It’s the last night of the year and also, by chance of the decade, we’ve found our vantage point and have settled in ready for the spectacle – but there will be no music or fireworks and the nearest cold beer is 2 days walk away in the station town of Carmelita – this might seem like a bad choice of location to welcome in the new year, if we were not standing on top of the tallest pyramid of the ancient Mayan world – La Danta in Guatemala – staring up at the constellations in the clear nights sky which guided so much of the daily life of these unworldly architects.

The Mayans left almost as many clues and they did mysteries about their lives – from their day to day habits to the techniques they used to build their incredible structures – and perhaps the greatest unanswered question about this race of master builders is how their multi-millennial reigns ended.

The Spanish arriving in the mid 16th century would have seen a sight familiar to the those trekking slightly deeper off the beaten path today – piles of cut stones and oddly shaped green hills – often set in deep semi-tropical jungle, to the untrained eyes they are easy to simply pass by.

The main contribution the Spanish made to the Mayan mystery appears to be in their industrial scale destruction of Mayan written records – burning anything which did not fit the puritanical tastes of the radical Catholic priests who arrived intend of purging every pagan notion from the natives they encountered.

By laying waste to the keys required by future generations to decrypt the complex hieroglyphic writing system which could reveal the Mayan story to the tomb raiders and archaeologists who would one day come to rediscover these lost cities in the jungle – the Spanish added one more twist of mystery to this saga – some parts of which to this say remain a mystery.

Let’s take a few steps back in time to the present moment and begin with a whirlwind tour of the Maya world as we find it today – stretched across the modern land masses known as Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras – there are thousands of sites ranging in size from hamlets of 2 buildings to expansive cities like El Mirador which occupied a space 3 times the size of downtown LA.

Some sites have been meticulously restored, made easily accessible and are patrolled and protected, while others remain totally covered and hardly known, but to local chicleros who wandered deep into the semi-tropical forests looking for new trees to sap.

With 3,000 years of documented history to the recent heartbreak of civil war and natural catastrophes, modern Ski Lanka is emerging as a vibrant and culturally diverse island, which maintains connections with its long history – both the more recent colonial one and also its longer connection with India and Buddhism.

The list of things to see and do are endless, but if you are lucky enough you might get to:

• Surf the warm Indian Ocean with turtles in the horse-show bay of Hiriketiya
• Ride a bicycle around the epic ruins of Anuradhapura, a huge 5th century city in the central plains.
• Eat the most delicious – and spicy! – rice and curry twice a day, followed by some cooling vanilla ice-cream.
• Visit Yala National Park and see a myriad of large flora and fauna, including elephants, sloth-bears and even leopards.
• Travel the old – and very crowded – imperial railway line up into the mountains, towards Kandy or Ella.
• Visit coffee plantations in the lush sub-tropical low mountains.
• The list goes on…

Sri Lanka has a heavy past – the generations that lived through the recent civil war hide their emotional scars behind bright white smiles and generous welcomes – they are proud of their country and keen to share stories, and once you are in their confidence they might also open up about the darker side of life – because it is importance to take a pinch of reality to balance out all this natural beauty.

Firstly, a disclaimer – I like boats, slow travel and elegant forms of travel – old-world travel might be a better way to describe it.

Nomad Cruise does not exactly fit the description, but it sits in an interesting niche in the modern digital ~ innovative ~ economy – where people who have decided they do not want to sit in someone else’s office try to merge their interests and skills to generate new activities which others can not only enjoy, but also learn from.

Nomad Cruise offered an interesting mix which appealed to me in the following order:

• A boat ride at around the same cost as a one-way flight from Colombia ( I was overlanding down from Canada at the time ) to Portugal ( where I am currently based ).
• Stops in Madeira ( which is oddly inaccessible by commercial ferry from mainland Portugal ), Antigua and Sint Maarten.
• An opportunity to “network” with Digital Nomads, attend conferences while at sea and also to share back some of my own experiences and skills – being one of the more mature attendees.
• All you can eat and drink – including pizza at midnight – if that’s your cup of tea.
• And very much last ( we learn from experience ) …getting drunk in the disco on cheap Margaritas..

The overall trip was a success, the boat was enormous and provided lots of space to relax, network, feast and even to play sports — and oddly, hardly a drop of Wi-Fi for 15 days, which was a cold-shock for many of the young net-addicts onboard 🙂

I grew up in the smallest city in the UK, which had been an important Mediaeval settlement with a history dating back to at least the 7th century, and along with it’s diminutive size, also held the record as the highest point of the Fens, at a staggering 26 meters above sea-level.

Despite the clay foundations, many of the Gothic and Romanesque buildings remained, not only in good condition but in daily usage – most notably the huge 11th century cathedral but also the extensive grounds of the large private school which occupied much of the old monastic buildings.

We lived in a Victorian era terraced house – built form brick with small sandstone detailing and an extensive Parthenocissus quinquefolia which turned a deep red in the autumn, covering the small internal yard.

The schooling system and curriculum did not sit will with me, we spent most of our days in a drab 4 story mini-tower block, built in the pure 60’s style, tired from years of neglect and teenage abuse – it was a sad, unloved environment and it failed to inspire in me much joy for the topics I was being taught.

Next to the Music block sat the single level, open-plan Art department – and it was here that I first felt truly inspired by both a subject and the people teaching it – their passion was tangible, they believed in what they were sharing and in most cases they were also practising artists – successful or not, they were not just people retelling a story told to them – they were sharing something they felt intimately connected to.

It was here that I was first introduced to the History of Art – the story that maps humanity’s development from naïve to narcissistic – the story of how simple expression turns into obsession – and how we learnt from the errors or others to move from mud buildings to grand stone cathedrals.

One of many significant events that came to mind was an adventure up the tiny, twisting Mediaeval stone staircase to the roof of the cathedral, during the enormous renovation project – we were greeted at the top by unparalleled views of the oak and stained glass octagonal tower which streamed coloured sunlight down onto the central alter below.

To see the inner working of these innovative – and risk-taking architects – from the middle ages was about as awe-inspiring as any lesson I ever received and it left me with a profound passion for stone architecture which has propelled me around the world, from Cairo to Cartagena to Angkor Wat, in pursuit of first-hand knowledge of how these buildings were actually made and by whom.

This journey took another step when I came into possession of an abandoned farm in the mountains of Central Portugal in 2009, which included 3 hand-built dry-stone granite buildings and a large area of land.

In 2016 – thanks to the help of many willing hands and many years of hard work – the major building work was completed on the central ‘celeiro’ or barn in 2016.

In truth, I had been exploring abandoned properties for years, even the small island of Ibiza offer rich-pickings on this front, with some amazing old fincas to be found, lost deep in the valleys and hills.

However, by comparison, Portugal is a ruin-hunters dream with entire abandoned villages to roam and discover, many in rural areas which have seen mass emigration to wealthier countries like France and Switzerland, offer few employment opportunities and have little to entice the younger generation to stay, compared to modern cities.

Many such town are now being re-populated by foreign – ex-patriot – groups who come looking for the “Good Life”, and in many cases find it – all be it behind a thick bush of hands-on hard work and cultural adaption.. not to mention some advanced tongue-yoga to master the local language.

This farm lies in a very traditional area of the mountains of Central Portugal, there are no other foreign owners around and the nearest neighbour is about 1 km away – not to mention the nearest shop!

However, the land and the buildings were such a close fit to what I had in mind that it was really love at first sight – so logic flew straight out of the broken window 🙂

Casita Verde is a kind act of rebellion and hamlet of peace on an island more famous for hedonism and VIPs.

Yet, it does not stand apart of opposed to those values, instead it has come into being to embrace people from all walks of live, agnostic to their vices or values, to present an alternative model of how people can live, more in harmony in nature, leveraging techniques and values from the rural past, but without fear of new technology and techniques.

The back-story goes way back – and in typical Ibiza style, starts with a group of lads – colloquially referred to as the “Bad Boys”, lead by “captain” Chris Dews, who dropped anchor on the Isle of Ibiza having navigated the globe more than a dozen times with the merchant Navy.

Having seen the degradation of the worlds oceans and the pollution caused by marine industries first-hand, he decided it was time to put his considerable energies and courageous voice into service, for the planet – and why not on the once-beatnik, but increasingly tourist-beaten island of Ibiza, a short 4 hours sail from the Catalonian city of Barcelona.

Ibiza has a long and rich history, once it was the favourite burial place of the Carthaginians, and since then the Romans created large salt-flats “Salinas”, giving the Island it’s common moniker the “White Island” – in recent decades, it has become a clubland joke that this referrers to the endless flow of Cocaine, rather than salt..

In the 1940’s U.S soldiers fled the draft, they were joined in the 50’s by the beatniks and more drop-outs joined in the 60’s counter-culture movements – all while mainland Spain remained under the tight grip of Franco’s dictatorship – land was cheap, the sun shone more than 300 days a year and local Ibicencos were accustomed to invasion, since time immemorial.

The next major wave of invaders came in the form of package tourists, shepherded in on the first cheap commercial flights from Northern Europe, to enjoy the legendary turquoise waters, balmy nights and eventually the world famous party scene.

Over the previous decade, summer visitors number swell the population of this small island from around 100, 000, to over 2 million, hungry, thirsty and expectant visitors, enjoying their 2 weeks of yearly freedom to the all-you-can max.

On a small, parched island with, with low winter rainfall and long, hot dry summers – only small numbers of local farmers, living a subsistence lifestyle and property prices exaggerated beyond even the wildest realtors dreams – the classic recipes of greed and corruption defined the battlefield for yet another cultural and environmental battle.

Any yet, the government, with coffers ( personal or not ) filling nicely year on year, did not want to upset the apple cart – so the responsibility of pointing out the obvious was taken up by small citizen groups and passionate individual – native or not ( in Ibiza, the lines on most things blur beautifully, the same can be said for being from the island ).

Chris was one of these brave people who – while not adverse to the many of the pleasures and freedoms of the island – also saw the environmental imbalance of the tourist model and the obvious damages being caused to his new homeland – from pollution on the beaches and coast, to the loss of traditional lifestyles and the corruption of the rich and privileged.

So, in an act of pure rebellion – Chris Dews rented a small tumble-down limestone cottage on 5 hectares of degraded farmland, and set-about creating a living and breathing ecological centre, designed to not only house a community of permanent residents, but also as an alternative show-home for the hoards of weekly visitors who came to eat the vegetarian buffer or sample Aloe Vera drinks in the weekly illegal restaurant / fund-raiser.

I joined the lunch one week and then followed Chris on the 2 hour bi-lingual tour, before returning to the bar for a late Aloe, as we all sat and watch the sun lazily sink into the pink Mediterranean between the low hills, and I knew already I had found somethings that were missing in my life – purpose and connection.

I offer to help and returned each week to prepare vegetable for the kitchen, harvest almonds or carob from the trees, we cleaned the roads around the centre and more than 50 beaches – always with some homemade pizza and a sunset swim and surrounded by travellers from the entire globe, all draw to Ibiza, to Casita Verde, to Chris – looking for something that was missing and finding more than we could possibly soak up in one sitting.

Eventually my professional skills were put to use on revamping the decrepit websites of the organisation and over the years me and my teams have created more than 20 projects for Casita Verde and its parent organisation Greenheart, based in Chicago USA.

I also gained untold exposure and first-hand experience to many principles and techniques which I would finally be able to put to practical use many years later, when I settled down again in Portugal.

It is a cliché and a brand in itself, whenever I mentioned that I lived in Ibiza to anyone – depending on their age – there was an almost always predictable response.

Younger people’s eyes would sparkle as they were momentarily transported back ( or forwards ) to hedonistic nights of freedom, new friends and fine tunes in one of the many famous venues of Clubland.

Middle-aged people or families might have a slightly different experience – one of being crammed into cheaply built, sprawling apartment blocks, perilously built into crumbling cliff edges, along once unspoilt bays, mostly in the farm north and east coast of the Island – the now-famous package holidays, which seem to be designed to discourage any cultural integration or local investment, by providing all you can eat or drink and mind-numbing “entertainment” shows from 8 am each morning.

And even the older generations have their own dedicated timeslot, they were the trend-setters in terms of off-season travel, and I would say were perhaps the luckiest, as they often visited Ibiza over the autumn or winter months, when it had its short respite from the touristic invasions over the summer months, and returned to something like the peaceful haven that the natives and long-term adoptees come to love and cherish.

And, it’s true – Ibiza does have something to offer for everyone – thankfully.

So, once you have visited a few clubs ( and paid generously for the experience ), swam in the turquoise waters and perhaps adventurously taken a trip out for a sunset selfie at the mystic Es Vedra – you have a choice, you can ask yourself, did I look deeply enough, or am I satisfied with this Ibiza experience.

Hopefully, you’ll choose to dig deeper, because, around nearly every corner of this culturally diverse island, you will find rich rewards, be it a Phoenician necropolis or a Moorish irrigation system, or perhaps you will be lucky enough to discover one of the Mediaeval round pirate tower with the door ajar, allowing you to step inside and wonder at the curved single-barrel vault ceiling which gave them their enduring strength to weather the centuries, abandoned and unmaintained.

The central and north-west areas of the island are less-touched by tourism, due to a lack of sandy beaches, and thus also retain more authentic culture and local ibicencan families still herd flocks of goats on centuries old Fincas – often their imposing, castle-like farm houses are in a sorry state of disrepair, but look closer and you might find one with a walled-garden and delicate round arches exposing a sun-filled second floor terrace.

Along the coast, it is also still possible to find local fishermen sailing out shortly before sunset in their brightly coloured, hand-built wooden crafts, ready for another long-night at sea – during the days these boats are safely locked up in caverns, carved by hand into the soft, pink limestone cliffs that offer some protection against the rough winter storms.

Before moving to Ibiza, I took the plunge and bought myself a new digital camera ( the legendary Sony DSC-F828, with a Karl Zeiss lens and swivel body design ) in hope of finding some interested subjects to capture – in the end I was spoilt for choice and the camera did its best, but somethings are best lived in person, to truly understand.

Following the attack on World Trade Centre and the global downturn caused by the DotCom bubble bursting, employment opportunities in my new niche were more limited, but I had saved diligently since my first pay cheque and the last 2 years in London had not only been an eye-opener, they had also provided me with some disposable cash.

A perfect algorithm: Cash + Free time = Travel 🙂

Through a good friend working at STA, I soon had return tickets to Sydney, Australia with stops in Thailand on both legs of the journeys, which I used to venture through Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam as well as much of Thailand – and I also spent around 3 months travelling both islands of New Zealand in a trusty old Nissan campervan.

The highlight of the trip was getting lost for several days in the expansive Buddhist city of Angkor wat, but the most obvious take-away to me, was the absolute importance of freedom and continual exposure to cultural diversity.

An out of character move, driven by a desire to share my eclectic record collection and get free entry to all the clubs, I decided to musical share my taste with the world as DJ TempoSkill.

My music taste, fortunately, did not fit well with many and was never going to be headline material, I found a happy niche as a warm up act, or placed in small, obscure chillout zones – blending a heady mix of ambient, rave, disco and, well – to be frank, just anything that I felt like hearing 🙂

Maidstone itself was drab, the town’s most notable feature was probably the nearby military barracks.

However, the campus was a safe-haven for an interesting mix of high-brow “conceptual” artists and more business-minded graphic designers – and a big dollop of every other oddball creative in-between.

I sat firmly in the middle of the dollop – I had earned my place at KIAD as a photographer and 3d sculpture with little world experience and shockingly inadequate level of basic education, which was quickly exposed to high level metaphysical discussions and high-art theory which kick started both a level of dedicated learning and a reactionary rejection of artistic intellectualism, in the same broad stroke.

with hindsight, I imagine I was not the first Art rebel, the history of Art liberally documents one rebel after the next, but KIAD was well prepared and had hired eclectically, from both ends of the scale, so suitable subjects and tutors were always on hand to guide niche interest and pique the interests of even the most wayward student -in fact, to some degree, I was pleasantly surprised to find my rebellion not only tolerated, but in many cased supported.

What a contradictory experience, my rebellion against the institution by supported by its own – and they continues to supply an endless stream of radical information to fuel the fires of creative learning.

Musique concrète, Baudelaire, deconstructionism, the Futurists, finally, I understood – the people teaching me had the same drive as I did, the same fire – they were also rebels in their way, and my own rebellion was nothing unique – it was just raw, unbroken angst, creativity which needed channelling through exposure to relevant knowledge and guidance towards a purposeful outcome.

I arrived at KIAD in ’97 as a poor artist, rich only in raw ideas, and I left three years later with a BA ( Hons ) in Visual Communication, and more importantly as a digital story-teller, with exposure to the right tools and training to guide me confidently toward whatever happened to flow my way.

My parents had Vinyl, my generation had cassette tapes – how unfair is that – but at least we could record stuff.

But it was not long until some new mediums came along to revolutionize the scene, CD’s at least offered great quality, but the UX was poor – all that glistens is not gold…

But the Japanese had plenty more formats to provide, and from a quality, usability and flexibility point of view, there was nothing that topped MiniDisc.

I felt like a secret agent each time I popped one of those slick little square disks snuggly into the loading deck and heard it’s smooth mechanics position in correctly to the optical reader – and if you afford to splash out on high quality headphones and cabling you could both record and listen back in a previously unattainable fidelity – and it looks cool and it did not jump when you did.

In the end, Vinyl came back in a big way – and while some might say that it’s about the quality of the sound, I always felt that it was more about the UX, the feeling of slipping the disc out of the inner casing, or opening a double fold is really hard to match.

Top grades in Art and Art History.. not so great in Sociology.

On reflection, this was the hard way to do things.

My mother had taken me out to learn how to drive on an old abandoned airstrip near our home when I was still 16 – and after a few goes, I basically had it.

I took 1 official driving lesson, my instructor was sufficiently impressed to book a test for the next week, but insisted on one last lesson to refine my somewhat rough style.

Sadly, this second lesson ended abruptly on a wet and cold night, when the truck behind ploughed into my car, destroying it and nearly taken me and my extremely calm driving instructor with it – rarely have I seen a person so calm in such a stressful situation – he did not even swear!

Unperturbed, I decided to go for the test a few days later, and managed to pass, with the maximum allowed faults, but not too bad, considering the circumstance.

As a young child, I was afforded a generous amount of freedom, to roam the rivers, lakes and forests of the area I grew up in – fishing, playing and from a young age, working as a paperboy – with my own personal pedal-powered travelling machine, which allowed me to discover ever nook and cranny and to also know the name and the quickest route to every single street in town.

The one street name which always fascinated me, was the ostentatiously title “Quai d’Orsay”, next to the 19th century Malting house, which sits beside the river Ouse.

My French was very poor, I had no idea how to pronounce the name, yet before I could train my tongue enough to enunciate the words correctly, I found myself on a 2 weeks foreign exchange trip in Orsay, on the outskirts of Paris.

The trips was an eye-opener, my two strongest memories are of eating lots of pancakes reheated in column-like stacks in the microwave and of visiting my exchange students mother’s workplace, to witness a strange experiment which involved pouring dry-ice on the floor – sadly my French did not improve greatly, but my first solo-travel left a longer-lasting impression.

My father had worked as an electrician, repairing fruit machines and duke boxes in local pubs and restaurants – the biggest perk of this was that we always had an upright arcade machine in the garage to play with.

In the 80’s, he went to university to train as a Computer Scientist and the mixture of his practical electrical engineering skills and the high cost of pre-made computer units, led to his small study becoming a living, breathing DIY PC assembly line, with large plastic keys, printed circuit boards, multi-coloured wires and tactile floppy disks squeezed into every available space.

Eventually, out of this maelstrom of pieces, several working PC units appeared and along with that, lots of obscure technology magazines, with pages lined with alphanumeric codes, which looked like readable patterns to my young, but obviously decryptional brain.

Before I knew it, I was writing these lines into the PC, via the oversized blue plastic keys and reaping the rewards, as the code instructed a few large square pixels to move rhythmically back and forth on the screen – I had taken my first steps into a the brave new world of computer programming.

My father went on to teach Computer Sciences at Cambridge Technical College, before founding his own start-up “Interface” – teaching core PC skills and advanced software usage.