Daily life - rainy season, garden, the angry bird, Luna goes for a swim [by Marina]

So, the low (rainy) season has started, however, it's not raining too much, as mentioned before in Anna's post.
We are happy to notice that our occupancy rates are higher then forecasted and by the middle of the month we already reached the monthly lowest target. However, due to little amount of tourists and high competition among half-empty pousadas in Jeri, the rates are drastically dropping down and we have to implement some cost-saving measures in order to be able to still make some profit.

Low season also means more free time for the owners and therefore a good possibility to do some maintenance here and there. One of these days I collected a bunch of flower pots that were standing around the garden and painted them red - our Russian signature color :-)


While I was busy with the pots, spray, solvent, and all my artistic mess in the area behind the kitchen, the piririguá bird that made a nest on top of our palm tree got stressed up by the noise and decided to protect the chicks (or, the eggs? whatever it had there in the nest).



Actually, I wasn't even aware of the bird's nest on our palm-tree until that moment. I don't go around the garden randomly looking for some piririguá nests, you know... So, it was quite a shock for me when one of the small coconuts fell right next to me, I look up and see the angry bird some meters above - I bet the piririguá was aiming at me, but it missed it. I saw more coconuts around the nest, ready to be launched and withdrew myself closer to our closet. You have to respect the local inhabitants, you know ;-)

After 2-3 weeks of regular rain, many trees in the garden got full of flowers - all at the same time. It's so amazing to look around one day and find so many nice surprises here and here, some of the flowers that came out we weren't even aware of!

Luna also enjoyed some benefits of the "color-it-red" campaign and now she's a proud owner of 2 clay bowls matching her new collor.

That morning she got me worried by the way. 



Half and hour after breakfast I noticed that she was gone. Normally she hangs around the breakfast area or stays in the street in front of pousada, but now she was really gone. I even walked around the neighbor trash cans to see if she hasn't fully satisfied with her breakfast, but nothing. 
She showed up one hour later happily wagging the tail, dripping wet&salty. I figured she decided to take a swim in the sea after breakfast. Well, it's a good start of a day, I must admit, however, she could have left a quick note or something "gone to the beach, brb, kisses", couldn’t she? ;-)

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!

"This corner of the world is like me in many ways..." Daily Life [by Marina]

You know, sometimes there comes a day when everything's just perfect, and you are in the happiest mood, and everything you do, turns out right the way it should, and you end up feeling high because of all this harmony and unconditional happiness, and feel like you are floating inside of a big shiny ball and nothing can get through it to hurt you? Today is one of these days, and i couldn't help but share it with whoever reads this post.

I've been getting up early recently, and even though I'm a late bird by nature, I guess getting up really early, at the sunrise, gives people good vibes, at least it gives me good vibes, if I get to be outside to see the nature waking up.

Yesterday, I went for jogging through the hills at 5 a.m, and today I had my first (and only because it takes only one to learn) class of stand-up paddling (SUP) at 6.30 a.m.

The class was fantastic! I had a lot of fun falling down from the board again and again  ploff-ploff! while learning how to pass by the waves and even regret that I didn't ask anybody to film this "Charlie Chaplin" action on video. 
However, after all, stand-up turned out to be quite easy (at least comparing to surfing) and I even rode my first wave by the end of the class! :-)
So, now I am busy looking for a SUP board to buy, which turns out to be quite expensive and there's not much offer on the Brazilian market because SUP is considerably new here. So, ironically most of the offers I saw online are from Santos where I lived for 6 years and never even tried it!
 
We have our first friend-guest Claire from France who knows Anna for many years already and we are very happy to have her with us!
While the girls are enjoying their morning at the beach, I take my first shower of the day, and work my morning shift at the reception. Today is an easy day, nobody's checkin-out, so I just reply some quotations and go get some groceries for lunch. Walking through the village is always funny, even after 6 years in Santos, I still can't get used to meeting so many people you know in just 3-4 minutes and saying "Hi!" to everybody as you are passing by the streets - a real village life ;-)

Back to pousada, cooking some pork sausage-tomato-potato stew for girls, sweating like hell, dancing to Jamiroquai and baby-sitting the dog of our guests from room nr.2. Then comes my second shower of the day.

Lunch is ready, looks like everybody liked it, the girls are back from the beach and I'm writing this post, attending customers and sending customers which are popping up from the street to our neighbours in order to earn some comission - doing all this at the same time - multi-tasking is something that a small hotel owner needs to do a lot ;-)

Soon I am off my shift, maybe will take a nap or do manicure, will take my third shower of the day for sure ;-) and tonight is Vanessa da Mata's free concert at the beach, all the friends are going of course, and I am looking forward to have a lot of fun and feel very HAPPY TODAY!

My tune and lyrics of the day: Jamiroquai
"Corner of the world".


Little darlin' don't you see the sun is shining
Just for you, only today
If you hurry you can get a ray on you, come with me, just toplay
Like every humming bird and bumblebee
Every sunflower, cloud and every tree
I feel so much a part of this
Nature's got me high and it's beautiful
I'm with this deep eternal universe
From death until rebirth
This corner of the earth is like me in many ways
I can sit for hours here and watch the emerald feathers play
On the face of it I'm blessed
When the sunlight comes for free
I know this corner of the earth it smiles at me
So inspired of that there's nothing left to do or say
Think I'll dream, 'til the stars shine
The wind it whispers and the clouds don't seem to care
And I know inside, that it's all mine
It's the chorus of the breakin' dawn
The mist that comes before the sun is born
To a hazy afternoon in May
Nature's got me high and it's so beautiful
I'm with this deep eternal universe from death until rebirth
You know that this corner of the earth is like me in many ways
I can sit for hours here and watch the emerald feathers play
On the face of it I'm blessed
When the sunlight comes for free
I know this corner of the earth it smiles at me

Daily life - unequal fight against the insects [by Anna]

Here is Jeri we don't really have a problem with any insects, although the mosquito can be annoying on a windless night, as I have already mentioned. Cockroaches here are quite peaceful insects who live in the garden , in bushes close to the ground. Actually you don't ever see them, until some neighbour hotel start spraying the poison against them, and then they come with the wind. The New Year's eve is approaching and I guess everyone is preparing, so last week in two rooms at the same time the guests saw two roaches in the bathroom! We were quite shocked (let alone the guests), as we never ever see them, but we took the matter seriously and decided to spray also.

A tiny bottle of poison is enough for a bucket of water. So we put on masks and gloves and set out to spray the rooms and the garden. The whole process took us about three quarters of an hour, despite the protection we felt nausea by the end of the process and we were afraid that the frogs and lizards would also feel not quite well after the spraying. We were very excited to see if any dead roaches would pop the next day, but there weren't any. I have a suspicion that no one ever manages to kill them, they just migrate around...

Daily life - post and garden maintenance [by Anna]

So days go by very fast! We are entering the busiest period of the year and we are working hard trying to fill out the remaining vacancies that we have for the next couple of months. Everything is going well, despite the couple of power blackouts that we had recently (luckily during the day time) and the fact that the garbage truck broke down and the trash is really piling up now. 

I now manage to answer simple phone-calls without having to pass the phone to Marina or Dady. Never before I have learned a language this way – just listening to other people and then talking. Or I guess I did learn Russian that way!

Couple of days ago we received some packages – the heart-shaped forms to make fried eggs (our Australian guests were the happy eaters of the first ones we ever made); some strong pain-killers from my English friend Cynthia in Paris (she works as a journalist and she used to buy those for the B-52 lead-singer she told me) and a blue mini-bar for room 6 (now all our rooms have mini-bars).

The same day we also did some maintenance on the coconut palm trees. We were mostly after the big dry leaves (?) and those other dry parts. We would like to use them to make our ugly lamps look nicer. There are used a lot around here and we also would like to make our place look more rustic! 

Murder of the Imperial Palm [by Marina]

So, we had a favourite little Imperial Palm tree (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roystonea_oleracea) growing outside of our fence.

We were watering it, and trying to protect from cows and donkeys, hoping that many years later it will grow into a gorgeous palm tree and will delight anybody who passes by our street with it's beauty.

Then yesterday some evil person reached through the little fence around the palm, torn off the top (the growing part) of it and left it laying on the sand. The 2 year old palm died from the hands of the crazy person :-(((

According to the results of our forensic analysis, the palm tree wasn't damadged by an animal, and yes by a human being. I have one suspect, but have no proof in order to accuse the murderer of the palm.

We got very sad but then decided to plant a new Imperial Palm in our garden.
Looking for a seedling now ... :-)
 

Daily life [by Marina]

Days are flying by quickly and we keep on being busy with arranging things at our new place.
Today Anna made a heroic effort to clean the storage room and separate useful things from the old crap.
Some objects that she found are really puzzling.
For example, anybody can explain what exactly is this rusty thing that looks like 2 matching metal plates with a few hard (resin?) balls inside? 


Anyhow, we found out that we have twice more space then we thought!
Meanwhile, I continued my never ending battle on the bureaucratic field...7 hours straight of calling, e-mailing... Talking about bureaucracy is boring, so here are instead some more curious details of our daily life.

A few days ago a couple of baby-ducks got separated from the flock and Dady spotted them out lost quacking in front of our gate.
A real village girl, she quickly pushed them inside of our backyard. We waited for half a day, and as the owner of the ducks never showed up, we decided that Dady can take them to her mother, who breeds ducks for sale.


The mango season is starting and inland is full of fruit laying on the ground.
My Russian-Soviet instinct told me to run and collect but before I could figure out where&how, a local village man showed up at our gate selling wild mangoes R$5 (USD 2.7 / Euro 2 / NOK 15.7 / RUB 16.9) per 25 fruits.

Wild magoes (collected from the ground especially) are not so delicious/easy to eat fresh, so we are going to make some jam out of them I guess (tomorrow!).


And the last one for today: tropical climate makes you drink a lot of water through the day. And I hate the tastlessness of plane still water, it makes me wanna puke! So, I enjoy mine always with some slice of lemon. Dady noticed this habbit of mine and came up with a spooky warning: according the the expert opinion of the Northeastern  people regular consumption of lemon decreases female firtility factor :-O Or, in Dady's simple words: "Stop drinking water with lemon or you won't have kids". Go figure...

Daily life - buggy accident [by Marina]

It's after midnight and I am tired of fighting with the telephone operator, internet banking, credit card machine, writing e-mails to our accountant and all the rest. Let's finish the working night with a short post!

It's funny how even on our quiet Rua Das Dunas (the Dunes Street) where we have no more then 1 car per half-an-hour passing by... one perfect morning there happened a pretty serious accident - one buggy bumped into another, and the last one hit the wall of the neighbour pousada, just in front of our porch.

A local driver on a full speed hit the buggy being manoeuvred by a gringo kite-surfer who was just going to start his beautiful tropical day at the beach in the company of his girlfriend.

2 minutes later a crowd gathered around for a small show. Not every day we get to see something like that on our sandy streets. Luckily there were no victims.
Later on the local driver went home to sleep after his busy night work and the gringo surfer went to pay the damage of the rented buggy.

Sometimes life is a bitch even in a tropical paradise.

Daily life [by Anna]

Today we have no guests, but we have a long list of things to do. The tasks range from clarifying some outstanding issues with Booking.com (pretty bad experience working with them so far!!!) to screwing our new hangers to the walls in all the rooms.

Meanwhile, here are some curious things from our everyday life.

We make our own yogurt. We got the recipe from our Serbian friends: heat up two liters of milk, mix in a small yogurt and leave covered for around five hours. In our temperatures it is enough to turn the milk into a yogurt, which can be then used twice for the next batch.

One thing I omitted on my "I miss" list was my grocery vendor on Storgata in Oslo. Those huge bundles of coriander for 12 NOK (4,7BRL/1,5EUR/80RUB)! Here is what we can get of coriander. As you can probably see, only about 30% of it are actually usable for cooking!

Today Dady called me to show me lizard eggs. I had no idea lizards lay eggs and I had no idea what they look like. We got to see these, as Dady was watering today and scared the lizard off, so she didn't have time to dig a whole in the sand for them. Here's what they look like. Dady made a little "house" for them in the sand so that the eggs get a chance. Let's see what happens.