Jim, Linda (Casey’s girlfriend) and I took the lancha to town this morning to have a spa day … and to get diesel and propane and sandpaper … we are boaters after all.

Blanca Guerra comes from Puerto Morales to work on Tuesdays at El Tortugal, and we have long been singing her praises as a massage therapist. What we hadn’t experienced till this year are her haircuts, manicures and pedicures. Jim and I were both getting pretty shaggy since our last cuts in Halifax (mid October) so Blanca gave us each a trim. The pedicure cleaned up the calluses on my heels and gave me pretty red toes, and the massages for Jim and Linda left them both feeling unknotted and limber.

It’s a pretty cool thing to come down here to Rio Dulce and find someone who is every bit as professional and capable as any one doing the same service back in Canada (and more so than some we have been to.) And lest you think that such services might be out of reach of the average cruiser’s wallet, the massages are 200Q (about $24 Cdn), my pedicure was 100Q (around $12 Cdn) and the haircuts were 25 Q each – less than $5. Cdn.

It poured rain for a couple of hours but we were under cover either getting pampered or eating or talking with friends so we were all happy.

Once the deluge stopped, Linda and I set off to town – for the trek from store to store to find the place to leave the propane tank – El Dragon’s – that doesn’t seem to have a sign but I knew it was along on the right side of the street somewhere between the cellphone store and the Dispencia (grocery store). It took us 3 tries. I paid 70Q (less than $10) and it will be ready on Thursday. And then we needed the store that carried sandpaper. I sure wish we had looked up that word first (papel de lija). Our charades didn’t work very well on that one! But after 3 tries we were back at the first store (the one that didn’t fill propane tanks) and found 80 grade sandpaper for Casey.

Meanwhile Jim dinghied across the river to Ram Marina to fill jerry cans with diesel and hurried back to meet us. But because we were doing the up and down the street thing – and stopping at the little produce stands for avocados and pineapples and the Dispencia for yogurt and napkins, we were slow and he ended up waiting 45 minutes for us – with a truly amazing level of patience. (I know you remember that waiting part, Liam!)

We ended the day well though – for the first time in my recollection, the wind didn’t come up in the afternoon so we had a smooth, fast trip back down through El Golfete – 50 minutes and no one got wet.