Thursday 2 June 2011

Rain, dead bunnies and a private change

Hi again,

I have decided to use the time of low business to keep my blog up-to-date. I can write while being in La Yunta and just copy the text to the blog at nights. Hope you’ll get more information like that :)

After more than 2 months of the business running, I can share some of the experiences we had with our business. We have seen some very good days – usually Sundays – and also some very low trading days. Those are during the week and seem to be not really foreseeable. Today is one of those. The weather is not very pleasant, it’s raining a lot and people seem to rather stay at home than travel towards the south. Some may be put off by our car park and the low temperatures we have in our restaurant. Having said that, we have put measures in place to solve both. Yesterday, we bought a truck load of gravel (14 cubic meters) to make our car park really nice and clean. Customers can now enter without getting their feet wet and dirty. It was long needed and is a great improvement. Also the temperature is now under control with two gas heaters, each with 4 kilowatts of heat production. It’s getting cozy :)

Our little farm has been extended. We now have rabbits and gees. Unfortunately, the some of the rabbits have not survived for a long time. We first thought that the biggest male is killing the little ones but now feel that some disease has killed the poor bunnies. The latest dead bunny is currently at the vet for autopsy. Hopefully, he will find the cause of the deaths.

Many of our customers are still first time visitors. We receive very good feedback on both, the goods we offer in the shop as well as our food offering. So, all good there. Also, we have already developed a good number of frequent customers. Our furniture is continuing to be the biggest driver of shop sales. We have thought about extending our business to furniture production, although this would be a big step and we are not sure it’s worth the effort. We’ll see.
I believe that currently the weather is the biggest harm to our business. Once it gets a bit more steady with longer intervals of sunshine, we should see the business improving as well.

On the personal side, I have very exiting days and weeks behind me. The most important part of my private life has been impacted by the fact that I got engaged with my girlfriend. Yes! I am getting married in October! What a change in my life. Not only the move from Europe to Ecuador but this. I am over the moon.

Jim and Sole threw us a surprise champagne round to celebrate our engagement. Nice!

Also, my father came over for a 2 week visit and we were travelling a couple of days through the mountains and to the rain forest. The country is continuing to impress me. It’s so beautiful and has so much to offer. Apart from these great news, I have started again to play football. Every Wednesday night from 9 to 11 PM, a group of work colleagues and their friends are playing the so-called “indoors”, which is a 3/4th size football pitch with artificial grass and a roof over it to cover from the rain. It was quite tough for me, not having done any sports for almost 6 months at the high of 2.500m – but I will get used to it and manage to add to the game. Yesterday, I was most of the time in the goal to not push my luck too much.

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