Hotel Bandolero was once again featured along side the village of Juzcar in a nature program broadcast here in Andalucia on 08 and 09 January 2011. This is a link to where one can view the program on-line:

http://www.radiotelevisionandalucia.es/tvcarta/impe/web/contenido?id=7223

The program normally features stories on sustainable tourism and other related topics about nature and the environment.

Meanwhile, we have been enjoying some beautiful weather, well this area has as I was away for a week up to Tuesday. I went to London for a short break to catch up with friends as I had not been to London since 2005, a long time ago. Ivan stayed here and manned the business as we had a few bookings for the weekend.

As one can imagine, this time of year is normally a slow time in the hotel sector, especially here in the mountains. So we put on a what I think is a pretty attractive offer and we are getting some nice results; many phone queries and some firm bookings. The offer is any room in the hotel for January and February at 53€ per night including continental breakfast and tax. We also reduced the room prices a wee bit given the economy especially here in Spain and so we have been getting booking requests for later in the year as well.

All the almond trees are in flower with their lovely small white and pink blooms dotting the landscape all over the Serrania at the moment. There are many puffy bright colored trees around, so lovely to see almost everywhere one looks on our route from Juzcar to Ronda.

Some of you may have noticed that our website has been revised yet again. The problem with the new format was that it was not being indexed by Google. Furthermore, since I revised the website, not one booking had come in so I figured go back to tried and true, simple format, easy text and photos. I will be adding a photo album soon to make it easier to view the photos of events in the hotel. The ESP version of the website will be revised back to the old version shortly. It's lots of work to maintain a website so there you have it.

If anyone has any comments or criticism, please do let me know. Comments appreciated.

Thanks.

Well here we are in June and it is hot.

We had a very successful week with painters that came from the USA in May. They stayed with us for 9 nights and saw a lot of the area including a visit to the Alhambra Palace in Granada where we organised painter´s passes for them which allowed them go enter wherever they wanted whenever they wanted. We had lovely weather while they were here as well.

We will soon be offering another painting workshop as we have recently been in touch with another American artist interested in offering workshop here in the Genal Valley.

Meanwhile, we have been trying to get some artists interested to bring and exhibit their art work in our gallery but this is turning out to be a lot harder than we thought. I can´t blame an artist who wants to know that if they hang in a gallery they will be able to sell something. We have yet to reach that threshold but we hope it will happen. But it will certainly never happen if we do not have items on exhibition in the gallery space. Sounds to me like an egg and chicken sort of situation. The two previous artists were happy to ahve their work on display here and were not so concerned about selling things which was helpful to us. I recently went to Gaucin in the lower Genal Valley and basically was made very discouraged to think the artists of Gaucin would be intersted in hanging here in Juzcar. They seem to be under the impression that we are in overly remote area and bascially clouldn´t be bothered the the ¨hassle¨to package and bring their work here. So this will be another uphill struggle to get our gallery off the ground. So much for helping the local artist community. We will carry on but seeking out artists from another location in the Serrania de Ronda may be more fruitful for us.

Ivan prepared a couple of fabulous cakes this last weekend. A strawberry mousse cake, three tiered, and a large sheet of chocolate mousse cake, both for a large communion celebration here in the village. Photos to follow but as my Mac crashed on Friday and is in the shop a the minute, I am using my trusty laptop and do not wish to load a lot of photos here so the cake photos will be loaded up when I have my desktop back.

And that charming little house that was la casita de Diego has stirred up some interest from a couple of parties, I am happy to report. We are now awaiting word for a couple of items to be cleared in order to procced with its sale! On that happy, I say hasta la proxima.

A celebrity comes to Juzcar.

Our first celebrity, Cayetano, came for lunch on Sunday last with a group of friends and family. For those of you who do not know, Cayetano is a famous bullfighter and an Armani fashion model, quite well known in Spain for the family he comes from as well. Very nice to have a celebrity in our place who enjoyed everything from the food to the views.

Prospero Año Nuevo.

Happy New Year.

We hope you are having

a

merry holiday season.

The Fiesta de Ronda starts today. That means that the hotel is full for 3 nights, good business for us. The weather has been quite hot so perfect for a fiesta. This is the fiesta de Pedro Romero and this is when the La Corrida Goyesca happens. There will be three days of bull fighting in the Ronda arena, the only time when there is bull fighting in Ronda during the whole year. Tickets can be quite dear to experience this occasion.

The main part of the Ronda fiesta is held at the Ronda fair grounds which were opened only 3 years ago and is located along the Ronda by-pass road. One could have seen much activity there in recent days as the preparations were under way for the fiesta. Big rides going up, casitas being built, lots of lights being installed, buses and trucks parked along the fair grounds, animal trailers about as well.

Last night was a parade which would have started next to the Ronda bull ring and snaked its way through Ronda eventually ending up at the fair grounds.

The centre of Ronda was abuzz with preparations earlier this week as well. There, too, were tents going up for casitas, as they are called. In the Plaza Socorro, a big structure was being put together and I am curious to see what is the finished structure as it was quite large. There are lots of street parties in Ronda during this time, speakers out in the streets blaring music, lots of people standing around chatting and drinking/eating tapas, all very festive actually. And the principal shopping street, Calle Espinel, was already decked out with colourful balls hanging over the street, people selling balloons and other blown up things for children and other memorabilia.

We are hoping to go into Ronda to check out the fiesta for a couple of hours at least ourselves later today.

Another gorgeous day in Juzcar, oh to be sitting by the Bandolero pool with a cool drink to hand and a wonderful book.

We went to Las Navas del Marques last weekend to participate in the first day of the annual fiesta there. Las Navas is a village in Avila province in Castilla y Leon and is Ivan's home town. We drove through the night on 2 July to arrive at 7.30 AM in Las Navas. Slept until about 12PM and then off to have some tapas and see friends, fmaily and acquaintances there.

The big night was Saturday. Our friends who currently live in Madrid came up to pass the evening with us. The children had a good time as there were a few kiddy rides as well as those big blown up balloon play areas for kids without shoes.

After dinner we all got ready and went out starting with the dancing in the plaza. We passed the whole night more or less around the plaza with a couple of paseos up and down the Avenida Principal . Music started at midnight with the first band playing mainly pasa dobles (a popular Spanish dance) and then around 1.30 changed to second group who played more contemporary type music. It was a good night in terms of weather as well so all had a good time. By 6.15 AM I decided it was time to turn in and so retired to bed at 6.30 while those still remaining of the our group straggled one by one off to bed as well, except for Ivan and Antonio who did not see their beds until later that Sunday.

Ivan's cousin Danny is a bullfighter and he was doing a bull fight Sunday afternoon and it was the first time he was doing that in the Las Navas Annual fiesta so all the family went to see (and support) him including Ivan. The tickets were quite expensive for a small village bull fight (more than Madrid so I heard say) so I did not go, I had a nap instead and then a wonder down tha main street, eating sun flower seeds as is a big custom here and waiting for Gabriel and Natalia to turn up (they also missed the bull fight). Sunday evening was a big family gathering on a terrace on the main street which was quite entertaining.

We drove home on Monday afternoon; the drove from Madrid to Juzcar is more or less seven hours. I was pleased to see some roadworks in progress as that Autopista was in dire need of a resurfacing and that's exactly what it was getting.

We were able to head north for the weekend as bookings so far this month are pretty sad; in other words we closed the hotel for the weekend. We have a couple of more bookings this month but nothing to write home about, even with the fantastic offers we have put on.

We have been spending some time organising our new apartment and getting more things moved over from the house.

It is very hot in the sun here. The air temperature is comfortable and there is even a cool breeze at times but the sun... is hot. Hot dry sun, great weather for sitting by the pool and reading a book and sipping a tall cool refreshing drink. Hey, I think I am going to head over the pool right now and finish that book I've been reading.

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.

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.

We had another death in the village this week. This time a younger person who did not take care of himself. In fact, it was discovered that the house he and his brother were living in needed to be torn down as it was falling in on itself. Amazing conditions some people are willing to live in; the people from the village were even surprised at the mess in this house, filled to the ceiling with trash apparently.

The weather has been good and spring like. The temps have warmed and the flowers are sprouting. The forecast for Ronda is not good for today and tomorrow, rain, no sun. But here in Juzcar it is quite nice, sunny, clear, warm. Better to be in Juzcar than Ronda.

Our art gallery is almost there. The new closet is just about finished; now I have to move everything into it and organise it well. Then the place needs to be cleaned as there is a lot of dust around. We have had plenty of time to work on things upstairs these last couple of weeks as this has been the worst March for bookings, sadly.

And now people are arriving in the bar so I must dash... more later.

Today is Father´s Day in Spain. It is also San Jose Day who is the patron saint of carpenters. Things like that, I never knew growing up in New York. Here in Spain, one learns about patron saints. The calendar issued at each year end by Unicaja Bank, the largest in this area, has the names of the saints on each day of the year, so helpful, no?

We had a death in the village last Friday, a neighbour of ours as well. She was called Maria, what a surprise. She lived two houses down the calle from the hotel. She had a small dog that followed her, slowly, every where she went in the village. She was sometimes friendly enough to say ¨buenas dias¨ or ¨buenas tardes¨ to me or Ivan but she never failed to give a salutation to Lolita, one of our French Bulldogs; ¨Oh Lolita, Lolita, ¿que tal?¨ she would say. We would see her pretty much daily, going to take her trash to the bins or going down to the fountain to fill a bottle of water. Stopping at the mirador with another one of the villagers to chat and look at the view, speculate about the weather. On mornings when we were here early enough, we would see her waiting for the baker to arrive (the baker comes from Ronda daily about 9AM with fresh bread and sweets in his van). And once, we were clearing out some of the quantity of boxes full of vinegar and so we put a couple out in front of the hotel for anyone to help themselves to and help herself she did. She came along moments after the boxes were put out and said, ¨Oh, oh!! What´s this? For me? Ah, have you got some string for me to wrap it up to take home?¨ And off she went with all the vinegar, no word of thanks, no good-bye, just off she went, waddling down to her house, vinegar in hand, dog following behind her.

Her son, Javier, came into the bar on Friday a couple of times, also a new experience. Although they lived practically in front of the hotel and he even helped to build our pool, he never came to our bar before and he certainly never spoke. But on Friday, he was not himself as he had discovered his mother that morning. Now he would be all alone here in the village. He spoke to Ivan and explained a couple of things to him and had a couple of drinks. He came back to the bar later in the afternoon with some family relations and men from the village for coffee and copas of pacharan with ice. He came back in the evening with an aunt or someone that looked like that and wanted lots more pacharan for which I was admonished by this aunt as he was getting drunk.

On Saturday morning when I came to the hotel, the area in front of the hotel was full with cars. Just as I arrived at the hotel, the procession was coming up from Maria´s house with the hearse in front followed by Javier and Mª Carmen on his arm, a moody, somewhat deranged widow from the next street over. They were taking her to the village cemetary for internment. When our waiter arrived at 11.00, he saw all these cars and thought the hotel must be packed but no one was here except us as usual and one drunk called Paco from the next village (a whole other blog entry that is).

Friday was a glorious day as was Saturday, warm, sunny, clear. We had a table of four for lunch on the terrace of people from Ronda, called Rondeños, which does not happen nearly often enough. We had a lovely American couple staying with us for the weekend as well. They live in Cadiz where they have a business. We also had an English couple stay Saturday evening who publish a local English language monthly magazine called ¨Andalucia Life¨. They are doing a story about Bandoleros and this area and so planned to feature the hotel in the article.

We have a new waiter who started the weekend before; his name is Antonio like our previous waiter but that is where the similarities end. He is a very nice regular guy who also has a business which is struggling at the moment given the economics of the times. He and his fiancé, Mª Angeles, run a butcher business in Ronda but as business is down he is supplementing his income by coming to us on the weekends. They are both quite nice people, Sevillanos living in this area. We are now getting some of our meat supplies from him to help him out. In fact, I´m off to Ronda now to go and collect some suckling pig from them.

So I must be off. Another beautiful day here in Juzcar and warm as well. It had cooled a bit earlier in the week but it´s fantastic now. Ciao for now.

Today is the last day of the best February I think we have had, in terms of our business. We had a group booking in the first weekend of the month for two nights which filled the hotel. Then we were full for Valentine's day, for the first time. Last weekend was the only one (this month) where we had no clients staying in the hotel and little to no passing trade for lunch. But this weekend, there were 3 rooms last night (2 were Finnish couples) and 6 rooms today; we had a group of Danes that booked in for lunch today and we have another group booking for lunch tomorrow, technically, a different month. So all in all, we are happy with our flow of business and it continues to improve, despite this economic climate.

We were written up in a Costa del Sol based Finnish newspaper this month and so we have started receiving queries and reservations from Finnish people. We have previously had many Swedes and Danes and been included in a couple of issues of coastal Danish magazines as well. This is the photo of us published in the article in which we are told there is a good review of Ivan's cooking and the hotel.

Espanjan Sanomat - Febrero 2009 - Nº107

We had the windows finished in our new apartment last week. One of the new doors was installed as well, without the large piece of glass which will be installed when the second door is in place. We started painting the flat as well so it is really starting to take good shape. I'm hoping to be sleeping in there by the end of March!! The complete move of all our belonging may take longer than that as we will not have the benefit of a moving company to assist with that so "poco a poco" as they say here.

The weather has been bright and warm of late although today it is cloudy and raining. We're hoping that the cold weather has relatively little time left to run as we are ready for the milder temps of spring and the blossoms of wild flowers bursting with colour everywhere. Already the cherry blossoms are out in spectacular pink as usual and there are several other small flowers appearing in the countryside, yellows, purples, blues, whites, it is very lovely and should be gearing up very shortly as we move into the month of March.

We have a new bird cage that Ivan built, it is rather large and red and has 3 birds in it. Fred and Ginger have been relocated to this cage and a new male canary which Ivan would like to breed. He bought a new female canary but she was not very well from the start and died a couple of days later so we are now waiting for a new one.

We are expecting Ivan's parents to come for a visit for Semana Santa. Semana Santa starts this year on 3 April. We already have several booking for this week but still have plenty of availability so if you're interested in booking, now is the time to do so as the queries will increase in the coming days as people have a eye to arranging a break from all the bad news about these days.

I'm working on revising the website a wee bit. I have finally decided on the new format of the website making a wider which is more suitable to the contemporary sizes of computer screen. It will be more or less the same, the content will remain the same but the format will change. I still have not figured out how to incorporate PHP into my website as I am not sure how it functions and I am not a professional webmaster so I do not have lots of literature at my finger tips to do some research, even with the internet available. I know PHP would help me in reducing the amount of time I have to change some things on my website. When I've finished revising it, it will look nicer and be a bit easier to navigate. This will definitely take some time to do as I have so many pages in my site now and want to add one or two more.

I'm also trying to get a brochure for the rooms completed but I have been working on that for more than a year now and it is still not finished. I'm not a big procrastinator like my friend Andy in Los Angeles (sorry Andy) but it is just a slow process, deciding on the content, the form, and then putting it together.

I can say that I have procrastinated like my friend Andy in LA in terms of getting a disk of photos of my wedding to my sisters. The wedding was in May and here we are in March and still no disk. I have at least finished compiling the photos which I want to include and they are in the proper order but yet to be burned to a disk. This week I hope as I am not being held down to doing any accounting this week!!! I finished that last week.

Well more later. Ta ta amigos.