Discover for yourself how she orchestrated the entire scenario. As the title of the posting implies...rarely have the residents of Ojochal who have vacation rentals encountered a 'Cindy' of this caliber who not only justifies a premature departure with defamatory remarks in a publicized forum but also reveals the 'real' reasons of why they left which is so totally not related to the rental in Ojochal.. Cindy simply made a bad choice and is making others pay unjustly.
E-mail from Cindy ''Dear Michelle:
It has been difficult for us to consider how best to respond to this situation. We left Casa de la Diversidad sooner than we'd originally intended, but later than we felt comfortable staying.''
Cited from Cindy's blog:
Gary and I laid in bed wondering if we’ve made a big mistake coming here to this wild place for this long. With carpet underfoot and leather underbutt, from Calgary, five weeks in Costa Rica seemed like a luxurious indulgence. And I am loathe to mutter anything that might read like a complaint for the spoilt, coddled gringo I am loathe to come off as. But.
Dear Cindy,
It is equally difficult for us to understand how best to respond to a situation with ‘a vacation rental guest’ who is cheating, dishonest and trying to justify their aborted departure from ‘Casa de la Diversidad’. I am taking the time out to cite your blog and interject my reflections on just why you committed a fraudulent act such as skipping out of town and high- tailing it to Quepos.
Cited form Cindy's blog:
I was sitting at Exotica, the same place that turned us away for dinner the other night, downing my second pina colada, (my first alcohol consumption this trip) when who should walk in, but our friends from Canada, Mara and Natalie.
It wasn’t altogether as strange as that: we did know our trips were overlapping, although we hadn’t preplanned it thus, nor prearranged a rendezvous. The meeting up couldn’t have happened at a more opportune moment.
After another sleepless, scratching, oozing night, I left the boys to fight off the onslaught of killers back at the casa. We’d reached the moment of realizing, our predominant agenda has deteriorated to the single preoccupation of, we need to keep the kids alive. And so we took the $900 hit to change our flight itinerary. We’re coming home 19 days earlier than planned.
I was miserable.
My legs have become an oozing, disgusting mess.
I’d been struck on the face by a bat.
Gary’d peeled a scab from his tummy, to realize, upon examination, it was moving.
Elijah has wounded his knees so many times, he has scabs healing over scabs.
Elijah, drinking a morning cuppa joe …
It doesn’t look like your ‘baby’ is traumatized and in deep danger from the looks of this guy! Scabs!
Strange I don’t see the ‘scabs upon scabs’ on his knees! Except trying to understand his hysterical mother, everything looks AOK for baby three!
Cited from Cindy's blog ''Cleaning the gecko guano from our dishes before preparing or cooking a meal had long since lost its charm. If ever the gecko poop was charming.
Our deep disappointment in this dream vacation had descended into a Lord of the Flies-esque survival of the fittest endurance run, and I was craving flannel pajamas and carpet and a five minute reprieve of hypervigilence like as I’ve never before craved creature comforts.
But the dichotomy of the authentically confounding contrast between the undeniable brilliance of this place, (not to mention the degree of emotional investment I’d put into this trip) and the very real, ever present lurking danger, man-made and natural, was spinning me into a chaotic rumble of regret, of indecision, of sadness and guilt and self-judgement.
Then in walked Mara and Nat. Our dear friends and one time teacher who are always a blessing of clarity and perspective and authenticity and truth.
And they commiserated. Ironically, they were staying in the Estillo de Villa, a reservation they nabbed, (unbeknownst to us) when we let our hold on that option lapse.
“It’s not good.”
“And your place … it’s not good.”
When I am all grown up, I won’t quite relish in external validation like I still do now.
But oh, the breath of relief it was to have Someone Else affirm that, yeah, “It’s not good.”
They also were leaving Ojochal earlier than planned. And told us about where they were going alternatively. Up north in Quepos, by Manuel Antonio.
We borrowed a phone, we packed our suitcases, we ditched our casa. Seven days earlier than planned. And of course, we’re not even attempting the finca (farm) we had reserved.
For your blatant admission of scheming to leave,incredible, you borrowed a phone, packed up, ditched the casa and left without saying whatever to the person in charge of the rental!!! You could find a phone for your getaway in a hurry but not out of need and security for your three sons! Not only did you not respect your contract with ‘Casa de la Diversidad’, it appears you left the finca that you reserved high and dry. Do you realize that when rentals are reserved, we wait for guests, we worry for our guests, if they had an accident or whatever! Secondly, the reservation you made means the place is reserved for you and nobody else. When you disrespectfully make a ‘no-show’ you have unjustly deprived the owner of rental income.
I honestly hope that your friend ‘Mara’ did not do as you did! But then again, maybe she did, and was she the ‘leader of the pack of deadbeats’ who left town? Anyways, I’ll e-mail a copy of this reply to the owner of ‘Estillo de Vida’ just in case she personally empowered you to do so!
Cited from Cindy's blog ''As you knew, we were traveling to Ojochal -- our first time in the country -- with three young children.
How can we describe how stranded we felt when we learned on arrival that, not only did our temporary home have no telephone, but that the internet cafe advertised on your site no longer is in business -- and hadn't been for months. Your advertising site lists restaurants and local attractions and promotes phone numbers and e-mail and website links, but fails to mention that your rental does not supply a phone with which to call the numbers you detail, nor is there local access to online communication. (Only on the day before we left did we accidentally discover that Exotica offers wireless service -- would it not have been prudent to give your guests this information?!)
Cited from Cindy"s blog:
Humberto is also helping us get a vehicle rented … something we’d procrastinated from Calgary, unsure about availability in this high season, uncomfortable with the cost, but the freedom and flexibility factor something we think, after all, might be prudent. Humberto has also given us our first Tico lesson in pura vida … and so we’ve decided to forego renting a cell phone, (something commonly presented as a package with the car rental) and we’ve decided to forego the extended insurance on the vehicle, opting for the basic insurance, even though gringos have warned us basic insurance is basically useless.''
You willingly exchanged saving money for the security of having a cell phone included with the rental car and forwent additional insurance to protect your 'family' in case of an accident in a Latin-American country. It is well-known and stated on all tourist sites that the roads in Costa Rica are somewhat dangerous for first-time drivers to the country. Better be safe than sorry Cindy! but you chose to be unsafe!
The phone line just arrived around 2 years ago in Ojochal. There was no phone before but radio communication between residents. Residents of Ojochal asked for the phone line since 1992 and were waiting until 2005-2006 to have it! Now, the ICE Telephone Company is giving the lines in order of the date of the demand. Things are not so fast in Costa Rica! Casa Diversidad did not mention on the website that they have a phone line because they are on a waiting list to have it. By the way, if you ask for a phone, there is a public phone just at the entrance of Ojochal and another just outside the grocery store. You didn’t see it? In case of an emergency, you can go to the Restaurant Exotica, just next door, and everybody would be willing to help you. It seems you stay in your bubble centred on your family and you do not try to interact with surrounding neighbours.
Cited from Cindy's blog ''Further, at your 'tourist rental', no information book or guide or local access directory of any kind is provided: and for new travelers to the country, obviously all of the above are of critical importance.''
We are not a tourist rental but manage houses for peoples that are away. If you need information you have just to ask for it. Once again, anybody would have been more than willing to help you.
Cited from Cindy's blog ''It was especially imprudent for you to neglect to mention the extent to which we would be communicatively stranded, given that you knew we were traveling with young children! What crisis would we have endured if, for instance, the lethal banana leaf spider that emerged from the overgrown pool-side garden had stung one of our children before we could kill it? Or, if in one of the overgrown piles of plant and tree debris that litters the property, a notoriously aggressive fer-de-lance, (which prefers precisely the habitat you've created for them on this property) had been lurking and had struck one of our young sons?
Cited from Cindy's blog: Exerpt in regards to nature visit they made and the warning the guide made
What the staff told Gary, and with some earnestness as they looked with concern at our three tumbling boys, is that we need to be very cautious of the fer-de-lance while in Costa Rica.
Cited once again from Cindy's blog for opting out of the rental package of a car and cell phone
and so we’ve decided to forego renting a cell phone, (something commonly presented as a package with the car rental) and we’ve decided to forego the extended insurance on the vehicle, opting for the basic insurance, even though gringos have warned us basic insurance is basically useless
May I say we felt especially duped to see the extent to which your advertising photos were out of date. May I say it is not the way to make friendly business to sell a rental property based on eight year old pictures.''
The gardens were started in 2000 and the casa was built in 2003-2004. The pictures are recent excepting the entry where the municipality is doing road work throughout the village and cut a lot of threes in front of the property last October.
Cited from Cindy's blog ''Again, we were traveling with three young children, and your rental supplied not a single wash cloth, nor a single bath towel. The six stained and mismatched handtowels we found strewn about here and there were hardly an appropriate outfitting of a vacation rental. The pool also was filthy dirty, and as we seived the dead creatures from the pool's bottom every morning, we were loathe to see the grit and dirt that sifted up.''
The boys have been swimming in the mist. 
I would be ashamed to admit that these are the values I transmit to my children, schooled or unschooled! Be dishonest, be not responsible for the decisions one makes be they good or not and screw whoever is in their way!
Cited form Cindy's blog ''When we arrived at our long-awaited destination, may I add that we hardly felt warmly welcomed to be met with a property manager with liquor heavy on his breath, with the casa strewn with dead leaves that were hastily swept aside, with our bed linens hanging on the line out back, with burnt out lightbulbs in our living space and with previous renters' leftover food leavings alongside a meagre and messy supply of mismatched kitchenware.''
Photo of Elijah, baby of the family enjoying a siesta in the filthy hammock with Flat Stanley
Cited from Cindy's blog…'' and napping in the hammock. The bugs don’t seem to bother him either.''
Cited from Cindy's blog:
Ironically, as I caught my glimpse of the blue morpho, Gary and I were sitting talking about Plan F. And I’m making that up, because we’ve lost track of our numbers of Plan Bs as we’ve discussed almost constantly our spectrum of options out of what has been, since leaving La Paz, a miserable vacation.
Gary (with Tristan) drinking a morning cuppa joe … with Elijah, drinking a morning cuppa joe …
Looks like an unhappy flea-bitten naked little baby in a filthy unfriendly to children environment? How can a mother imagine her child sitting naked on a filthy outdoor sofa being exposed to the multitude of ants, biting bugs, and not to mention the teeming bacteria ready to invade the child with life-threatening tropical disease!Cited from Cindy's e-mail ''In short, I cannot tell you how disappointed we were in the accommodations your rental advisory service allowed this family of young children to rent.
We had to leave because I simply could no longer tolerate the nightly attack of fleas that bit me dozens of times as I slept. I was getting physically ill because my body could no longer process the barrage of whatever it was the bed was infested with.''
Ironically, the outdoor sofa which is more likely to have 'fleas' as you say is OK for your naked child for his morning 'cuppa joe' and the bed which is indoors protected by screens and a de-humidifier is so infested that you became physically ill? Where is your logic?
Cited form Cindy's blog:
I sat in the hammock and glimpsed a beautiful blue bird. It was noteworthy for its brilliant colour – we’ve seen avian flashes of yellow and red, but mostly browns and blacks, yes, many of them, and songbirds, so the ambient sound, when it isn’t drowned out by cicadas and chainsaws, is pretty. But still none of the flocks of red and blue and green macaws and toucans. So the blue bird was noteworthy for its colour. Suddenly it flitted and I realized it wasn’t a blue bird, it was a blue morpho. The infamous. I had hardly registered the fact before it was gone, and my running and stretching and peering didn’t bring it back into view. Two, three seconds of one the hallmark experiences we’d anticipated. And it was mine alone, gone too fast for me to share with the boys.
We both acknowledge that one of our options is to just change our mind. Decide to settle in. Bask in the fact we’re in the tropics. Relaaax.
And somehow that option doesn’t seem to stick. The creeping, crawling, flying, hopping things are everywhere. My legs are a festering ooze of itchy yuck. I’m so grateful the kids seem to be escaping the onslaught of biting insects that all seem attracted exclusively to my womanhood. Keeping atop the need for pristine cleanliness is cumbersome with three grazing kids. But if we’re not hyper vigilant about every speck of crumb, the counter, the floor, the table, the chair, is alive with ants, teeny weeny red ones, big bold black ones, in mere moments. Note to self: indoor kitchen next vacation a must.
Apparently the insects are exclusively in Ojochal and the rest of Costa Rica is insect-free. Cindy attracts 'bugs'!Cited from Cindy's blog:
To say we are gripped with gratitude is not an understatement: never have we felt more grateful to be Canadians living in Canada than after our trip to Costa Rica. The magical paradise of Costa Rica that is promoted online is, well, magical, yes, and paradise, yes, AND. The AND took us for a ride.
It was a good day in Costa Rica.
After 'ditching' your casa in Ojochal like a thief in the night for Manual Antonio...it seems that you take over wherever you go. Dinner cocktails in a hotel restaurant while 'your unschooled babies' sleep on chairs is probably more your style!
Cited from Cindy's blog:
We’re trying our best to be open and warm where ever we go. I stopped and gave a ride home to a Tica mom and her son walking down the road the other day. We stop and indulge the attentions of anyone who wants to coo over our adorable white babies.
No comment for this racial slur
Cited from Cindy's blog ''I suspect if we were up north in Guanacaste, where tourism has had a longer tenure, our experience would be vastly different. Coming to Ojochal to experience Costa Rica is like coming to Rubber Boot Saskatchewan to experience Canada I think''
Elijah discovering the environment in 'Rubber Boot' Ojochal Costa Rica
He appears more natural on the outdoor terrace than snoozing away in a restaurant on a chair with noise in the background and cigarette smoke in the air!
Cited from Cindy's blog ''I personally am also processing some regret, (and then I’m beating myself up for the regret, because aren’t we never supposed to live with regret?) acknowledging that we were so traumatized by the time we got to Si Como No that we really did hide out there a bit … probably not exploring as much of the natural wonders just outside the hermetically sealed confines of the resort as we might have had we not been hunted so voraciously in Ojochal. (And how did that phrase get into my blog? Hermetically sealed? Puhlease. The forty or more, (cuz yes, I stopped counting at 40) new bug bites I got on my legs testify that Si Como No is not exactly the hermetically sealed haven one fellow guest commented poolside.)''
But then I think, hey, lounging poolside here:
and having great conversations with really interesting people while sipping fruit smoothies and sangrias isn’t that horrible a way to spend a week. So give yourself a break! Sheesh. The truth is, we did have to let go of the vacation we planned, and do a mid stream shifting to embrace the vacation we had.
It looks like the 40 or more and still counting ‘New’ bug bites you got at the 200U$ per night at ‘Si Como No’ in Manual Antonio are just as voraciously hunting you as they were in Ojochal. Surprising fact isn’t it? Luckily you seem fine sipping on ‘Sangrias’ to ease the pain.
We all enjoyed hours in and by the pool.
Looks like the poolside garden is overgrown here too…Don’t I see your boys in the picture under the buoy? Oh my gawd! Danger! Danger! I see a lethal banana leaf spider in the palm…no…it’s a fer-de-lance lurking under the rocks just beside their little footsies! It’s OK though ‘cuz mommy ain’t feeling no pain guzzling ‘Sangrias’
Cited from Cindy's e-mail ''We did say we would address with you the outstanding issue of the incompleted stay. We stayed at Casa de la Diversidad ten nights, of an anticipated 17. You quoted us $1,500 for the 17 nights. We previously paid you $800 by wire transfer. (What your country skims off the top is your adminstrative expense, not ours.) We are prepared to pay for our stay, plus an additional two nights cancellation fee, which nets to an additional $258.82 outstanding.''
I am sorry to say that this is not acceptable. There are no refunds for cancellations and you owe the outstanding sum of $717 US funds to be deposited in the account number provided. You are responsible to pay for the reservation of 17 days as was concluded in our agreement. It was your decision to leave prematurely. I understand if you had issues, then the responsible conduct was to discuss these issues with the manager. This means the towels supply and to re-clean the casa while you were out on a nature hike. The next morning you had the responsibility to communicate your concerns in regards to internet or telephone access which was next door literally to your rental. As for the bugs and insects in a tropical environment, I am sorry to say nobody can ‘Raid’ the entire country of Costa Rica because Cindy and Gary Bablitz are coming to town. Just do like everybody does and go to the grocery store and buy some repellent like you do when you go camping and fishing in Canada! You did not realize that you rented a house in the tropical jungle when you made your reservation?
Cindy, I suggest you conclude your agreement and deposit the outstanding amount of $717 US. Also, we demand that the name and reference to Casa de la Diversidad be removed from your blog site to avoid further action for defamatory prejudices.
Cited form Cindy's e-mail ''We will wire transfer $260 to your account on receipt of your confirmation that this concludes the matter. Our position is that this is more than fair value to you, who provided something substantially less than fair value to us.
cindy''
Below is a series of entries from her blog which demonstrate just how contradictory the safety issue was:
Cited from Cindy's blog ''But. Safety in Costa Rica simply isn’t. Here’s my guess: Ticos who have grown up in Costa Rica have inborn into them the knowledge that one steps carefully. That one is watchful and personally responsible for ones own tread. And this is why their guardrails look like this:
In this next photo, Tristan is pouting, a little bit, because Gary and I just, with our hearts in our mouths, scooched him down from standing on the “guard wire”, for to lean over and get a better view of the 15-foot Elliot … who had just, while we watched, backed up from his lazy pose a little ways away along the edge of the pool, quietly submerging and positioning himself directly underneath our leaning Tristan … and waiting …
Said Roy, “Do not let your children stand on the guard wires. If he falls over, there will be no chance to save his life.”
These are photos of the beautiful lobby projection at Si Como no.
A very strong binocular at the apex of the projection provides incredible viewing zoom of the small rocky outcropping offshore.
But this is the freaking so called guard wire!
… and from here, there’s a 40 foot drop into jungle gardens or cement walkway!
But back to the great scenery along the coast highway.
Once back in Alajeula, it was funny to go for dinner, our last dinner in Costa Rica, at a newly opened Peruvian restaurant down the road from Hotel Villa Bonita … spending our last night in the country where we spent our first night. The entire menu was only en espanol. And when we asked the server/proprietor(?) if he could translate for us, I think he couldn’t read the menu. We asked, “Do you have any noodles?” No noodles. So we asked what he recommended. He recommended for the boys a heap of rice fried in a pan with chicken or seafood. “Con pollo,” we said. “With chicken.” “Nada seafood for the boys,” shaking our heads at the pescado, “No seafood.”
We got the heap of rice with seafood.
We said, “We asked for the pollo, (pronounced pojo) not the seafood.”
He said, “Oh, don’t worry, on the bill, I’ll write down that you got the chicken.”
Um. Okaaaay.
The other dish he recommended for the boys made Tristan vomit on first taste. Literally … he went screaming to the toilet and threw up.
We weren’t really sure what we were getting.
Gary got the spaghetti. As in, noodles.
One reader's comments:
Cited from Cindy's blog (looks like the safety factor is only when she decides it's lacking)
Still, between you and Elijah, it was all we could do to keep you boys strapped into your seats. The flight attendants kept reminding us passengers have to be buckled into seatbelts for lift off and landing … but when they weren’t looking, we let you both peer out the window …
Wish we could of talked before you planned this trip! I often tell friends with small children Costa Rica is not an ideal place for them. On the other hand my well traveled daughter of 19 loved Costa Rica from the food to the beaches and rain forests. Well better luck next time, try checking out http://www.welovecostarica.com you will get very good advice on this site from locals, expats and other travelers.