2013 start update! [by Anna]

It's been reeeeally long now since we posted anything! Obviously, it is not because nothing has been happening. It is because there has been happening a lot :-)

First of all, in 2012 we have finally finished all the paper work! It included picking up our permanent residence permit in Moscow and changing the type of company, which downgraded our taxation scheme and now we will pay less taxes! All this was of course a very long and painful process with delays and time and money wasted - both in Russia and in Brazil. At least that these two countries have in common - their love for bureaucracy!

Also in October we went through a construction process - we built a new, seventh room. The decision to do so was a bit spontaneous and was taken one Friday night in front of Na Casa Della restaurant and immediately cheered for with beer cans we had in our hands at the moment.

The construction process was smooth, delayed only by one month exactly as we had expected (100% of the time predicted by the foreman) and 50% more expensive than predicted by the foreman, also exactly as we had planned, so no surprises there. It was not SO smart of us to have the construction in the middle of high season, but since we had started, it was important to have it ready by the New Year's eve, and it was. So we are now well on the way in making the investment pay off.

We closed 2012 with satisfactory result and 68% average occupancy rate and also found that we re-invested over 80% of the profit. Since June 2012 we are Number One B&B in Jericoacoara and we've been working hard to maintain this position. In 2013 we plan to ripe the results of this reinvestment and work less and relax more! No big plans expect changing two last old ACs to new models and doing some general maintenance during the low season. Although of course you never know what kind of new inspiration we may get all of a sudden!

I have also decided that my 50% of the business are now up for grabs at the initial price of €200.000 and any takers are welcome to contact me for more info!

Here are some photos on the Room 7 development:

the beginning

the washing area that has been moved into the house

one week into the construction

three weeks into the construction

the result (we paved the outside area with big flat stones now)

the inside (we still want to paint two of the walls pink)

the draft of the shells

the result

check more details about our pousada at www.atlantis-jericoacoara.com

about cashew [by Anna]

after closing July and August with 90% occupancy we had a bit of breathing space in September - we are now coming to a finish line with 70%. this week-end there is a sport music festival in Jeri. well, it is always good with something different than traditional weekly samba and forró parties! next month we both are finally going to Moscow. it's been a while!

in order not to get bored in medium season now we started a new project - constructing another room where the washing area is now. the washing machine will move into the house where we have a lot of unused space and we will dry the bed-linen behind the house now. the project started today by cleaning up behind the house and preparing the area for putting up the ropes, tomorrow we move the machine and then next weed start with the foundation. the whole thing is scheduled to be completed by the end of October. well, we'll be happy to get some part of the investment back selling the room for New Year's eve - the top highest season in Jeri. the 4 days packages for a double room in economic B&Bs like ours starts at around BRL2.000 (RUB30.500/EUR760/NOK5.600). mind you, we have only one room available, the has been booked for a couple of months now! time to make money!!

anyhow, that's for the update. this post is about cashew. i remember the first time i tried cashew - it was in early 90s. my mom asked me to close my eyes and guess what i'm eating. i thought it was some sort of a cookie. then my mom told me it was her favourite nut - my grandfather used to bring them from his trips abroad (his was a diplomatic courier). cashew was not a common thing in USSR!

here in the state of Ceará cashew is one of the most common fruits. the season starts in September. Jeri is surrounded by cashew farms and the strong winds bring the smell of cashew fruits all the way till here. well, there are a lot of cashew trees in Jeri also, we have one of our own. it's quite small but you can see some fruits getting ripe on the top:

the fruit itself has a slightly astringent, but pleasant taste and is mostly used to make juice. we use it a lot to make juice for breakfast - it is nice and also pretty cheap during the season:

well as for the nuts... obviously they don't grow on the trees roasted with salt and packaged to go with a Friday beer. so i decided what lies in between! every local person can tell you how to get nuts out of the cashew, just like any person in Europe can tell you how to grow potatoes. so i didn't have to search long - i asked Dady! here is the process. first, you put the nuts into the sun. this is supposed to make the oil start coming out. this process takes a couple of days:

then we have to "fry" them, as Dady put it. normally it is done on bigger surfaces on the sand, but due to the lack of thereof, we used our grill. ready to go - cashews piled up and straw from coconut palm trees is prepared. Juja is making sure everything is according up to the standard:

well, then you put th straw on top and set the whole thing on fire. the straw picks the fire very quickly. it is only used to set the cashews on fire though - the shell has a lot of oil and it starts burning easily. now the trick is to move the nuts around so that they fry evenly. this is done with a very long stick - the nuts start spitting the burning oil that apparently can make burns that leave scars for life! hence the very long sticks. and - lucky for me, as today the preparation for the construction work started, our handy man Alfredo and his helper were more than happy to take a break and participate in the frying:

as soon as the straw has burned, it is time to stop the nuts from burning:

here we pick the ones that are done and leave the rest a bit longer:

meanwhile we break the first ones with the stone and taste the warm nuts. nice! and totally different from the salty ones you get in Europe, naturally:

well, i use the next hour to crash the outcome. it takes me a while to figure out how much force i have to use to crash the shell and not the nut. after one hour i have a tiny ball ready. no wonder cashews are so expensive here! by the way, here they are normally fried with sugar and sesame seeds, cinnamon etc. mine have to be dried a bit further in a frying pan in order to get rid of the outer shell that is bitter:

well this will be a souvenir that i bring for my mom when i go to Moscow!
check more details about our pousada at www.atlantis-jericoacoara.com

end of winter/summer updates [by Anna]

we are good way into the high season now and since we more or less finalized some upgrades to our territory, everything is business as usual now. check-ins, check-out and everything that comes in between. since the standard amount of employees in hotel business is one for each five rooms, and we have actually six rooms, everything in betweens also includes now helping serve the breakfast and cleaning up afterwards, loading the washing machine and hanging the bedlinen afterward etc. and since we fired the night-guard, it also now includes watering every day cleaning the territory in front.

we have been in Jeri for almost a year now. i am finally considering taking a kite-surfing class. since people from all over the world come here to surf, i thought it was silly i didn't. our surfer friends from last season have started coming back and the village is busy.

both Marina and i have finally bought our tickets to Moscow, which we will visit in October. it's been a while since we left Jeri and i'm really looking forward to seeing family and friends, and inhaling some cool air.

meanwhile, here are a couple of things we did - we finally took care of the territory outside the fence. we put yuccas all along the east side, replaced the missing palms and moved the ones that were not in the line. now there is only one big one left, but it has to wait until rainy season. for those who is wondering - fences and nets around the small palms are meant to protect them from donkeys and cows that eat them.

then we got rid of the messy plants in front of the entrance:

before

after

and finally, we solved the problem with the neighbour pousada's windows going out to our territory. technically, it is not allowed, and since according to the local legislation all the constructions should be at least 1,5 meter away from the fence, we thought the owner would be willing to collaborate and close the windows.

before

he refused to do it though, motivating it with the fact that he cannot have rooms without windows. well, we thought we couldn't have someone else's windows going out straight to the passage in front of one of the rooms, so we had to think creatively. so basically this is how it looks now. the neighbour still have the windows in the rooms, although the view is questionable, and we have spared our guests the necessity to remember that there are other people close to them!

after

check more details about our pousada at www.atlantis-jericoacoara.com

before and after continued - room no. 6 [by Anna]

as we say in Russia, renovation cannot be completed, it can only be terminated. Marina and I found ourselves trapped in this rule - we just cannot stop trying to make the things look prettier. the past couple of days we were working on room number 6. this is by far my favourite room! it is the smallest, but it is the only room situated on the right side of the main house, therefore nobody passes by and it is very private.

before from last year

before painting

it all started by us wanting to treat the bricks of the fence to stop them from getting dirty by the water, but as this solution turned out to be quite expensive, we decide to use it rather in room 6, that has three brick walls that constantly lose the loose cement particles and make the room feel dirty. then we decided also to paint the fourth wall as it was only painted once and not too nicely. then we fixed the bath-room door (it wasn't possible to close it), removed the ugly and rusty door-handle and lock, polished and painted and put the hand-made door-handle. we also painted the door frames, as suddenly with the new paint-work, they started looking really untidy. then I also polished the surfaces of the furniture.

a while ago Marina fixed the electric socket. the top of it was missing, we couldn't buy a new cover as this model is not produced anymore, and it was not possible to change the socket itself, as the way the wiring was made, it would require rewiring of the whole room. so we had to think outside the box!

before from last year

after from now

also, before it was possible to walk to the washing area from this room. we have closed the passage and removed the stones of the path, put plants there and instead enlarged the area in front of the room. now we only need to get a small table and some chairs. hook for a hammock was added yesterday :-)

after from now

fish-scale "curtains" [by Anna]

we have a long list of the things to do on our "maintenance and improvements" list, but today finally i crossed out one - making some sort of curtain over the laundry-drying area on the right side of the house. this part has historically been half-neglected as there is only one room that is situated there. the entrance to the storage room is there, the garbage tanks etc...

as mentioned in the previous post we have already changed out gas container solution, and now, after long hours, 110 holes in the fish-scales and 220 knots on the thread, we put up some sort of decoration to masquerade the ropes for drying cloth. well they don't exactly hide everything behind, but at least they distract the attention from the laundry and also from the window behind, which actually goes pretty much straight to our bath-room :-)

before from last year

these are the same fish-scales we talked about here by the way!

after from now

before and after (mostly after) photo report [by Anna]

it's been a while since we posted anything, so maybe it is time to do some updates!

so we are half way through the rainy season now. people say, it is the driest rainy season in years. indeed, we are a bit disappointed with the amount and frequency of rain. believe it or not, the sun and the heat do start getting tiresome at some point! every day we hope for some rain and every day it's sunny and hot. so far it rained maybe every 3rd-5th day and the longest it rained was 15 minutes at a time. it seams though that for the nature it is quite a lot of ready, and everything is green. the serrote hills are green and the desert around the village turned green. it makes me nostalgic as I think of summer in Europe. the landscape is even more beautiful than before now!

as for the occupancy, we closed March and April with 44% and 62% respectively, which is higher than we had projected originally, but still not quite enough to make up good numbers. oh well, luckily the low season does not last that long here! now in May most of the places close and it is the lowest of the low. however we seem to be ok for now. today Marina picked up four Russian tourists from jardineira, so we are happy! the last week of May we will close to go for one week field-trip to Lennçois Maranhenses.

meanwhile, our team has expanded with yet another female member - it is Zhuzha. her mother is a Doberman and the father is supposedly pit-bull. well, we doubt the latter, although it seems as her character is the one of a pitt-bull. Zhuzha is a very active puppy and it is pretty much impossible to take a picture of her sitting still. however, it appears that she learns fast, as I already managed to teach her to sit. and she is not even 2 months old yet!

since we are not super busy these days, we've been using this opportunity to do some maintenance. amongst other things it includes polishing up the look of the hotel - adding the numbers to the rooms (after some clients managed to mixed up the rooms and walk in on the neighbours in the middle of the night), painting more things red, making a new storage for the gas container and taking care of the garden.

the old solution for the gas container

the project

the result

Marina and I have rather different ideas about the garden (to put in mildly) and since Marina's ideas are much more dramatic and involve a lot of cutting down and taking out, she always makes sure to invite the gardener the day I am away. I am not completely agreeing with that approach, but I'm sure I will get even with her on another occasion :-) meanwhile I have been spreading some grass and cutting some plants to make them look more neat. also we finally found out that our papaya tree is a she, since it started having baby-papayas!

new grass

before cutting

after cutting

as a bonus - a shot with some sort of strange seaweed that invaded the beach a couple of days ago.

the strange seagrass

Daily life - International Womens Day, dead toad and new number [by Anna]

pretty quiet here these days, so why not write some updates about the life in Jeri!

yesterday i finally bought myself a SIM-card. i paid BRL10 (NOK32/EUR4,3/RUB168) at the pharmacy for it and didn't have to fill out any forms. the only time i need it is when Marina is out of town and needs to reach me and Dadi has already gone home (cos if she hasn't, Marina would call her), which doesn't happen all that often, but it's good to be prepared!

the past couple of days we had a terrible stench around the entrance to the storage, which also started spreading into the house through the windows. Marina had suspected a leak in the sewage due to heavy rains, but Dadi insisted it was some dead animal trapped underneath the lid of the entrance to the sewage pipes. today we found out that Dadi won! it was indeed a toad that got stuck there, and which wasn't very easy to discover. we contemplated trying to fish it out, but in the end we just covered it with a bucket of dry sand. now we can breathe again!

on a more positive note - today the courier-boy working for our accountant brought us a rose. he said that Erivando (the accountant) is sending flowers to all the clients because it is the International Women Day tomorrow. it's been ages since i got flowers for the 8th of March!!! wha a nice surprise. happy 8th of March, ladies!!!

Daily life - new hammocks and fridge [by Anna]

i don't really know how often it rains here during the rainy season, but past couple of days have been hot, sunny and windy just as during the other months. i am almost looking forward to the rain starting again. it will be nice with some freshness again!

today is a big day - the fridge that we ordered one month ago has finally made it's way to our hotel! it's our second positive experience with shopping online at Walmart, that delivers to the door and before the dead-line. it was really about the time we changed the fridge - the pictures of our old one speak for themselves.

unpacking the new fridge!

old freezer with permanently frozen bottle of Smirnoff in it

the old Consul

Marina also bought five new hammocks in Camocim today. neither of us really like the frills on the sides, so Marina used a couple of hours to cut them off.

Marina cutting of the frills

as a bonus comes another picture of a sunset. Marina thinks it's kitsch, but i like it!