Imagine que usted tiene 26 años de edad, que es mujer y que ha sido recientemente ascendida al puesto de Gerente de Operaciones del Banco Promerica en Manuel Antonio. Está a punto de tener su primera reunión con los ejecutivos de otras sucursales en San José. Ha llegado desde Quepos temprano en la mañana y entra en la habitación con su agenda y un bolígrafo. Hay que enfrentarse a un grupo de directivos, casi todos hombres de mediana edad con computadoras portátiles al hombre hablando por teléfonos celulares. Esa fue la introducción de Gina Jiménez a sus colegas profesionales en 2005. Read More…
Imagine that you are 26 years old, female, recently promoted to the job of Operations Manager at Banco Promérica in Manuel Antonio. You are about to have your first meeting with other bank executives in San José. You’ve arrived from Quepos early that morning and you walk into the room carrying your agenda and a pen. There you confront a group of officials, mostly middle-aged men with laptops slung over their shoulders, talking on cell phones. That was Gina Jimenez’s introduction to her professional peers in 2005. Read More…
Es la imagen de la combinación moderna de Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso y Jacques Cousteau, que vive en Manuel Antonio y al que se le puede imaginar como una personalidad real en nuestro medio. Adrián Valli, más conocido como “Adrián, el artista de Argentina,” pinta, esculpe, talla y experimenta con diferentes formas de arte, en su estudio de la selva en la zona de El Lirio, Manuel Antonio.
Picture a modern-day combination of Paul Gaugin, Pablo Picasso and Jacques Cousteau living in Manuel Antonio, and you may be imagining a real personality in our midst. Adrián Valli, known to most as “Adrián, the artist from Argentina,” paints, sculpts, carves and experiments with different art forms in his jungle studio in El Lirio, Manuel Antonio.
(in English) Por Carol Vlassoff
Traducido por Rosa Arechederra
Desde el momento en que puso el pie en el barco de pesca deportiva de su amigo, Jeannette Pérez se enamoró. Estamos en su oficina en el segundo piso de un edificio modesto de Quepos y señala con el brazo hacia la ventana principal con vista al malecón del Pacifico que esta exactamente al otro lado de la calle. “Eso es lo que más me gustó Pérez”, sonríe. “Nunca olvidaré mi primer pez vela. Fue la cosa más hermosa! ”
Jeannette Peréz de cincuenta años de edad también recuerda su primera impresión de Quepos en 1989. Había estado viviendo en los Estados Unidos y volvió para visitar a su madre en San José con sus dos hijos gemelos de diez años de edad, Manuel y Carlos. Cuando le ofrecieron el trabajo como gerente de “Sports Fishing Costa Rica “decidió echar un vistazo.
From the moment she set foot in her friend’s sports fishing boat, Jeannette Pérez fell in love. She sweeps an arm toward her front window, with a view of the Pacific waterfront, directly across the street from her second floor office in a modest Quepos building. “That’s what I loved,” she smiles. “I will never forget my first sailfish. It was the most beautiful thing!”
Fifty year old Pérez also remembers her first taste of Quepos in1989. She had been living in the United States and returned to visit her mother in San José with her ten year old twin sons, Manuel and Carlos. When she was offered a job as manager of Sports Fishing Costa Rica she decided to take a look.
(in English)
Por Carol Vlassoff
Traducido por Rosa Arechederra
Probablemente lo primero que le llama la atencion a uno cuando conoce a Krissia Rodríguez, Gerente General del supermercado mas grande en Quepos, Super Mas, es que ella se ve tan joven. Y es joven – sólo 31 años -y lleva trabajando en la tienda de su padre desde que era niña.
Se ríe cuando recuerda cómo ella y su hermana se organizaban las vacaciones de verano de tres meses: “Nos poniamos de acuerdo para tener un mes de vacaciones y pasar los otras dos trabajando en la tienda. Pensábamos que trabajabamos muy duro, siempre pidiendo a los cajeros que nos dejaran ayudarles, ahora me doy cuenta que realmente no trabajabamos tanto.”
Probably the first thing to strike you when you meet Krissia Rodriguez, General Manager of the largest supermarket in Quepos, Super Mas, is that she looks so young. And she is young – only 31 years old – but she has been working in her father’s store since she was a child.
She laughs as she remembers how she and her sister organized their three month summer vacations: “We agreed to take one month of holiday and spend the other two working in the store. We thought we were working very hard, always begging the cashiers to let us help, but now I realize that we really weren’t.”
Dr. Alfonso Gaspar Martínez del Pino, nacido y educado en Cuba, dice que pensó en quedarse en Costa Rica desde el momento en que decidió aceptar la invitación para asistir a una conferencia aquí, en 1995. Dejando a sus amigos y familiares se vino con 63 libras de equipaje (59 libras de libros), 145 dólares en el bolsillo y se dedicó a empezar una nueva vida aquí. Dio varias conferencias en la Escuela de Veterinaria de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma en el Barreal de Heredia, y a continuación, dice, “me quedé.”
Dr. Alfonso Gaspar Martinez del Pino, born and educated in Cuba, says that he planned to stay in Costa Rica from the time he accepted an invitation to attend a conference here in 1995. Leaving his friends and family, with 63 pounds of luggage (59 pounds of it books) and $145 in his pocket, he set out to establish a new life here. He gave several lectures at the Escuela de Veterinaria de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma en el Barreal de Heredia, and then, he says, “I stayed.”
Constant Boshoff – chiropractor, conservationist, coffee farmer and owner of Rafiki – was born in German East Africa, Tanganika. His ancestors moved to South Africa when he was a child because of “political storms over Africa”, as he puts it. Boshoff ‘s father was a big game hunting outfitter. Equipped with luxury tents and a portable kitchen, his father and his party would pitch their camp under the trees at night. He watched his business grow into a very popular tourist destination for high end clients. This is the background that shaped Constant Boshoff’s own trajectory in life.
Barry Biesanz pulls into my driveway, hops out of his car and wastes no time settling onto a patio chair for our interview. He does not need any prompting: he clearly has a message to share.
“People ask me,” he says, “I bet you’ve seen a lot of changes here over the last 40 years. They assume they have all been for the worse – but they haven’t. Sure, there are some ill-conceived projects, drugs, prostitution and corruption. But there are far more monkeys than there were in 1971, and much more prosperity.” Most of Manuel Antonio, he continues, was being converted to pasture and crops, even much of what is now the park, and all the mangroves near town were cut to make charcoal.
“The United Fruit Company was the only employer aside from two huge and many small cattle farms. With the switch to tourism, forest cover increased and species that were been gone for decades have returned. Living standards are very much better for Quepeños.”
Milo Bekins Faries y su agradable esposa Tey se reunieron conmigo en su hogar en el bosque, a cuatro kilómetros de Londres en el camino a Cerro Nara. Nos sentamos en la galería que rodea la casa por los cuatro lados. Fiel al modo de vida de los Bekins, la casa está construida con cedro amargo y teca. Milo plantó esos árboles en su propia propiedad años atrás, con la idea de sembrar su “futura casa”. Está rodeada por jardines forestales y un canal de agua corriente que mantiene su casa sorprendentemente libre de insectos. Read More…
Milo Bekins Faries and his attractive wife, Tey, meet me in their forest home, four kilometres from Londres on the road to Cerro Nara. We sit on the veranda that encircles four sides of the house. True to the Bekins’ lifestyle, the house is built of cedro amargo and teak. Milo planted these trees on his own property years ago, with the idea of seeding their “house-to-be”. It is surrounded by forest gardens and a running water ditch moat that keeps their house amazingly insect free. Read More…
(in English)
por Carol Vlassoff
by Carol Vlassoff