March 24, 2008

Easter is over, San Jose cool weather, changes

Dear Dad,

Easter week is over and everyone is back at work.  In Costa Rica Easter Week is a big deal. Most businesses are closed from Wednesday through Sunday, but there are some who close all week and if you count the two weekends that means a long vacation of 9 days.

What does this mean?, well, the Friday before last, not Good Friday, the traffic was so bad that it was bumper to bumper until 8:00pm.  We didn’t leave the office because I would rather be comfortable here in my office than stuck in traffic with people honking and shouting to get home and then leave town and go to the beach.

The biggest vacation times hear are Christmas holidays and Easter and the school break or ¨Little Summer¨ in July.  This is the time when everyone goes to the beach.

Since David and I go to Punta Coral every 15 days and are always at the beach, I decided that I would rather stay in town.  It was wonderful with little or no traffic and peaceful.

Yesterday we went to Bonnie’s house for a BBQ and Easter Egg hunt with her 9 grand daughters and a few other little kids ( her children’s friends had kids and were there).  It was a mad house, but wonderful.  Must have been all that sugar.

Bonnie lived next door to Casa Calypso in Puntarenas.  We have been friends for more than 30 years.  Our kids grew up together.

Since I missed seeing the Heigold family over Christmas because I had a bad cold and the flu, I was really looking forward to yesterday, and it was better than ever.

Bonnie lives in a really big house with her mother.  It is a small mansion with a big yard.  Her front yard has one side with huge bird cages and inside the cages are of course lots of birds.  She has Lapas or Macaws: 2 Scarlet (a brilliant Red) and also 2 of the Sergeant  Mccaws that are blue and gold in color and then she has 4 Toucanetts , Two Toucans, and 8 of the Yellow Napped Amazon parrots as well.  She also has a variety of small birds too.

 The canary in the kitchen sings all day and has a lovely sound to it as long as you don’t go into the kitchen where he lives because then canary stops singing. 

Bonnie is known for taking in birds and if anyone is leaving the country or cannot take care of a bird anymore or has robbed a nest (now very illegal) Bonnie gives them a home.  Once a bird has been taken out of its nest or captured, it is very difficult, if not impossible to let them free again because they cannot find food – they forget how or never had a chance to be taught by their parents.

Behind the bird cages is the dog cage with three dogs living inside.  She also has another dog pen where her two poodles live.  As you can tell, Bonnie has a Zoo.

Only two of Bonnie’s kids were at the party.  Kiley is married and lives in California and Steve was working on a boat anchored in Herradura Bay.  The boat steve works and lives on is a 120 foot sail boat that is the toy of a man who owns one of the most popular girly bars in San Jose.   They are getting ready to sail to the Philippines next month.

The oldest son, George, was there with his family of one son and three little girls.  George travels all over the word inspecting tuna catches for a big company and grades the quality and then sends the fish to either: France, Japan or Germany.

Robbie, the youngest son, was there with his family of two little girls and his wife.  They are building a two story house on the property that is supposed to be finished in a few months but hopefully will be completed by next Christmas.

On the counter in then kitchen were thre big baskets filled with an assortment of candy that would delight any dentist.  Even a Tootsie Roll, something I have not seen in years.

Bonnie also made a cake that looked like a rabbit and had a cheese cake in the fridge.

On the grill was an assortment of sausages and hot dogs, and two types of beans and two types of potato salad and a green salad and of course an assortment of chips guacamole, olives and ¨pico de gallo¨ or a tomato relish dip- same that you get in Mexican Restaurants.

Lucky Bonnie has 9 grandchildren and 8 of them are darling little girls between the ages of 9 and 3.  One is cuter than the next one and it is impossible to tell them apart, mainly because they don’t sit or stand still. Must be the sugar rush again.

Bonnie always wanted girls and has a daughter and now a whole bunch of grand daughters.

The Easter Egg Hunt:   Instead of coloring eggs, Bonnie had 200 plastic eggs.  (I asked her why and she told me that they color and hunt eggs in school - besides who has the time anymore?) There were bigger kids at the party and they got to hide the eggs.  Since Bonnie has a huge yard, there were lots of places to hide them.

The hunt was after lunch so that the little kids would eat something besides a lot of candy.  Each kid got a stuffed animal to take home too.  After finding the eggs, they were counted and depending on the amount of eggs found, say 20, the kids would get to choose 20 pieces of candy from the big baskets in the kitchen. 

Tempting as it was to munch on all the chocolates and toffees; I only had two pieces. 

I didn’t even eat a piece of the delicious bunny cake either, but later in the day had a wonderful piece of pineapple cheese cake.

Bonnie is famous for her baked goodies.  She makes the most delicious desserts and it is always a treat to try any and all of her recipes when available. She used to sell her cakes, brownies and pies to all the restaurants in Puntarenas when she lived there.

Her chocolate brownies are to die for and as hard as I have tried, I have never been able to make them the same.  Bonnie has given me the recipe many times but they are never as good as hers.  Even her daughter-in-laws say the same thing.  Bonnie is the best baker ever.  It is probably a good thing she lives across town or I would be as big as a house.

Tomorrow David will drive to Puntarenas and take a private boat to the old prison island of San Lucas (it closed in 1992)  He is going with a group of people and one of them is Oscar Arias, the president of Costa Rica.  This is a big honor to be invited to go.

The occasion is to visit the island and see what and how it can e turned into a tourist attraction.  Also, there is an area in Puntarenas that had been built years ago as a public dock sight on the estuary side.  It had been rented out to a Spanish group, who has hotels around the country, for the last 15 years.  They trashed it and the government took it back.

Now it is going to be a big project and the government wants our yacht to leave from the area once it is fixed up again.  We are renting space now for a lot of money and the owners want to raise the price 50% with a new contract.  It is too much. 

David is being asked to participate in the design of new floating docks and the piers and reconstruction of the area.  They want us there and it will be for a lot less money.

Calypso is a big, famous company and we have always been the pace setters for anything to do with the water.  Whatever happens, we get credit or blame.  Sometimes this is good and sometimes it is not.  

We are in the process of helping the government, especially the municipal government to make positive changes for the better that is good for everyone.  Anyway, tomorrow is a big important day for David and Calypso.  He will probably be on the TV news and the morning paper on Wednesday.

I could probably go too, as I am the General Manager of Calypso.  I was there when we met the Minister of Tourism in Puntarenas for a meeting a few months ago, but I think it is only men going this time. 

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Congratulations Great Grandpa.  I received an e-mail from Louie announcing the arrival of Francesca and Lucca.  I have goose bumps.  I also received an e-mail from Linda with a photo of Francesca taken a few days ago.  She looks tiny and perfect and has the Arnone look about her.

In Spanish the word for twins is gemelos , when the twins are one boy and one girl it is called mellizos ( the double ll is silent).  The word for aunt is tia and the word for great aunt is tia abuela, the word for grandfather is abuelo and the word for great grandfather is bisa abuelo.  Congratulations to Jaimee and Natal J

On March 20, the telephone company added another number to both the cell phones and land lines.

Everyone is confused and we all talk about ¨the real number¨ rather than the new number. 

If you are calling a land line you must press the number 2 before the telephone number and if calling a cell phone you must press 8 and then the number.

 I guess in time we all will get used to the change, but now all the written information:  business cards, brochures, ads, plus all the information on the internet has to be changed.  When you advertise internationally, like we do, it is a lot of changes.

The good news is that we have just finished making a new brochure and the new phone numbers will be on it.

Our new project is Expotur.  For more than 20 years the event is the end of May. This year it is happening on the 13, 14 and 15 of May.  We will be out of the country.

Expotur is a tourist convention, and although some business is done and we do have a chance to give out information, it is mostly to show the agencies here and from around the world that we are still in business.

Every year it has been disorganized.  Each day, there is an appointed set time (10 minutes) for each buyer to go and talk to each seller. No, no-one can visit all the stands with set appointments, but before the show, each buyer and seller makes  requests of the people they are interested in talking to and the information is put into the computer and  the computer tries to match up the requests.

We pay a lot of money to participate and want to see as many new wholesalers and or agents as possible.  Sometimes the buyer doesn’t go to his scheduled appointment and just walks around talking to whomever he wants to talk to and the seller sits at an empty booth.

I think this will be our last year of participation. They want us to sign up for next year the day after the show closes.  This is the last year that Expotur can be held at the Herradura Hotel and no-one knows, not even the company that puts on the convention, where the event is going to be held next year. 

 This year we are going to do our history with photos and newspaper and magazine articles from the last 30 years. Old articles and photos will be scanned and then printed on a big banner that will hang on the wall behind our booth. No-one else can say they have been operating as long as we have – 34 years.

Did you know that Calypso is the oldest tour still operating in the country?  The train ride is older but the train stopped running more than 25 years ago.

Thursday

Last night I received two phone calls.  One was from Celiece, returning from her tour around Costa Rica with the OAT group. She called to let me know that her cat , Tigre, has come home after being gone for 8 days.  What happened to the cat?  . No one knows but he disappeared.  He was probably kidnapped or should say catnapped.

This is Celiece’s favorite cat.  She has another cat who likes Marlon.  They both have a favorite cat.

Celiece was very sad when their guard told her that her cat had disappeared, but last night he told her that he heard a cat meow and went to investigate and found the missing cat, a lot thinner yes, but home at last.

Cats are funny.  My friend moved from one area to another, a long distance.  When packing to move, her cat disappeared and two months later showed up at the new house and had never been there before. 

The distance the cat traveled to find his owners was incredible.  He had to cross mountains and valleys and rivers, but he did it.  Amazing.

The other phone call was from Miramar (real name Bernardo) who called to let me know that now that he has his pension; he wants to stop working at the end of the month. He was going to continue working for us out of his home; but I guess he changed his mind.

For the last few years he has been suffering from acute shoulder pain.  He has not found a doctor who can tell him what to do or if it is repairable, but it has been obvious that it really hurts. Social Security medicine, sounds wonderful, but it really doesn’t’ work.

It is time to let him go although he has worked for over 25 years with Calypso.

He not only is a carpenter, but knows all about fiberglass too. 

Through the years he also made lots of Christmas presents for Celiece and Bryan and lots of costumes that required props made from wood.  I still have a tiny dining set he made for Celiece when she was interested in Barbi.  The 4 chairs and table legs have Queen Ann’s legs and is a prefect replica of a normal sized set .

Also in the news is Abuelo, the musician who used to play the marimba on Tortuga Island for years and then as he got older we moved him to Punta Coral.  He is 96 years old now. I send him money because his pension is so small it doesn’t cover his needs. 

The Captain of Manta Raya went to give Abuelo some money and found him planting

cilantro (an herb used here in everything) and Abuelo said he is feeling better and wants to return to work.  Imagine that.

He was terribly ill and this is why he retired.  I am so happy he is feeling better.  He told me once that he was going to live until he is 120.  Maybe he will make it.

We bought his marimba and it is at Punta Coral

This is the news update for the week.  I hope you are well and enjoying the spring weather.  Are the California poppies in bloom yet?

We are really looking forward to seeing you in May.

I love and miss you.

Besitos,  Cecs