Monday, October 3 was a TLC for Kosmos day. Eric started the day by changing the generator impeller. Then he put away all the tools from oil change and impeller change projects, and stowed extra oil containers (Santa Rosalia doesn’t have any place to dispose of used oil). Christi and Keith started washing the boat as soon as the water was turned on. However, it was already hot, and they ran out of energy halfway through.

The last time we were in Santa Rosalia, we mentioned that our dive compressor was broken. At that point in time, we’d had about a tank and a half of air onboard, and Christi had continued to used it to clean the bottom until we ran out of air, which was a few days before the hurricane. Since Christi hadn’t been able to do the bottom in almost a month, we made arrangements through the marina to hire someone to do it. He came today.

We also got the bottled water issue straightened out. It was a simple miscommunication. Normally, the deliver the water, we dump it in the tanks right then, and they take the empty bottles back. The higher number was because they thought we wanted to keep the bottles.

The next thing on the to-do list was to walk to a store that sold oxygen to see if they could fill our SCUBA tanks. The shop was on Highway 1, not far past AutoZone. Unfortunately, they couldn’t help us, and told us there was no one in town that could.

The store was near the cross-street that led up the hill to the supermarket. We decided to take the upper road back for a safer walk. Along the way, we passed a stand that sold soft serve ice cream, so we stopped for ice cream. Here is a view of downtown from the top of the staircase that leads into downtown.

In the evening, we went back into downtown for dinner. The soldiers did a great job clearing the mud! The crushed car had also been removed.

We ventured farther west into downtown, searching for a new restaurant to try. After wandering around a bit, we decided to go back to El Muelle because we wanted more pinto bean soup.

We found out that the soup of the day changes. Today’s soup was caldo de res, which was beef soup with vegetables, and it was just as good as the pinto bean soup. The bones with meat attached had been cut into large chunks, and the soup was served with the meat/bones in the broth. Caldo de res often is served with corn on the cob floating in the soup. This one did not have the corn, which we were happy about because the corn can be messy.

The menu at El Muelle was in both English and Spanish. Some of the English translations were inaccurate, so Eric and Christi focused on the Spanish menu while Keith looked at the English menu. Keith asked if he could have cheesecake for dessert. We said they didn’t have cheesecake. He pointed to cheesecake on the English menu, which was a mistranslation of quesadilla (flour tortilla wrapped around melted cheese). He smiled brightly when he realized that quesadillas was a meal option, and happily ordered the “cheesecake” for dinner.