It's been a while, but never a dull moment.
Blog entries have been coming further apart as we have become busier than ever before. More often than not the excuse is not knowing where to start when there is so much else to do.
Who remembers Covid? We've moved on so far and so fast we are in the middle of our second record season in a row. Except for a short lull in February we've been busy since the start of last year. Who would have guessed? We now get bookings all year round. Even better, the majority of those bookings are directly through us. That's important because that's when we earn some money. Return guests are on the rise and we now have a good number of regulars for whom we even keep non-perishable food until their next visit. Meanwhile the big booking platforms still remain a big part of our business. I must admit I'm surprised how people either do not realise or do not care that these platforms take a whopping 20% in commissions. The most surprising are those that contact us directly with questions, then book on a platform.
That's not to complain, we love bookings. But earning a living is the goal. So we raised our rates on the platforms in order to better align with our own rates. And, new surprise, people now mostly book at the lower, non-refundable rate. This basically comes out the same as our old standard rates, but now at least the bookings are non-fundable. Cancellations always happen, but less is better and at this game non-refundable is best.
It's also a good thing that the gardens are already in order. It has taken 5 years to clear, clean and trim the whole 11'400m2. This year it's a park. And with some selective pruning we've also managed to recoup some spectacular views that help remind us each day how lucky we are to be here. Now there truly remains only yearly maintenance to do. It sort of helped that Sylvie decided one day to the next that we would host the Monte-Bougainvillea Open 2.0 in the next 15 days because we would not have time otherwise. The logic is we have some time now. The result is we no longer have time now, but gardens are done and the disc golf course is ready for T off on the 15th of June.
Working outside in the gardens and around the property is more than half the job here. Cleaning apartments and resetting memory foam pillows is the easy part. Keeping pace with nature is more challenging. The sun is harsh and the weeds all the tougher for it. Everything has spikes. Palm trees need monthly treatments to fend off a deadly bug while all the agaves are dying because no one knows how to kill the new bug that it attracts. Every now and then a full grown mimosa tree will just fall over as if sawed at its base. The big wood needs to be cut into little wood then moved and stored as fire wood. Hedges need to be trimmed twice a year. Trimmings and leaves need to be blown and raked in piles, then the piles need to be moved to bigger piles on an ongoing basis year round. On every tree there are a bunch of leaves or pines for which fall is now and that's what they will do. When it rains we are allowed to light fires to burn the piles. Only when it rains. A little counterintuitive, but it works. So the piles better be ready in case it rains. With an average 300 days of sunshine per year and being in a multi-year drought, the piles multiply. Until it rains and we manage to burn. Then they are all gone in a couple hours. The old piles, not the new piles. They are too green to burn in the rain...So there is always a pile somewhere waiting for the next rain to burn. Odd sentence ein? (pronounced 'eh' by Canadians)
For a lot of the pile moving business I rely on a quad bike, when it starts, and a garden trailer, that can be, and is, moved by hand most of the time, like a wheel barrow. One of the reasons the quad rarely starts when I need it must surely be that it has been sleeping outside for 4 years. So I decided to build a proper shed for the quad and the scooters and another as a work atelier to centralise tools. Another difficult part of nature here is the land. It's full of stones. The main industry around us are stone quarries. Anywhere and everywhere you poke a hole in the ground, the odds are you will hit a tectonic plate within 10cm of the surface. So the easiest way of flattening the ground is to fill the holes rather than scraping it. As I had been moving a very old pile of trimmings closer to the burn spot, to be ready in case it rains before... November, I noticed the earth under the pile was quite loose. I could shovel it easily and this would be perfect to flatten the ground for the base of the sheds. In fact this old pile was so old and so big there was a good meter high of composed earth beneath So I loaded a few trailers full and when I got all I could I just raked over all around to landscape a bit. I was a little disappointed because it was not enough. I would need 2 or 3 more trailers full, but I had reached the hard ground under the old pile and shoveling by hand would not be possible anymore.
The next day I noticed the ground I had sort of leveled under the old pile was turned over like a tractor had gone through it. New stones all unearthed and ground all dug up. 2 trailers worth of easy shoveling earth, again. Seems I got some unexpected help during the night. Unexpected and unwelcome: wild boar. They have been visiting during the night on and off since winter already. Each time they damage the stone walls, the lawns, the irrigation system, the golf course. We've talked to the hunters, we've yet to get a solution. On the contrary there is less hunting now than ever before. But at least now, in this particular pile, they are helping me. So after I got 2 trailers worth of dirt out, I leveled the ground again and left it for the next day. I figured 2 more would be nice. And they did the job. They came back the next night and rummaged through another 2 trailers full of earth. Now it's done, I need no more, for now. They seem to have noticed because they stopped coming on that side of the property. On the other side is another story. Our beautiful lawns are being damaged. In an Ironic twist of a pig's tail, to patch the holes I will be needing one more trailer full of earth.
Meanwhile you'd be forgiven to ask why Dixie is not doing her 'job' of keeping uninvited guests at bay, especially wild ones. But this is a complex situation. Dixie wants to do the job. In fact she pleads us to do the job. We celebrated her 6th birthday last week. Dixie is more mature, and in turn more confident. This means she not only barks louder, but she will chase trespassers well beyond the limits of our property into neighbouring woods, or our new neighbours' pool (facepalm). If she corners the culprit she may stand her ground and bark at it for hours, literally hours. When this happens she will not listen to us. She is on a mission and only comes back when totally exhausted or we catch her. So we now only let her free during daylight. In the evening, particularly around the full moon Dixie is on a leach. She sleeps inside, on the sofa, because we do not leave her alone outside even on a leash and we do not want her barking away while guests are sleeping. The closest comparison to her barking in the night is the monday morning alarm clock from the days I worked a scheduled life. It wakes you like a bomb detonation.
Dixie can sniff a trespasser from miles away even from inside the villa. This is a great security feature because she knows and distinguishes guests. She does not bark at guests, ever, unless taken by surprise, then immediately calms down when she recognizes people. She totally understands our business and still insists on, and thoroughly enjoys doing her 'welcome kiss' to every new guest. It's part of her job and she likes to do her job. But when pigs try to check in, Dixie is a different beast. She wants out, she wants to chase whatever is out there and she is very vocal about not being happy with the strangers on our land. This happens 2 milliseconds after the bomb detonation wouff and within the next 5 seconds Sylvie or I will be up to calm her down to keep her from barking. She wants to do her job, we don't always let her, because we need ours, and our sleep. It's complicated for Dixie.
So since this winter, on top of being busy with bookings, more and more of which have the earliest departure flights legally possible, we have regular pig visits in the middle of the night meaning brutal wake ups to calm Dixie down. This was taking a toll on our beauty sleep but with time Dixie has become a little more discerning in her reasons to wake everyone up. If the pigs want to play golf in the dark, let them. Il y a d'autres chats à fouetter. To the point where I was cleaning the pool while 2 guests were sunbathing and I saw Winnie the cat out of the corner of my eye, and right behind her, an exact copy of her. When the brain fog lifted I said 'look at this' out loud as we all watched 2 little wild piglets trounce across the pool area into the bushes and out to the back fields. Now in broad daylight. The next thing I said was 'oh oh' thinking 'where is mom??' just when one of the guests said exactly that out loud. So we stayed there in anticipation, watching...and wondering what to do if she did show up.
She didn't. Nor did Dixie for that matter, sacred afternoon siesta time.
A bit like our beloved major Tom the cat who walked out one morning at the end of winter and never showed up again. We miss Tom a lot. Really. But not enough to accept our neighbour's cat, also called Tom, or the orange devil we have named Oscar. Since our Tom has gone, numerous other cats have started showing up at our doorstep. We have no intention of replacing Tom, we still have 3 cats and a dog, that's enough. Neighbour Tom knows he is out of place so he will run home as soon as he sees us. But Oscar, oh Oscar. He wants to check in, at all hours of day or night. He just comes in and helps himself. This of course does not go well with our cats and when they complain Dixie gets involved and ...Boom, another middle of the night detonation rings a loud wouff in our sleepy ears. Pigs are a hassle, but at least they stay outside and do their deeds silently in the night. Cats are loud. Fortunately we have new neighbours who will live full time in their house and have a new fence all around. Also, human activity has picked up in the surrounding fields, this should curtail the pig visits as they must go further away to find shelter during the day. So basically we are left with one bad cat to whip as the saying goes in French. (I wonder how the last sentence appears to people reading a french translated version, does the saying convert to english? hmm).
But even more fortunate is that guests hardly notice all the brouhaha. Dog barking is part of the soundtrack all over the countryside in the Algarve and indeed most people are shocked when they notice, then go on to not even notice that they don't notice anymore because other than that the countryside is very restful and silent at night Either that or people are being extremely polite. In any case people are very nice because our guest satisfaction ratings increase even as we have more and more guests. Believe me, that is not an easy thing to do. First, because of mathematical averaging it means a single low score will hit us hard, while it takes many perfect scores to move the needle up a single notch. Second, because moving from almost perfect to nearly perfect is really hard work that sometimes requires us to lose sleep to ensure our guests get the best of theirs.
Because that's what we do. Turn the jungle into an oasis.
So, one cat to go. What's that Mamour? Ants??
Oh, gotta go...
I really wanted to finish with a good sales pitch, as I always do (puff puff), but hey, what better than to show you the bright side of the curtain: our very own web-site home page. Lots of nice pictures and a little bit of text. Check it out, you'll see exactly what it's all about in an eye glance.
Don't hesitate to reach out, we do get late cancellations and we sometimes make exceptions. If you don't get an immediate answer, do not worry. We may just be busy chasing ants or shoveling dirt, but rest assured, we will get back to you asap.
This is where you want to go, it's all here: www.Monte-Bougainvillea.com
Hope to see you soon,
S&jc
Monte-Bougainvillea
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