August 11 to 17- Thermal Baths in San Vicente plus other fun stuff

Week three of our renovation has started. OMG what a mess! I thought that the kitchen demolition was bad but week 3 was even worse. Most of the tile in all rooms plus balconies was underway. This included taking out the balcony doors and the constant cutting of tile to fit. The dust, the noise arrrgh! As well, the kitchen upper and lower cabinets came and were installed. A small burp as I thought the cabinets were installed a little high from the counter tops. They were at 24” and when checking with my friends in Canada who have done many kitchen renovations and our family who just had theirs done, we found that the norm in Canada was 18”. Since labour is cheap but my kitchen won’t be, we had them all lowered. No problemas!

               Pictures of the latest changes- new tiles almost everywhere and new kitchen cabinets

 

 

On Sunday we had lunch at Luccy’s new location of her Mexican restaurant.

https://www.facebook.com/LuccysCafeandGrill

 Uwe had tacos and I had quesadillas- delicious as before- we sure missed you, Luccy, welcome back.

We also went to Dolar Pizza on their Tuesday night 2 for 1 special.
https://www.facebook.com/DolarPizza
After many deliciosas pizzas were enjoyed, we all wished the owner, Marco, a happy Birthday.

 

My friends and I felt we needed a Women’s day at a spa and since some of us had never been to the Thermal Baths at the nearby town of San Vicente, we decided to give that a try. The following well written Blog basically describes all the fun stuff but I’ll tell our tale as well. http://nanlevin.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/banos-termales-san-vincente/

First of all, it is a reasonable distance from Salinas, over ½ hour drive and a $20 taxi ride round trip. Connie’s friend, Fernando, picked us up about 10AM and drove us there and was to pick us back up at 2PM.

                                                  Here we are standing in front of the gate

Connie, who had been there before, showed us the various locations we would be going to and then we changed into our bathing suits in the private dressing rooms. A reminder, bring your own towels- 2 is good- soap and shampoo especially if you are getting a massage.

We booked our massages first, Connie and I wanted an aloe massage and Denise wanted a mud massage first and then followed by an aloe massage. We then spent a pleasant half hour in the warm thermal pool, much like a huge hot tub but with natural hot mineral water. Wonderful!

Ok time for our massages. If you are shy please be aware that these 30 minute massages include an almost full frontal as well as your back.  I had chosen an aloe massage for my dry older skin. And lather it on she did while kneading my tense muscles. There wasn’t a single piece of me- body,arms,legs,face and my full head of hair, that was not thickly covered in aloe.

Now here is where the soap and shampoo become absolutely necessary. It took me forever to get all the aloe out of my hair and my bathing suit will need a heavy duty laundry to become clean again.

The mud pool was next. I know, here I was just newly showered and off to the mud pool? Denise who had had a mud massage was already covered head to toe in mud. The water in the mud pool was cool and about 2 feet deep where we went in. The problem was that there was another foot of mud into which your feet sank- a truly weird icky feeling. Then you were supposed to bring the mud up with your hands and spread it over your body.

 

 I opted to do most of this sitting on the side of the pool as I really didn’t like the feeling of standing in a foot of mud. There were lots of other people there most of whom seemed to enjoy this experience.

More showers and more hair and body washing- this is where an extra towel comes in handy.

After one more turn in the thermal pool, my favorite of the day, we got changed and went outside the venue and had a delicious lunch- soup, breaded fish, rice and beans, juice all for $2.50 per person. A perfect day with mis amigas! And better yet, a relaxing day away from THE construction zone.

Walking on a late Saturday afternoon along the Malecon, we were so surprised at the number of people still on the beach during what is Salinas’ low season.

This weekend we were invited to a house warming party for one of our Ecuadorian friends and his family. Edison Salinas also runs a Real Estate business at the same address so it was both house warming and intro to his new venture.

The party was hosted by the Blairs, Don & Leslee, who are also our Canadian consulate representatives in our area.

                         There were delicious appetizers and lots of good wine and beer.

                                 We met many old and new friends and per usual,had a wonderful time.