The Pyramid Project
The Pyramid Project |
|
Daily News - March 2008
27 March 2008 Peruvian Navy approve The Pyramid Project!!! :o) Today was a momentous occasion because at last the project received the resolution from the Peruvian Navy giving authorisation for the Pyramid Project to go ahead. The Navy are very rigorous in their checks and it was necessary to present several in depth reports that had to be ratified first in Iquitos and then again in Lima. The process took 8 months but is now concluded. People often criticise third world institutions for being corrupt but here we found honesty, integrity and competence. Peru can be proud of the service her Navy offers On behalf of The Pyramid Project I would like to formally register this company's appreciation for the work of Ivan Mansilla Laichi pictured below on the right. Ivan, having previous Naval experience, was able to make the process smoother but his personal commitment ensured that this project has maintained a very good working relationship with the Navy and I am very grateful to him for this. Ivan now takes on the role of integrating with the Municipality (local government) in order to seek possible financial backing. Ivan, also with hotel management qualifications, will be running the pyramid's hotel when it opens in September 2009 The formal ratification received today means the project can advance as planned with the blessing of the Navy. This resolution protects the project for 30 years. It was a good day today!
26 March 2008 Carlos makes good start New maestro welder, Carlos Ramos Silva, has made a very good start on the project
Working together with Modesto the team are producing all the iron supports for the "floating steps" of the pyramid. Carlos has taken care to hide the welding work from people climbing the stairs which adds more to the minimalist illusion we we will be creating
The iron duo will soon be dominating the project as we get closer to a major advancing of the base pyramid square skywards - then we will have a pyramid! - Tomorrow I will report on how we are doing in preparing that pyramid base
22 March 2008 Visit to Pucallpa Today I met with one of my favourite artists, the Ayahuasca artist, Pablo Amaringo
Pablo shared his work and explained some of the detail, I found him to be a very warm and gentle man. We talked about the pyramid and I asked him if we would be happy for me to include posters of his paintings in the rooms. I explained how I envisaged the pyramid being a unifying focus for Amazonian Shamanism. If one man was to be elected as an artist spokesman for shamanism it would currently have to be Pablo Amaringo
The photo above was taken in the school that Pablo runs. Pablo's website is here
21 March 2008 Happy Easter! It's Easter here in Peru, a little earlier than back at home. In fact they call it "Santo" and it lasts for a week! Despite the guys having Monday, Tuesday and today Good Friday off work there has been some good progress. The last of the two side Remocaspis were added by Westerban, great job! Ivan got more anchors in the water to protect us against the rare wind combination of being pushed directly against the river bank Emilio's team were busy adding the diagonal uprights around the edges... these are there for tension holding the bottom beams to the top beams when they are floating in the water Teddi's team have done well to ensure that all the lower edge beams are exactly 12cm above the water level. Now we just need to straighten them some more (This is a hard job!) I started eating again and am now following the Essenes diet A new employee started called Carlos Ramos Silva. Carlos brings with him experience of welding and working with iron
This is the view from the Boulevard of Iquitos. The project was covered by local TV Channel 7 a few days ago and since then more people are taking an interest in the project Peace be with you this Easter Julio xx
15 March 2008 Progress Report Modesto and Jesus working on the iron supports for the steps. This job alone has taken two men two weeks now. Fashioning iron is very labour intensive
The corners of the pyramid have also proved labour intensive. Now two of the corners are done and we are adding the diagonal uprights (4"x4") - these clutch the two horizontal beams together and are under tension. The vertical beams (6"x6") are under compression. The Topa in the picture on the right is destined as adhoc Topa that we position under the rafts to give us more lift in areas where there is a lot of weight. The central structure is 4 layers deep with Topa!
The guard's bedroom to the left is now walled off. The kitchen below is taking shape. When this is fitted out I have asked the cook to start cooking onsite. The food the men eat daily is good by their standards however I have insisted now that the cook uses no more MSG. MSG is called "Ají no Moto" in Peru and it is added to food generously. The problem is that it is very harmful to health and lowers IQ - in the States now many restaurants display a sign saying "No MSG" as people in the West realise how dangerous the compound is
Below the bathroom and shower room - this room will have a tiled floor and walls. To the right the site's office with some of Westeban's team working hard there.
Let's take a closer look at the office as seen from the other door...
Upstairs now to my bedroom
I kept turning the camera to get more angles... This is the balcony outside my room where there is another water butt
Finally the stairs leading back down...
As you can see work on the main staircase is on hold because I want the outer iron skeleton in place first as this will give us a more accurate knowledge of where to place the steps. If we go by the drawings, the reality might be that the steps are out by a few centimetres and we can't accept that
11 March 2008 Anaconda Visits Pyramid Today a beautiful little Anaconda was found along the river bank next to the pyramid. This serpent is the king of the Underworld according to the Incan Trilogy and it was a good omen indeed. It is the first time we have seen a snake along here. I decided she was a she and named her "Dannan"
10 March 2008
40 Day Fast Today was day 1 of my 40 day diet; 7 days eating nothing and then 33 days of just eating plant food, uncooked and fresh as God intended. This is something I have been wanting to do for a long time. I called on the Gods to let the strength of the pyramid be my resolve in this diet, so I must succeed! Yikes!!
Pyramid Story breaks in Switzerland Today Switzerland's oldest newspaper, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, print a great article about the pyramid project. Thanks there to Oswald Iten. Click on the image below to see the article in German. I will be creating a "Media" tab soon where translations of our media coverage are provided. Virginia, we need a translation... (I think she's hiding in the jungle again)
06 March 2008
Nancy Dantes Today Nancy Dantes, the director of the Iquitos School of Arts visited the pyramid. I asked pyramid artist, David Hewson, to join us because when David does the gold leafing in the Meditation Room he might recruit some students to teach them his techniques whilst they help out. The pyramid is asking the Iquitos School of Arts for help in painting onto the glass of the Apex depictions of the four shamanic elements; Fire, Air, Earth and Water. The area on each side is an isosceles triangle with a 4.266m base and 3.455m height - it will be necessary to split this area into 4 panes of glass. We also invited the Iquitos School of Arts to use our lecture theatre when it is built for 2 hours per week. In this way we encourage a link between tourism and art in Iquitos and give the students a chance to get out the noisy city once in a while
APEC Peru 2008 Here's the warship that appeared after I raised the Union Jack... The guys on there visit the pyramid from time to time, they are very interested in the project and it has been a pleasure to chat with them...
Why is the warship really there? Well actually, the security went mad in Iquitos a few days ago because we are hosting 10 of the forums of the 2008 APEC conference. (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) - There has been 100s of police on the streets especially around the main square where the hotel hosting all the executives is situated. Tomorrow it will all be over, check out what the local government wrote in English (It's global) - made me smile...
Hey get this... remember the other day the pyramid made front page news of the Iquitos Times? Well the editor, Mike, usually drops off around 20 copies to the hotel the executives are staying in. This week they needed 80 copies! A part of the conference was to discuss climate change and energy. How great to kno that my project would have been read by some of those decision makers because some of our missions are to solve these problems. They would have read this: 75%
of the money from the pyramid is being donated to 7 missions.
These are: 1)
Find a renewable energy source
that is cheaper than gasoline.
We will use esoterical working methods to boost this research 2)
Convert 20,000 of the Iquitos taxi
cabs to electricity and lobby the local government for a 15 block gasoline
exclusion zone in the city centre.
(Fights air pollution and noise pollution because electric engines are
quiet) 3)
Educate the people of Iquitos
about Health and Medicine and reverse the obesity trend in a modern city 4)
Rebuild the district of Belen in 3
stages. A) Pollution cleanup, B) Rebuild houses and infrastructure C) Create a
World Class Sailing Boat industry 5)
Create a “Keep Peru Beautiful”
TV campaign to fight littering 6)
Create a mechanism for getting
people off the streets and back in the jungle 7)
Create a spiritual mechanism for
preserving and uniting shamanism and spreading the “connect to nature”
message globally
Down in Cusco there was another APEC conference. This time including the forum for discussing future ideas for tourism in Peru - there is a big jungle theme park being planned near Iquitos for example which will be an excellent attraction for tourists already in Iquitos. Will it bring in tourists from all over the world? Well maybe but I personally think that "Spiritual Tourism" will be the "killer ap" for the future of Iquitos because here lives Shamanism. (The Municipality don't kno what they've got here!) I asked the Iquitos Municipality to help my project back in April 2007. They said they needed more information and gave me a format I couldn't work with. Perhaps now it is time to approach them again... hey, we'll get Ivan on the case tomorrow. Thanks for reading!
05 March 2008
Roof Finished The temporary roof over the Central Structure was finished today which means the inside will remain dry. Which means... we are getting closer to a time when I can move in!
My Room Lets take a closer look at the space I'll be living in. The roof looks beautiful from below...
In the UK the carpenters would only join joists above a perpendicular joist where as above you see they make the joins midway between perpendicular joists. I'm no carpenter but I could see this is wrong and they won't be making this mistake on the permanent structure. Another common mistake they make is hanging weight on nails rather than the weight going thru the wood (kinda the same thing I kno). On the other hand the guys do things here I wouldn't think was possible and constantly amaze me (especially Spiderman! - Go go Westeban!)...
Despite the errors I keep saying to them, "Well, we're learning this together". Having a temporary structure to practise on has been a good idea! Also the solutions to the mistakes keep turning up better designs than the original so there you go Back to my room... The ropes on the floor mark where the walls will be added (and the door)
The wall facing the stairs will have no windows as the public will have access here to go up to the restaurant 5 floors above. Tomorrow Westeban's team will continue to work on this room - I'll keep you posted of the progress and you are invited to watch me move in It's a dream come true to be living in such a natural place where collecting rain water to drink, for example, seems the obvious choice and breathing in the air that has crossed 1000s of miles of virgin jungle... well who wouldn't want that. I'm working up to my raw food diet too and my daily exercise plan is back in shape. So here's to a healthier Haynsie who is walking the talk. If you don't kno already, I haven't used soap or shampoo for over 2 years now. I kicked deodorants over a year ago (I just use Vodka). About 3 months ago I stopped using toothpaste - the new dental cleaning plan I have is much more superior. You wanna kno what it is? OK, in a nutshell: 1) Swill out mouth with water after every meal. (Use the water on the table to do this - have a good gargle and use toothpick. 2) Floss after last meal. 3) Only eat once a day, preferably at noon (tough one, it is what Jesus said - I'm not at this stage yet). 4) Use salt instead of toothpaste. 5) No need to brush in the mornings when no food was eaten but use Vodka gargled with open mouth for 10-15 seconds to kill all bacteria - then swill with water 3 times. DO NOT DRINK THE VODKA! 6) Every few days brush teeth with lemon juice before introducing the salt (This is to shine off yellow). I developed this program myself but the salt and lemon is the jungle way which has been used for centuries. All of this might make me sound very strange but it is the new way for humans to go as we reduce our dependency on chemicals. Why? For the sake of toxicity of our bodies and we must sack the manufacturing process that does nothing for the environment - All this will be taught in the personal development program of the pyramid
Flag Flying Thanks to J.T. and J.C. who both told me that the flag was flying upside-down - a sign of distress apparently so we cannot have that. "Too scared to go up the ladder to change it" said Mister Clifford. "Challenge Accepted" said Mister Haynes... Thanks to Tony Robbins in Fiji for teaching me to dance with fear
Anacaspi Cleaned In other news, the Anacaspi was cleaned today. This is the wood that the structure of the spiral staircase will be made of. This wood is now stored out of the rain and will be used after the iron pyramid skeleton is up. I decided it was too difficult, if not impossible, to calculate exactly where the steps need to go before having the floors in place as dictated to by the iron. So first the iron but before that, perlease, we need an exact square to build on. This is taking longer than expected and once again we are essentially waiting for the jungle to deliver... God's speed Wilder!
Anchors Dropped Ivan's team today got 3 good new Northern anchors dropped. Ivan used his marine experience to cross the ropes from the various positions of the anchors to the pyramid corners - we will be much more storm proof now. By the way, Ivan was the guy who has been helping the project by liasing with the Marine to get permission for the pyramid to be built on the river. He is now working onsite and taking on some pretty major responsibilities. It is planned that Ivan will run the hotel after construction and he is also doing some promotion work across Peru for our coming Shamanic Tour
Nice job Ivan!
And Finally... Did you check out Slocum's portrait of me lately? He says he has many "layers" to go. I think it looks fantastic and I am flattered to have a painting done of me by such a talented artist - Nice job brother!
04 March 2008
Raft Building These guys are getting faster, two more rafts in the water today no trouble!
North-West Corner This corner advancing well with the upper 6m diagonal being added. This is slid in from underneath and with the vertical uprights sandwiched in there also the whole thing locks together well
Iron Ready The situation with the iron is that it is ready, onsite and protected from the rain. The two lads that were due to start the other day didn't show so now we have a new guy starting Monday. He has years experience and seems like a competent man. We are not ready to start building the iron skeleton until I am happy the outer square is straight and distortion proof however there is iron work to be getting on with in anticipation of this big job. The welding machine and iron cutting equipment (oxygen and gas used here) is also ready. Here is the iron, each iron angle is 6m long and 5/16" x 3".
Central Union The join between the two 20m beams has had to be improved as we widen the boat entrance to 2.33m. This type of work can be time-consuming and maestro intensive!
More anchors More bags of stones are delivered. In the last storm we had the pyramid was moved despite all our previous bags of stones. With all these in place the pyramid will be going no where!
Balcony The balcony, temporary as it is, is looking great. Here you can see it around the stairs...
Hey Bill! Project friend Bill Grimes and his son stopped by to take a look. Bill wrote the Iquitos article in our Shamanic Tour promotion and is the owner of Dawn of the Amazon, a very successful local jungle tour operation
Earlier in the day (and last night) we had 2 groups of marines drop in for a look round. They are currently stationed in a big warship about 200m from the pyramid. The ship appeared the day I added the Union Jack, don't worry fellas, it's just a flag! :o)
Decision Time So here's how we are looking...
I decided last night that I wanted to be moved into the pyramid by April and therefore it was a good idea to get the temporary roof finished. Westeban's team are on the case. I will also start collecting rainwater so I can experiment with filtration systems and ways of keeping it bacteria free without using any chemicals. It is an objective to have clean rain water that I can start drinking by the time I move in - I'll guinea pig this for a few months and then we will be the first restaurant to offer chemical free drinking water. My idea is to rotate the water containers, filter thru charcoal and clean the containers weekly with vodka and vinegar... it's radical but I want to drink the rain as part of my personal health plan and there are others here thinking the same way. When Claudia gets here and starts the raw fooding in the restaurant we can all get much more healthy
03 March 2008
Steady and Sure It's been a couple of weeks since I gave a good update on progress because we have all been very busy You can see that the main 10 x 10 square of rafts is in place - now we can see exactly how big the base of the pyramid is but remember the height you see is only 2/3rds. The flags are positioned at the floor of the Meditation Room and this floor is 8.1m tall. Add the Ankh on top of that and we still have 10.4m to go which is nearly the height of the vertical Remocaspi's again We are making good progress with the surrounding square wall too with the triangular uprights yet to be added. Nearly half of this wall is in place and the ground work on 2 of the 20m beams around the back has been completed. It was planned that when the outer square was finished we would start building the outer iron skeleton. However, it has been decided now to add the "Spoke Beams" in first. (They link this square to the centre). Whilst this means we cannot float the central structure to the outer edges to give us height as we'd planned it does mean that we can ensure the outer square is a square and not subject to distortion. To gain the height for the iron framework we will now need to build scaffolding which will take longer
Strengthening the Structure Inside the central structure we've been adding thatching but the roof is still incomplete at the top. We need to start the stairwell going before we can close off the roof. This is scheduled for this week. Once the roof is closed off, and rain kept out, I shall be moving in! Remember this shot?...
Last week was spent adding 4 of these 7m Remocaspis. There are 4 more to go in this week. We decided to get these in without delay because now we have the wood. These extra Remocaspis strengthen the design protecting it from rotational distortion - plus they look fantastic!
Shopping Trip to Lima This week myself and a helper, Marcus, were in Lima where amongst other things we bought a welding machine and high powered tools for cutting iron. The welding machine had to be flown via cargo freight because it was too big to go with us. The 2 days in Lima were very busy so special thanks to Marcus. Thanks also to Wilder for doing an excellent job of running the show whilst I was away
Social This Friday it was a pleasure to take around a dozen of the workers out for a few beers. They said they were very happy to be working on the pyramid. When we get to the end of Phase 1 we will have a BBQ for the families of the workers and perhaps a few press friends will get an invite
Raft Builders Special thanks to the raft builders (led by Demetrio) who this week not only met their objective of building 10 rafts but also rebuilt the raft building station on higher ground - thanks for working Saturday fellas! We now have 75 rafts with another 25 left to build. It's taken exactly 3 months to build them so by my calculation we'll be done building rafts by April 3rd
Design Section Translated
A special thanks to Charlie for wading thru the Design section and getting it all translated to Spanish. Just the Art section and the February News now then Charlie! :o) (He's a star!)
01 March 2008 British Flag Raised Today I proudly raised the Union Jack to fly alongside the Peruvian flag on this joint international project. Media attention has been heating up and more and more people are talking about the project in Iquitos. I have been on local TV twice now, apparently it is being discussed on radio and it is exciting for me to be recognised from time to time in the street. Mostly people wish me good luck and make the sign of a pyramid with their hands. We have tourists taking photos regularly and the project made the front page of the Iquitos Times - the English written tourist newspaper. The moral of the workers is good and despite the fact we didn't complete phase 1 by March 1st I remain very happy with the progress being made Two new contracts have gone out for more wood as I have brought Phase 4 forward to compensate for Phase 1 being late. The idea is that as soon as Phase 2 starts we will start Phase 4 in parallel. Phase 4 is where we build all the "Spider" beams in the platform in anticipation for floating the pyramid on plastic bottles in August
|
|
|
