September 3, 2007

Dear Dad,

It is September already.  We are very busy in the office. Bryan is starting to work here too.  I am getting him to work in the inventory department and as soon as he learns everything there is to know about that department, I will move him to another and then another until he learns how and what for all of the departments. It is a little difficult to keep him thinking of himself as a new employee and not son of the owner. 

 Manta Raya will be going into dry dock and we will have no tours for the two weeks she is out of the water.

What is everyone doing?  Well…………………………….inventory and ¨cleaning house¨

I am redoing the bodegas of closets that are full of stuff and trying to re-organize everything and get rid of the collection of stuff that seems to accumulate. 

By law we have to keep 4 years of receipts, and facturas (what we call our bills) everything but the rest we can throw away.  Throwing away this stuff is not going to be too easy because we cannot throw it in the garbage.  All the papers we don’t want need to be shredded or burned so that no-one can get any company information.

I have been busy with changes in the menu too.  I took away the vegetables that were served with the entrée and added a carrot and raisin salad.  I changed the sauce on the cake and also changed the recipe for Mai Tai.

Since I have made changes we no longer get negative comments about the food or people who want fish instead of chicken.

Today the gardener is at the house planting the new rose bushes that I have had sitting near the driveway for two weeks, and some border plants to finish the garden in the back yard.  He is also cutting the lawn and cleaning out the dead leaves and pruning too. I am going to have a nice little rose garden.  The gardener was at Punta Coral on Friday and Saturday pruning.  This is the time of the year that we prune – during the rains. 

Yesterday a different man was at Punta Coral to look at the Mango trees and make plans to prune half of them as they are getting too thick and not producing enough fruit. Also, the trees drink 500 gallons or more of water each day. We are always looking for ways to save water.

Sounds like we are really busy everywhere and we are.

Also starting today or really returning to our office is Marco, the computer guy, who left us for another company because they offered more money.  Marco wanted to learn how the other company worked and bring the knowledge here so we can do the same thing here on a small scale with bigger companies.  How do we get the bigger companies?  Through David’s brother Dewey, who lives in California and has contact with the ¨big boys¨.. 

I am also getting ready to go to Columbia next week to work at a big tourist trade show. I leave Monday morning and return on Saturday. I am going with a really great friend and we will have one day to shop and play.

We had a wonderful sunny morning but now we are having heavy rain.  The hurricane

Eric is moving north and now is a category 5 and is off the Atlantic coast of Costa Rica.

We should have lots of rain later this afternoon and tonight. Don’t worry, Costa Rica is

a funny elbow shape and the curve keeps the bad weather away and we just get lots and lots of rain.

We have been having big thunder storms and lots of rain for the past week.  The lightening is really scary, making big long slashes of silver light in the sky scaring me to death.  The thunder is very loud too and makes me jump every time it strikes.

Mauricio, the head of our reservations department has been busy all morning cleaning out the fish pond and waterfall.  He put the 8 gold fish and one black fish into a tub with the air pump while he cleaned the gravel and the bottom of the pond and the pump.  The fish are the keepers of ¨good luck¨ and absorb the bad energy. After first buying fish they used to die( they absorb the bad energy and die) and I would send one of the guys out for new fish.  Now that all the bad energy is gone, the fish stay alive and are growing bigger They are almost pan fry size.

Today is Thursday.  I tried calling Linda to see how wonderful your dinner was last night.  Another long table with family, Oh how wonderful is that!!!!!!

I have been in a dentist’s chair all morning getting a root canal done on a molar.  Now my mouth hurts and is swollen on one side. There is nothing to do but wait for the pain and swelling to go away – hopefully in the next hour – but alas – I will have to wait it out.  Ugh.

I am looking forward to a massage today and hopefully this will help

Tomorrow David will celebrate his birthday – 63 years.  Wow.  It is hard to believe that David is 63 and we will celebrate being together for 37 years in November.  Seems like just yesterday that we met in a Zacks Bar in Sausalito in 1970-  Time seems to be going at a faster and faster pace lately.  

I don’t think I told you about the Ant bear or Anteater we saw at Punta Coral.

 last time we were there.  Misael and Edgar had seen it and told us that there was one hanging around the area between the casona or big house and the casita or little house.

Misael came to the front door of the casona early on a Sunday morning and told us that he had spotted the animal again.

David and I followed him to the casita and there we saw a small light brown furry animal with a darker – almost black colored saddle shape of fur on his back. The funny part of the Ant Bear is his paws.  They are small and almost round and have a really long pointed nail in the middle of two smaller nails and walk on the backs of their paws.  This makes them very slow moving like a sloth.  Actually it has paws like a three toed sloth.  The skin on the paws is mottled – cream and brown color.  Also the tail is long and pointed at the end.  The snout, as you can imagine, is long and narrow with a long thin sticky tongue he uses to stick in an ant hill and capture the ants for a feast.

We have lots of ants at Punta Coral of all sizes and colors.  This means there is lots of food for the Ant Bear to eat. 

We have a new project now too.  The gardener and another man, a person we consult on the use of organic products for the property, have designed a compost building and it is being built now.

Misael and his three workers have finished repairing the gavions – the pvc covered cyclone fencing that is formed into a box shape and filled with rocks and is the sea wall.

It was a big job to redo the existing gavions by taking off the wire that was used to sew them and open them up take out rocks, cut away the bad parts of the cages and then fill them up again with rocks being careful to keep the flat side facing our so as not to lose the square shape.  The more of them that they repaired, the faster and better the guys got. The gavions near the dock were really more difficult and had to be done according to the low and high tides. The gavions are stacked and are two and three tall.  It was a lot of work.

Today I am working with Marco, the computer wiz that has returned to work again with us.  He is busy designing new banners for both the Tortuga Island tour and the Punta Coral tour. 

We have to get the design finished and take it to the company so it can be printed tomorrow. As usual, we leave lots to do at the last minute. At least the company knows and we do lots of business with them and they have promised to have the banners finished tomorrow.

This is the latest news from Costa Rica.  I love and miss you and I am so happy that Lanie is visiting with you.  Your birthday celebration has been a wonderful month long celebration and it should be. 

I love and miss you.

Besitos,  Cecs