December 5, 2007

Dear Dad,

We are all super busy getting ready for the Luau for 80 people this Sunday.

You have no idea the amount of work it will take to pull this off.

David ordered a 100 pound pig and a 50 pound fresh tuna.

The pig we will pick up on Saturday and take to Punta Coral. Then Saturday night

David will build a big bon fire to heat the stones needed to cook the pig luau style. This we will do early Sunday morning, maybe at dawn, to make sure it is all cooked by 1:00pm for lunch.

Also on the menu are four salads and handmade fresh tortillas. The woman who is going to make the tortillas will take the early morning ferry at 5:00am and I will send someone to pick her up at the Paquera ferry dock and bring her to Punta Coral where she will start making the tortillas.

Also on the menu is grilled pineapple, ceviche and piña colada cake for desert. It should be fun.

Right now David went to pay the helicopter pilot who will fly the photographer over both Manta Raya and Punta Coral and Tortuga Island for aerial photos for our web site.

When we were there last weekend he and the photographer scouted out a landing site for the helicopter to land after the shoot. We have permission to land on a soccer field on the island of Cedros that is across the water from Punta Coral.

Guess what? Yesterday Celiece and Marlon came over with dinner and a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Celiece, once again, has been recognized as in the top 100 of the 7000 Overseas Adventure Guides around the world. This is a big honor. Where she is in number of the 100 we don’t know, but she should be the top guide. Anyway it is very exciting news and we are very proud of her.

This morning I went to see Bryan´s new place of business. He has been working very hard getting tables built and installing phone lines and computers. He works long hours and is busy all day. I am happy to see him interested in something he likes. You may be wondering exactly what he is doing. Actually he has a partner and the partner’s cousin has a computer program that is used to bridge betters with agents. He is the link between and doesn’t actually place the bets he is customer service between the two. Betting on line is really BIG here. I know, it is nothing we know much about; but I am happy if he finds something he likes to do and does it. He is a good …..I wanted to say boy but next month he will turn 25 so I guess I should say he is a good man.

It is difficult to look at my children as grownups and not children. They will always be my babies.

Today Bryan and I rushed Junior, the young female cat, back to the vet. She started howling like she does when she has something she caught but this time there was nothing dead or half dead near her. Bryan and I got worried because she wouldn’t walk and was panting and had her tongue hanging out. Yikes!!!. Well, we took her to the vet for tests

thinking she may have been poisoned or even hit by a car or something.

I have been waiting all day for the vet to call and he just did to let me know that she has another bacterial infection this time in her bladder.

For a wild cat she is not very strong.

This is the second or third time we have treated her with injections for infections. She is a hunter and eats everything she catches if I don’t get there first. The vet wants to keep her overnight so he can give her a shot today and one tomorrow and then another on Friday.

The cats eat the most expensive food on the planet; well it seems like it and a special diet that is for spayed cats. Maybe it is the water? Bottled water for the cats? I had the filter changed last week and maybe that was the problem. Always something.

It isn’t 5:00pm yet, but I am going home. I feel awful and want to rest in the quiet at home instead of here with all the noise from the street. If I leave now, I will be home before the commute traffic starts too.

A few days before we left for Miami, a nurse and doctor came and injected all of the San Jose employees with an anti-flu shot. Well…………………..I am going to go and slap them silly today because I have a terrible cold. Never again will I take advise and get a vaccine…………………….they can kill a person.

Thursday

Today, Celiece and Marlon drove to San Isidro de General a city on the mountain called Cerro de los Muertos (Death Mountain) to look for the badly needed bateas or large wooden plates that we use to serve food and fruit on. Now we are all set for the Luau.

According to the young woman in the artesenia (place where local souvenirs are sold) it is not permitted to cut down the trees that are used to make them any more. Fortunately for us, the place where Celiece and Marlon went to, about a two hour or more drive from San Jose on the main road heading for Panama, the long arm of the law does not reach.

Cerro de Los Muertos is the highest pass on the highway leading to Panama. During some really cold months there has even been a little snow fall on top. It is a dangerous pass and this is where it gets its name.

When I went into the artesenia shop looking for the bateas I had a conversation with the young woman who works there. During Christmas season it is traditional to set up a Portal or Nativity scene in the house. I have a beautiful hand carved set that Mario, who lived and worked at Punta Coral for 13 years, made out of drift wood that floated onto the beach there. It is very beautiful and looks just like the set that we are used to seeing with a cow and a mule and three kings, Mary Joseph and of course Baby Jesus. The figures are just as I remember from my Catholic school days except that Baby Jesus has a nose like Jimmy Durante. It gives him character

The Nativity Scene or Portal should never be purchased unless it is a gift and it is a great honor to receive one.

Here, Portals can be really grand with lots of farm animals, and buildings and anything else. All of this is usually set upon moss that is collected off the trees in the Tropical Forests.

It has been against the law for a few years to take the moss off the trees and I was very surprised to see bags of it for sale at the shop. When I asked about it the young woman told me not to worry that both kinds of moss, the green and the favored white, is now imported from China. Is there anything these days that is for sale that is not imported from China?

What do I use? I have a small supply of shredded beige synthetic stuff that I place in the manger.

David has arranged to trade his car for a friend’s son’s truck to transport the pig. David didn’t want to ride with it is his car. Honestly, I am not looking forward to riding the two to three hours to Puntarenas with the 100 pound pig. I am glad it will be in the truck surrounded by ice. I wonder if we will attract vultures?

When Celiece got married in 1999, I remember the pig that was given to her as a gift from the Heigold family. They must have picked the biggest pig on the farm. It had to be slaughtered, gutted and then the hair burned off and then was transported to Punta Coral on their sail boat. I remember the beast on the ground in front of the bon fire pit that Mario built and lined with flat rocks. It was covered with a tarp but even so, it looked like a dead body.

David and Misael will build a BIG bon fire to heat the rocks to cook the pig. It will give us a chance to burn all the drift wood that floats onto the beach that we cannot use for cooking because the salt vapors will rust the BBQ.

Early Sunday morning David will rise early and clean out the ashes and move the now HOT rocks out of the pit using long handled rakes. The pig will have been cleaned, covered in salt inside and out and a bottle of rum poured into the cavity to ¨sweeten¨ it.

Flat HOT rocks will be placed inside each leg and the cavity filled with white and sweet potatoes, carrots and onions and garlic. Then the pig will b wrapped in banana leaves that have been cut and passed over a flame to close the porous cells and soften the leaf. The now ¨dressed¨ pig will be wrapped in chicken wire to keep it the meat from falling off the pig after it is cooked. Next, the pit will be lined with the hot rocks, covered with wet gunny sacks or here we use coffee burlap bags used to pack coffee and then the pig and more burlap bags and more rocks. As soon as the last bag covers the pig it is covered with dirt and then we wait for 6 hours. Actually we wait and pray that when uncovered it will be cooked to perfection.

When it is time to uncover the pig, everything is raked away and the pig will be lifted carefully and placed in a wheel barrel and taken to the BBQ area where set up will be a big long piece of wood on saw horses. Here it will be unwrapped and then carved and served.

This is David’s project. I am trying to get everything he will need to Punta Coral. The list is long but I think, hopefully we have thought of everything.

This morning I went to the vet to pick up little Junior. She was very glad to see me and a little weak and smelly. I took her home and with Bryan’s help we gave her a bath and dried her off before leaving for work.

She is still sore due to her bladder infection but has had two antibiotic injections and will have another tomorrow. She should be better in no time.

This is second strong infection she has had but this time it was very painful. She needs to eat but doesn’t seem to have much of an appetite.

I forgot to mention what happened last Friday when David and I went to the Calypso Kitchen to formally take the keys away from the two cooks who resigned and give them to the new cooks. It was awful. The Assistant cook had her nose up in the air and the other was in tears. I am sure it is finally setting in what they both have given up.

I am so thankful that I never had to fire them. I was about to because they just wouldn’t follow directions and the attitude to me and the other employees was very nasty. Both complained a lot too.

Now we have not only a new kitchen with new stainless tables and a much nicer location that is cleaner and easier to keep clean, but the new women who have taken over the jobs are friendly, nice and follow directions and are glad to be employed by a company (that would be me and David) that takes care of its employees.

I am glad that I no longer have to beg and threaten to get the job done. Now it is all done with a smile and this makes my happy.

Having lots of employees is difficult. Keeping everything going is like the man in the circus who places dinner plates on the top of long poles and keeps them spinning.

It is almost the end of another busy day. I had to call the lady who owns an aquarium store to come and set up a fish tank for the gold fish that are in the fish pond. We seem to have a leak and half the water came out in one day. It is ok if we are here the following day because we can add water; but if there are multi days when we are not here all the water could seep out. Anyway, the fish are in a tank and safe, hopefully.

This is the news up date for this week. Hope you are happy and healthy and have not had too much trouble with the bad weather we here you have been having in California.

I love and miss you.

Besitos, Cecs