|
"I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and I grew up there. For 50 years our family owned a flower wholesale business. I studied accounting and at university, information technology. Because of my background and my studies I owned my first company when I was 21, a courier service on motorbikes. After I sold it, I became a partner in a computer business. During my holidays I would tour through Patagonia on my motorbike. In those days everyone went to Brazil or Miami for vacation because at the time it was cheap for Argentineans to go there. But I wanted to discover my own country first before I went abroad. And so I did. I traveled through all of Argentina by bus, train, car and on my motorbike. When I was 23 I crossed all of Patagonia alone on my motorbike, 11,000 kilometers in 40 days.
I fell in love with this little Patagonian village called Bariloche. I'd been there twice before.
You can compare Bariloche with Austria. It has lots of forests, very big lakes, and the village itself has only 100,000 inhabitants. When you come from Buenos Aires, with 16 million people, you call this a little village! I felt so much at home in Bariloche that when I was 28 I sold my shares in the computer company and moved from Buenos Aires to Patagonia. Just like Bonaire, Bariloche has tourists 12 months a year. You can go climbing, hiking, skiing, explore the caves, go sailing on the immense lakes or even dive. I became a tourist guide.
Although at first sight Bariloche doesn't have anything in common with Bonaire, I feel that since I'm living here, the two places are very similar. Society there functions exactly the same as in Bonaire: the friendliness, the interaction between the people, the informal way of living and tourism. Some months ago I told Anja, my wife, that Bonaire is just like Bariloche. That night we went to City Café and we met this Venezuelan guy who's been living here for a long time and he says, 'You're from Argentina? I went to Bariloche!' I told him I'd been living there and he answered, 'Bariloche is just like Bonaire!' Anja laughed and said, 'I've heard that before!' That was funny!
Well, after some time I had the opportunity to go to Holland. It was a challenge and an adventure and I found out that Rotterdam was quite a different thing! The first year I went to school to learn Dutch and worked part time as a motorbike mechanic. Then I became the manager of an international banner printer, 'Shipmade,' and I handled the production of South Africa's new flag when Mandela became president. After I finished reorganizing the production department I worked for the IT department and in their sales offices in France and at different locations in Holland.
I stayed with 'Shipmade' for 10 years. I worked 80 hours a week, but I had 10 weeks vacation per year. Five times a year I took off and traveled through Europe, the States and Egypt. I did a lot of sailing in my own boat around Holland and Belgium. I had a big car and a fabulous salary, but suddenly I just had enough of it!
I took my dive gear and left for Spain, looking for a new adventure! I went to the Costa Brava where I started 'playing' dive instructor. For four months I worked 14 hours a day, 6½ days a week." He laughs: "It was too much fun! So, somehow, after those four months I thought, I have to get back to reality. I went back to Holland and I found a job in IT.
In February 2002, at a dive show in Holland, I met the love of my life, Anja. She had just come back from French Polynesia where she'd been playing dive instructor. She'd left Holland in 1999, living and traveling through Canada and living on Bonaire for awhile."
"Before I left Holland," Anja says, "I was the sales and marketing director of a micro biological laboratory that performed quality tests for the pharmaceutical industry. I came to the show to see if it would be possible to give dive courses, not for a living, as I had just started working in the pharmaceutical industry again, but as a hobby."
"After we met", Jorge says, smiling very lovingly at Anja, "we spent a beautiful spring and summer together on the coast of Holland where Anja was living, and when autumn arrived we really loved to sit in front of the open fire in my house in Rotterdam. But then life in Holland became too cold and far too serious and we also realized that to be together one of us had to give up his house and move in with the other.
Then someone offered us an opportunity in Curaçao. Neither one of us had ever been there. Three days later we resigned from our jobs. Thirty days later our belongings were put into storage and after another 10 days, we arrived in Curaçao! Things there didn't turn out the way we'd expected, and after four weeks we came to Bonaire to check out the possibilities.
I thought Bonaire was a nice place to start something. Anja got a job working as a dive instructor almost immediately and a couple of months later I myself started working as a dive instructor." Jorge Ferron (42) and Anja Romeynders make a real good couple: they're
|
|
