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Many of my friends from Ft Lauderdale had met Dora and the guys from "The Bachelors Club" were particularly impressed with her. Several of them decided to travel to Bogota to test their luck. I assisted them as best I could and they returned to Ft Lauderdale in love with Colombia and the women from there. From these experiences I was able to come to the following conclusion. In the US there are large numbers of good, sincere men, who are lonely and unsuccessful in their quest to find a mate. These men are a cut above the normal guy on the street and they need assistance as they have been going in circles for a long time with nothing but frustrations. In Colombia the situation is identical for the ladies. They are beautiful and work hard to get ahead. They want to find a good man but they can't in their country. The supply of good men there is almost non-existent. These ladies are fond of men from the US and the guys here are fond of the Latin woman. For these reasons Latin Lifemates was created in 1990 to help good men from abroad meet the exceptional ladies from Colombia.

Within a few years business was booming. I was mailing out 500 to 1000 brochures per month to interested guys and 30 to 70 of these guys monthly would make it to Bogota to realize their dreams. We had 2 large houses side by side serving as our Bed & Breakfast with a total of 11 bedrooms. Joe Troia an American and his wife Erma were the hosts.

Balconies del Miranda Hotel Group Trips When we had group trips we needed more rooms so were were sending our overflow to the Balconies del Miranda Hotel. I liked the hotel because it was safe and centrally located, the clients liked the hotel, so I purchased the hotel for our exclusive use.

All systems were a go now and business was good. During the boom years from 1992 to 2000 I had 75 clients open their own agencies in an effort to make some quick cash and meet more women. All but one of these agencies closed within 2 years of opening as the owners found that this business was more work and less money than they had anticipated. The only complaints or problems I dealt with during the boom years were as follows : some guys were afraid to come to Colombia as the press scared them with stories about violence etc and some guys said Bogota was too cold and it rained too much.

San Jose, Costa Rica I opened an office in San Jose, Costa Rica to appease these guys but this was a mistake from the go. The women here are no match for the Colombian women. They are not nearly so beautiful, less educated, less social graces, and less everything.

Cartagena office manager Johanna Cartagena I tried an office in Cartagena and it was a little better but still too many problems. Next I went to Cali and better yet but not nearly as good as Bogota. I found the same similarities in both of these cities. The ladies are beautiful. They tend to quit school early and often have a baby at a young age. Oftentimes there is no father living at home. They enjoy sleeping late, dancing, and hanging around with their friends. They smile frequently and are open to dating men much older than they are. They are poor and always in need of money or things. Very few of these ladies spoke English nor were they willing to work hard to learn a new language. They had few responsibilities and no stress other than financial in their life.

Many of my clients were going here, finding nice girlfriends and inviting them to the US but once the ladies arrived so did a series of unexpected problems. The girls often did not adapt well to our culture as they had language problems and did not like the fast style of our lives. Usually they would want to return home where life was simple with much less stress. Many of my male clients were disappointed with their experience in these cities so I closed these offices and concentrated on Bogota were we were successful from day one. Girls from all over Colombia who are educated or really want to get ahead in life often move to Bogota where there are many opportunities. Most learn English as it is important in Bogota. There are more than 250 multi-national companies located in Bogota and plenty of good jobs for good ladies. I guess the single most important lessons I learned from these other offices were as follows : stay away from tourist areas as the beautiful ladies are lured into prostitution and all the ladies lose their sense of values from the big dollars flying around, choose women from middle class and above and stay away from lower classes as too many problems, locate where my clients are happiest and the relationships are lasting. My clients vote with their dollars and they have voted for Bogota as number one.

All good things must come to an end and the new century brought some changes that were negative to say the least. First came the dot com bust and this hurt business a lot. Next comes 9/1/2001 and this drives a spike into everyone. Overseas travel ground to a halt and everyone was tightening their belts and restricting all their spending. Most of my competitors chose to quit the business and look for other opportunities. For those of us who didn't quit it was a real tough period. We spoke a lot on the telephone to try to understand what had happened and when it would end and whether or not it was worth going on. Everyones business was down dramatically and no one knew exactly why. Customer satisfaction was high as always but revenues were at 25 to 50 % of previous levels and this was not sustainable. No one wanted to travel and many guys were wasting their money trying Match.Com and other inexpensive internet dating sites where they were meeting local women. My wife was not happy with the belt-tightening and to make matters worse both kids were now married and had moved out of the house to make it on their own. We were now empty nesters and I choose to sell the big house and move back to a condo on the ocean. My wife was not happy and filed for divorce. Our glorious marriage of almost 10 years had just ended and things couldn't be any worse at this point.

How could we let this get away from us ??? Like many of my friends this divorce was the most painful experience of my life. Failure is something I have never handled well. This could have been so much easier except for the lawyers. She had 3 and I had 2 and they seemed to do nothing constructive rather just stir up a deep hate between the combatants. They created a feeling of fear and distrust and her lawyers were promising her a glorious future with no economic needs when they were finished with me she would be set up for life. Well after 2 plus years we reached a settlement and the papers were signed and it was over. During this process of over 2 years Dora and I had not spoken except in the courtroom so I was quite surprised when she came knocking on my door several days after the settlement had been made. She asked if she could move in with me and give the relationship another try and I couldn't say yes fast enough. For 3 years we tried to re-create the good old days but the magic was gone. I think the 2 plus years of courtroom battles just wore us both out. Well at least we tried so now its time to go out and build a new life.

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