Fourth of July weekend here in Juzcar and it is quiet and quite hot!! We had a couple of rooms this weekend but otherwise it is too quiet. Took a booking yesterday for late July but we need to have a few more in this month for the month to pay for itself... sabes. July here in the Serrania is always quiet but this is just too quiet... I mean there is quiet and then there is dead and that is what it is like here at the moment. Even with the offers we have on at the moment, we are getting very few inquiries. I know we are in the same boat as many here in the Ronda area but that hardly makes it easier to bear with these slow hot quiet days ("daze!!" actually).

I am trying to not spend so much time working on the hotel website now as well. After almost five years of working on it almost daily, updating, optimizing, it just gets to the point where it should be going solo with some tweaks here and there but not daily... at least that's what I think. Is there someone out there reading this that can advise me otherwise or confirm my own thoughts on that? I know we appear in many Google results which is good and that's what I have been aiming for.

We finally moved into the hotel last week. July first was the day exactly; the first of July was also the anniversary of my accident last year when I fell through a barrel and broke three ribs. Yes, ouch yet again. And they have not fully healed yet either. I have an appointment in Ronda tomorrow for an x-ray to see how they are doing but at times I can still feel them move like they never did before 01 July 2008.

Anyway, the re-location into our newly created apartment was a big highlight of the month... on the first day of the month. I still have to install the handles onto the new closets we bought from Ikea but the bedroom is functional. The lounge area is coming together slowly as we are bringing things over from the house bit by bit... the the entertainment system is in place now, meaning the TV, stereo, DVD players, etc. Even the sofa & lighting are there now so it is all starting to feel like home. And I do not miss the house one bit.

That will be our next project in the coming weeks, furnishing the house, so that we can rent it as a holiday home in addition to the rooms in the hotel. It is a bit of a bummer to have to make that investment but better to have the house ready for letting to someone rather than sit empty and still having to pay for it. Ikea is having a sale soon so that should help.

Meanwhile all the new terrace doors for the hotel rooms have been installed and look great. No more dry wooden doors that leak and are not well insulated. we have to still install this special curtain that will make the rooms a bit more insulated from the heat and the cold in the respective seasons and keep the room darker for those guests wanting a lie-in. We still to install the new door for the bar which we have but have yet to install. We have to purchase the glass blocks which will fill in the space around the door as we are changing that from two doors to one door so the whole bar entrance will have a new look. And when the sun light is coming in during the late afternoon, the bar should be glowing with a lot of colours once those glass blocks are in place.

My recent visit to New York was a nice break but unfortunately, the whole of the north-eastern US was having a very wet spring; it was reported that for the month of June, there were 19 or 20 days of rain. I was in NY for 10 days and it rained for eight of them; the one day I spent in Manhattan on my own, it rained from about from 2PM to about 6PM and at times it was pouring down. Of course I was wet and then sticky as well because NY is a very humid place. Times Square is so completely different today than when I last lived in NY and I really don't like it. Too middle America now (nothing wrong with middle America in middle America, not in mid-town NYC). Packed as well with lots and lots of tourists, some sleeping in those beach loungers Mayor Bloomberg has temporarily installed there... a strange site indeed. And the traffic jams, everywhere I went during the whole week with my sister, we encountered mucho traffic, too much. Everyday, every highway by-way, motorway, packed with cars in every direction, bumper to bumper... it's no wonder there is so much road rage around. In fact my sister informed me that NY is number one for road rage in the country, sadly.

Anyway, back here in quiet Juzcar during my absence, I missed the village's annual romeria, the day festival with horses, picnics, dancing and singing in the countryside. Ivan had a few good days of business with returning clients who missed me. And some lunch trade as well (of which there is none this weekend).

I joined an on-line book club thanks to my friends Dan and Carol who were here in May. They recommended this website where friends can share what they are reading and make comments on and rank books they are reading or are interested in reading. This website is called www.goodreads.com . One must open an account and then one can list books read, or books to read and invite friends and family to share.

Update on the dogs; Bandit, our French bulldog, is going to have more puppies. We are expecting them between 29 July and 5 August. It will most likely still be quiet for us then so a good time to have a few pups around.

And finally, we will be closed from 9 - 13 July as we are going to visit Ivan's village up in Avila for the annual summer fiesta there. It has been more than a couple of years since Ivan last went and he is excited as we are also going with a couple of friends from Ronda so that should be fun and it won't be as hot there as it is here. And it IS hot here, hot, hot, hot!! But it is refreshing to jump into the pool and cool off before lounging poolside with my latest new book which is where I am headed right now.

Hasta la proxima.

This is something new for me, trying out a video in my blog space. This is a clip I made of our waiter one afternoon a few weeks ago.

We went for a drive through the hills the other, something we have not done enough of since we have been here. Exploring the mountains is fun... driving along these narrow dirt tracks trying to find your way somewhere you're not sure of. Here is a photo I took of the view from one of the points we arrived at.

You can see Juzcar to the right of the photo and the village of Farajan to the left. We were in amongst a gorgeous pine forest with summer forest fragrance, pine and orange blossoms. It was quite warm as well as you might see from the photo... to me, it looks hot.

Here is another photo of the chestnut trees now in full flower, a bit later than normal but they are pretty stunning to see. This photo only shows the canopy of the trees in flower but that is what I think looks so impressive.

The weather has gone hot now although there is a bit of cloud today, the temps are still quite warm. Yesterday in Ronda, after we delivered the wedding cake Ivan made, the temperature there in the car registered at 45C!! Not the real temp but close... a hot day yesterday.

Ivan made a three tiered wedding cake for an English wedding which took place a the Hotel Molino del Puente in Ronda. That hotel is run by an English couple and they get a lot of wedding business. Elaine, one half of the couple, is recommending us to her clients for the wedding cakes as she was not impressed with the cakes she has seen in Ronda. We are now waiting the feedback after the event but here is a photo of the cake:

Ivan is now finishing off a couple of communion cakes to be delivered for 1.00-ish today for a couple of families in the village of Farajan. We seem to do a lot of cakes for the people of Farajan and almost nothing for the people of Juzcar! Funny that... the village we live in does not give us much custom at all while the other villages are better patrons to us!

We have a couple from Madrid with us for a few nights as well as a family from Copenhagen. The hotel is almost full tonight which is very good because June is the second worst month of the year... July being the worst (slowest). That said, we have some offers on.... all rooms available in the hotel for only 55 Euros per night including continental breakfast and tax for two!! What an offer, eh?

Then next week, I am taking a few days to go to New York and catch up with a few friends and family. I've not been home since my Mom died a couple of years back (already)! I think I will be busy as I want to see quite a few people and I've only got 10 days. Plus I will be cycling with my nephew down that bike trail along the west side of Manhattan, something I am really looking forward to. Ivan's parents arrive tomorrow to be here to keep him company and help out while I am away... isn't that so very nice of them to come and be here so I could go to NY for a few days. Paz, Ivan's mom, is not a fan of the heat at all but she'll be here for a couple of weeks anyway.

Then in July, as it is the slowest month of the year, we are closing for a long weekend and going to Ivan's town up in Avila for the first couple of nights of the town's annual fiesta! That will be a nice break from here as well and it won't be as hot up there as it is here so another break from the heat for a couple of days. I really enjoy the heat as long as it is dry heat.

Please tell a friend about our offers for June and July as the pool is just perfect now.

I helped Ivan make marmalade yesterday. He's been making strawberry marmalade for the last couple of weeks. He made black cherry marmalade as well and it is very delicious... I had some on toast this morning. Yesterday morning, I was standing there in the kitchen for some 2.5 hours pitting the black cherries while Ivan and Antonio were cleaning up from the painting upstairs on the terraces.

Ivan and Antonio, our waiter, painted the exterior of the hotel in the last couple of weeks , a job that needed to be done and a big one at that. We had the idea of painting the chimney pots different colours matching the rooms that they corresponded to and did... they are now violet, blue, green, yellow and orange and BOY, what a difference it makes. The hotel looks almost like a different place. So here are a couple of photos and a photo of our bougainvillea that has sprung into colour in the last few days and appears to be quite healthy.

The weather has been up and down these last couple of weeks in terms of temps... April and early May were beautiful but these last couple of weeks could have been better; but today it seems like summer has arrived as it is quite warm out there today.

Bookings have slowed right down now; we were quite busy for a few weeks with the hotel continuously having guests. But from 18 May, the reservation booked has a lot of blank pages. We have an English guest at the moment who is a client of our friends from Butterfly Adventures. She is here for walking and relaxation on 5 day relaxing break having booked a couple of massage treatments as well.

Tomorrow the hotel will be full with a group of tour operators looking at promoting the Genal Valley but we don't have much to do with that thanks to the president of our association; I think he forgets that there are members of our association that he should be involving in these kinds of events but he is quite busy promoting the village, he forgets that others might have an interest as well. Not to worry though as the hotel will be full for a night with dinner provided as well.

We recently had a returning group of clients from Malton England; four gentlemen (well 3 from the previous time) who were here a couple of years back; they were here for a week and had a very enjoyable week of walking especially in the Sierra de las Nieves Natural Park Reserve. I think they were a pleasantly surprised at the fantastic walks they had there in the park but they were not surprised at all by the wonderful meals Ivan prepared for them.

We had to replace a hot water heater and deposit a couple of months back unexpectedly. Last night one of the motors on the walk-in frig decided to stop working so now we have another unexpected expense of that to sort out. Francisco got it working provisionally this morning but we need to get a new motor. There is always something that comes up unexpectedly/ un-planned for in running a business like this... there is never a time to just sit back and enjoy and let it roll with no problems arising for some time.

Ivan will be starting flamenco dancing lesson tomorrow in Ronda while I continue with my driving test preparations.... a story for another day. Ciao for now.

The photos will say everything for me this time.

These are a few photos I took of Juzcar yesterday, 07 May 2009. It was a glorious day and the photos say it all, including the wild flowers in the lower village near a picnic area.

Juzcar with Pujerra village in the distance

Juzcar

Juzcar, Hotel Bandolero second to
last building on the right,
(it's long).

Juzcar with glorious big sky above!


Wild flowers

Wild flowers

Scottish Flags flying at the
Hotel Bandolero, 01 May 2009

Things have been moving along here at the Hotel Bandolero. We've been fairly busy since Easter with few days free to rest and do the work around here to keep the place up. So far we have been having a much better spring than we did last year.

For example, this last weekend was a long holiday weekend in Spain as it was in many other European countries for May Day. We had a special offer on because of one of our clients, Fiona Mackenzie of Scotland. As you may know from my website, Fiona is an accomplished Gaelic singer with a few CDs out there in the market; she has performed in concerts in a few countries as well as her own and is a major promoter of the Scottish Gaelic language. We met Fiona last year when she came to Juzcar on holiday with her family and that how the idea evolved for a singing/language workshop her in the Hotel Bandolero.

The workshop started last Wednesday when the sign-ups arrived; Fiona and her colleague, Gillebride MacMillan, arrived on Tuesday. While there were only three sign-ups, Fiona and Gillebride enthusiastically approached this course. Wednesday morning, while awaiting the arrival of the small group, Fiona and Gillebride put up small cards with Gaelic words & English equivalents words all around the hotel, words such as (in English of course) Bar, Restaurant, Kitchen, Men's/Ladies' Toilet, Pay Here, Staff Only, No Smoking, manager, reception, Lounge, Welcome, Good-Bye, Some Gaelic Spoken Here, chair, table, wall, stove, frame, picture, lamp, cabinet, etc. The course included singing so there was Gaelic singing softly wafting about the hotel for 4 days, a beautiful sounds to open your door to in the morning. Singing on the terrace in the afternoon so villagers could hear.

Saturday Evening Ceilihd -
José, Christine, Gillebride & Fiona singing

Then on Saturday evening, there was a Ceilidh, pronounced Kay-Lee. This is an evening of singing and dancing and it was lots of fun. Ivan got his genuine kilt out for the first time along with all the rest of the accessories and appeared very Brave Heart Scottish for the evening. While we did not have as big a turn out as we'd hoped for, there were a few folks in attendance. Fiona and Gillebride sang Gaelic songs, some sad and beautiful, others more up lifting and chirpie! Antonio, our waiter, joined in with a couple of flamenco guitar songs while Ivan danced a couple of Sevillanas with Antonio's fiancée, Maria Angeles. Our friend Daica, visiting for the weekend from Madrid, sang a song with her daughter Audrey, a Scottish friend from the area, Kate, surprised one and all and got up to sing a couple of songs in Gaelic and did a couple of traditional Scottish dances. Everyone got to dance and sing and eat good food prepared by Ivan as well (including home-made genuine Scottish shortbread). It was a great evening and a very different as well from the normal Andaluz night. Here are a couple of photos of the event.

Iván dancing a Sevillana with Maria Angeles, Antonio on the guitar


Group participating in a wawking

So, all in all, a very good weekend of music and dancing. Ivan's brother Carlos and his family came for the weekend in addition to our friends Steven and Daica with their 3 children... lots of fun with all the little ones running around and having a good old time at the Bandolero!!

These are the types of Saturday night events we would like to host more of... we only need the musicians and singers to come along and then the people will come to enjoy and have a great night!!

What else has been happening here, well... we are almost finished with that art gallery. I feel like we are at this last stage and getting through it is proving to be quite difficult. We have installed a hanging system and we have even been provided with some art work to sell by an English artist who lives in the valley. But there is a lot of stuff left from the work of the renovation and we just have not had the time to clean things up and do the final organisation... so it feels like it is dragging on and on. Like our apartment! It is just about done but we are waiting for the big windows to be installed before we can move in otherwise it is not weather proofed. The electrics are just about done but Ivan has decided he is not so happy with its appearance and would like it done over again....! I'm not so fussy about it as I think it will disappear when all our furnishings have been installed and there are things hanging on the walls.

We bought a cloths closet at Ikea in Malaga last week and they delivered it within an incredible 48 hours. Then Steve, who apparently has lots of experience putting Ikea things together, put together our closet which I'm sure will be saving me lots of frustration!! So small steps down that road of moving.. we will be moving the things over slowly but surely as well. In fact, Daica helped to move quite a few things over this weekend as did Steve.

The weather is warming. We had quite a wind blowing through here on Friday and Saturday but today it is sunny and dry, quite clear, a perfect day for cycling. Speaking of cycling, we had a four Canadian cyclists arrive yesterday for the night, staying only one night here on their self-guided a circuit, heading next into Ronda. When chatting upon their arrival, it turns out that two of them live in Hong Kong and have done so for the last 17 years. They arrived in HK, coincidentally, one month before I did way back in 1992. Martin is a pilot and works for Cathy Pacific Airlines and knows someone (named Greg) that I know who lives in Sydney and works for the same company. All of this proves just how small this little old world is.

And on that note, I will say hasta otra dia.

Ivan and I feel pretty naive after being ripped off. We were only trying to be nice and build a cake business. But there are those people out there who take advantage of that and we had to learn a lesson the hard way.

We were approached by a woman called Melissa Harvey a few months ago for a wedding cake. She worked for an outfit called Purple Turtle International, an events organising company based on the Costa del Sol and in Hertfordshire, one of the home counties north of London. They were all excited about the possibility of doing business with us and were looking for a specific wedding cake for an upcoming wedding. We were happy to oblige of course; she came up to meet us here in the hotel one busy evening with her boss, a woman called Joy Gunning, a Scottish woman and partner with her husband in this company called Purple Turtle International.

They showed up bringing lots of gifts of pens, paper, mouse pads, catalogues with their products and were very effervescent in their enthusiasm. They stayed for some tapas and said how our business was so lovely and they would love to send some for their clients our way. They went ahead and ordered the cake with a tasting to start.

To make a long story short, we agreed to provide the wedding cake and deliver it as well to a location on Estepona, which is on the Costa del Sol, about 75 minutes from the hotel down the mountain. When I asked for payment, they said they could pay 50% on delivery and the remainder when their client paid. This should have set off alarm bells for me but it didn't. This is a major sign of just not having the experience required to run a business. Even now, months later this sets my head on fire for being such an amateur. I got half the amount due from Joy who so sweetly promised to get the remainder to us in no time. Her assistant Mel Harvey was just as much a liar as Joy was as she quit her job with them after this wedding and that was that.

Joy claimed that her assistant up and left her without notice nor any transition time and so she did not have our invoice and did not know how much she owed us and everything was in a right mess. I'm sure Mel left in a hurry as her boss is a thief and she did not want to work for any more, no doubt. Next thing, Joy is in Scotland for weeks on end due to family problems that I am supposed to have sympathy for. Being the nice person I am, I did have sympathy for it but I began to think as it was getting to be months later and no payment nor equipment we left as well (without a deposit... another amateur point to be fuming about), how professional was she for not making sure her business obligation were met even if she had family issues.

I asked her about it in an email and she sent me a very nasty response about how she has her priorities and family was first and she could do without an email like mine and in fact, this was my own fault that I was not being paid.

Well, she had a point there, not the way she meant it but the way I saw it. Of course she took advantage of us because she is the type of business person that is the slime of the business world; making all kinds of ridiculous promised not even asked for, kind of OTT, acting always with a nice face and being pleasant right up to the moment of payment. Of course she was not going to pay me the amount due, she most likely never planned to pay me as we were naive enough to leave a cake without getting full payment up front. We could have threatened to the cake back with us if they did not pay and that would have been that... I think we would have had our cash in hand had we done that... but naive is the word here yet again.

It should have set off alarms as well when I checked out their website and it was "under construction"; today, one cannot find an address on their site nor contact telephone numbers, also a warning sign of a shifty outfit. I should have had reservations when their phone numbers kept changing. There were several tell tale signs that I just did not cotton on to.

So all I can do now is put Joy Gunning's name in my blog several times as well as her business name of Purple Turtle International in the hopes that when others check on Google to see if Joy Gunning and Purple Turtle International are legitimate, they will come across this blog entry and realise that Joy Gunning is a liar and a thief; her outfit called Purple Turtle International is also a fraud and they prey upon nice people. They are the types of Brits on the Costa del Sol who give the Brits that bad name that they have, ripping off each other (Brits that is) and non-suspecting innocents like Ivan and I.

Well, we have learned a lesson the hard way and hopefully Purple Turtle International (also known as First Consultants Ltd) and Joy Gunning will soon be seeing my blog entry in Google results and help to protect others that they may be preying upon. All one has to do really is look at their website to know they are a fraudulent outfit. She even said to me a couple of times that they were for real.... should that not have said something to us to beware of these people?

Enough of them now. I am writing this to get it out of my system as every time I think about it, I get hot under the collar.

Well, we are having a good Easter week so far. The weather is co-operating, warm and sunny, not hot. Clear blue skies, fantastic light and shadows. Ronda is looking pretty good as well; the hills around Ronda are extremely green at the moment, that vivid, rich green that jumps off the hillside and grabs you.

We've had a couple of adventurous kids and their mother go into the pool yesterday and today; the temps are warm-ish but the water in the pool is not...they were just giving their circulatory systems a jump, I think!

The hotel is full tonight and tomorrow with a couple of rooms available for Saturday night... still may get a taker or two for them at the last minute.

We just placed an ad in the latest edition of the "Olive Press", a locally published English language newspaper that I am not all that fond of as it always making Spain look terrible, from an English point of view and I know there are plenty of people who disagree with what's written in it, including many Brits.; it's not the subject, just the presentation. Nevertheless, we got a very nice offer to be in their special edition of restaurants and decided to go ahead and advertise. We have already had a foursome in for lunch who said they came as a result of the ad.... one can never tell what kind of result one will get from print advertising.

We are also currently running some radio ads on Radio Andalucia.es as we got a great offer on that as well for 12 months of adverts, four times daily... we've not seen any results from that yet but one can hope.

We have a very nice French family with us at the moment, spending a week with us. Next Sunday, a couple from Stockholm arrive who were with us last year. They've even written to us in advance saying they are tired of the long winter of Sweden and look forward to their holiday here in Juzcar.

Well, that's it for today, just a short entry for the blog.