Yesterday we went to check out a part of town called Sanur, which is a beach community directly north of us. It was a short drive along a stretch of road that has become familiar to us after the last two days of tours. We were dropped off at the north end of town.

As promised, it is a nice stretch of beach. The water is protected, so there aren’t any really big waves. As such, this are sees more retirees and families with small kids than surfers. After a stroll along the beach, we headed into town. The town looks just like all the rest of Bali we have seen so far narrow streets chock full of buildings of mostly Balinese style architecture. The buildings housed a never ending array shops, restaurants and hotels. The streets are packed with taxis and scooters. Every local we passed tried to sell us something, some being polite and some being overly aggressive.

We were commenting about how this isn’t our kind of place when we passed a spa recommended by Lonely Planet. Christi wandered in and inquired about prices for a facial. It turned out a complete spa package wasn’t really much more than a facial, and we got a discount if we went as a couple. At first Eric pooh-poohed doing a foo foo spa treatment, but Christi managed to talk him into it. The package included jacuzzi with minerals instead of chlorine, cool bath with minerals, steam room, sauna, foot bath, full body acupressure (aahhh), full body aromatherapy massage (aaahhhh), full body mask, a flower bath, and two herbal potions all for about $42.00 each USD. It is definitely a very romantic activity to do as a couple. As we were leaving, Christi commented that she still wanted to get a facial. Much to Christi’s surprise, Eric said “OK. Let’s get facials right now!” Christi figured he’d like the spa experience, but she didn’t realize she had just created an addict!

We decided to get dinner, instead, and save the facial for another day. We had dinner at a restaurant called Alise’s, which was quite good. Christi tried beef balls soup, which we see often on menus. As we figured, it was meatballs, not the other kind of balls. Phew.

This morning we needed to move to a smaller slip. A big boat was supposed to be arriving later in the day that needed the spot we were in. The new slip is definitely not long enough, about the same size as the one in Port Douglas. We are back to climbing on and off over the side railing. It’s actually fun to have a legitimate reason to play on what are essentially monkey bars. I wonder if anyone would freak out if we hung upside down on them?

We have neglected to mention that we hired a boat cleaner to wash and wax the boat. He has been working on it the last three days. He has managed to get most of the awful stains from the boatyard out, and Kosmos was looking gorgeous. He was just about done and had a little left to finish up when we started the engine. And all the soot came out. A huge load of soot that got all over everything. The soot that doesn’t simply rinse off, it must be scrubbed vigorously with soap and brush. We felt really bad that he needed to start over with washing. The good news is that he was there when it happened and went right to work, so he got to it before it set in too much.

We also got round one of fuel today. The bad news is after we ordered the fuel we found out we could get it 20% – 30% cheaper somewhere else. The marina wouldn’t let us cancel our fuel order, as the fuel had already been specially delivered for us. Fuel was more expensive than we had expected, at $2.95 per gallon. They actually brought the hose to our slip, so it is kind of nice we didn’t have to go to a fuel dock. Unfortunately, the hose didn’t reach our port (left) tank, just the starboard (right) one. We filled the starboard tank up. We transferred all the fuel to the port tank and tomorrow will finish fueling up. We are seriously tipped on our side now from the uneven weight distribution. We finally get to know first hand what it is like to live on a sailboat.

Eric changed the generator fuel filter and impeller today, as well. We didn’t do anything else of interest today since it rained most of the day. Not light rain, but the heavy monsoon rains you read about in books. Harder than the torrential downpour we had in Fiji where everyone was bragging about how much water they had collected. We have never seen anything like it. Christi was in the marina restaurant talking to another cruiser when the rain started. The sound of the rain on the ceiling was so loud that they had to actually scream at one another to be heard over the pounding of the rain. The good news is the rain has broken the heat wave. The cool air is a refreshing change from the high temperatures and humidity.