig!
02 December 2007 First Raft almost ready Well OK still no raft built yet but we have a great building to work in and today Orison stopped by to add a roof to keep the sun off of our raft builders. I've been running around Iquitos trying to get the tools together and we are just about there. The raft building allows us to build a raft diagonally and then release it into the water. (We hope). There's one on there nearly built
It's been a hard slog these past few days under the sun and a special thanks to the 6 workers who have been helping us Also today I met the local community near to where we are building the rafts to check they were happy...
They asked me to contribute 3 Soles (One Dollar) to help them pay their local security bill. After I paid the whole bill of $10 they cheered so I guess at the moment they are OK with the Pyramid Project as a neighbour. We are also employing a couple of their men so that should help two of the families there at least. These people are very poor
01 December 2007 Promotion of Shamanic Tours developing well Matthew has been out and about this last week collecting photos of some of the places we will be taking our guests of "The Pyramid's Shamanic Tour". So far he has been to: Don Lucho's place in Tamshiyacu which is about 40 minutes ride by speedboat from Iquitos. Don Lucho loves his instruments and is the rock star amongst shaman. The hut on the right is his guest's dormitory...
Don Guillermo's place (below) is beautiful, his ceremony hall is a large round building. Don Guillermo gets some nice guests out there, the last time I was there I met Jeremy Narby the Canadian guy who wrote The Cosmic Serpent plus a film crew making a documentary about how Ayahuasca and natural plants can be used to cure Tuberculoses...
Well Matthew has still to go to The Gringo Shaman's place and Don Juan's place to get more promotional photos. These are the four shaman we are using on Week 1 of our Tour. Thanks also to my dear friend Craig Salter back in England for helping us work out how to take payments over the net. We are getting very close to launching this tour, perhaps one week off which is great news indeed since a regular income into the project is very much required. Craig's work also helps us with our Donations page which should be working soon. Thx again Craig! We are also finding the very best accommodation in the Iquitos area which will house our Tour guests for a couple of the week's nights. Here are some great shots Matthew took:
Thanks Matthew, that's a pretty funky place you found there!
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