I was lucky enough to hoop up with Rocky and Linda Sue, the owners of Casa Viento, the first time I went to Margarita. Excellent choice! Instead of being in a large impersonal hotel, I was in a small, very beautiful bed and breakfast with a hosts who eat breakfast with you every morning and fill you in on everything you need to know about windsurfing and nonwindsurfing on Margarita. Every morning I walked up the stairs to the covered roof of one of the villas, and sat and ate breakfast (and drank lots of excellent Venezuelan coffee) in the morning breeze. I made friends and shared stories with the other windsurfing guests, found out where the best restaurants were for dinner and waited for the aspirin to relax my sore muscles from the day before! After breakfast, wanting to save myself for the good afternoon wind, I would sit and read, up on the roof, in the breeze, with a view of the island, the ocean an! d way off in the distance, the mainland of Venezuela. Ho hum, another perfect day in paradise. Around 12 PM, the wind picks up and its time to walk the 5 min walk to the beach and the windsurfing. There are several excellent windsurf rental places with lots of new gear. The Casa Viento home page gave me the choices and I picked the rental company with the gear I wanted. (Want JP boards and Neil Pryde sails? No problem. Want F2 boards? No problem. etc.)

After sailing 4 or 5 hours, I would stagger back to Casa Viento, shower and go back up on the roof for cocktail hour. Usually there was a group going to a restaurant which I was free to join and frequently did. Then finally, blissful sleep in a clean quiet well appointed room!

This past year was my third time. This time I was able to convince my nonwindsurfing wife to come also. She also had a wonderful time. Her job is stressful, and a week of getting up in the morning, eating a leisurely breakfast and sitting on the roof for a few hours in the shade, in the breeze, watching the day unfold over the ocean and the island of margarita was her idea of heaven. In the afternoons while I sailed, she sunned and read, snacking at the beachside outdoor restaurant. We did some shopping in Porlamar, the capital of Margarita, and rented a car one day to tour the island, making sure to get back in the afternoon for me to get my windsurfing fix. In the evenings, we went to the excellent, reasonably priced restaurants which she loved. Then, back to the clean, quite room at Casa Viento. Life is good...

Joe and I want to thank you so very much for being such a great host and for providing us with the comfortable accomodations at Casa Viento. We thoroughly enjoyed our stay there. Your assistance in pointing us in the right directions for all of our activities was especially helpful.

We hope that if you get up to the Northwest again that you'll let us reciprocate. We'd love to meet Lindasue. Thanks to her too for making the arrangements for our stay.

Keep up the good work with your Venezuelan enterprise

Warmly,
Joe and Ramona