Last week we had a bit of a time. And I don’t mean the kind of time that Newfie Donny Dumphy sings about in Havin’ a Time. I mean it was a rough week. But we regrouped, hiked up our socks, got back on the horse, and cliché’d our way into Granada for a relaxing spa day to celebrate Shelly/Cheli’s birthday.

There are plenty of massage options in town, but we chose the Mansion de Chocolate in Granada for many reasons:

1. You get to enjoy the pool after a treatment.
2. They have a bar (if you’ve seen our PanamaDude expenses post, you’ll know this is important to us).
3. They have this treatment where you get covered in chocolate. One of us had to try this, so I took one for the team.
4. They have a shop where you can buy chocolate bars, chocolate soap, chocolate coffee, chocolate alcohol…pretty much anything chocolate
5. There’s a chocolate museum too, where you can learn all about…you guessed it…CHOCOLATE!

Cheli had a choco-reflexology. She always loves getting…reflexologied (new word, awesome)! They use a cacao oil and work the calves up to the knee, and also the feet, forearms and hands. It’s a good treatment if you’re standing/walking on concrete a lot, which many of us living in Latin America are.

As mentioned earlier, I took one for the team and went for Mansion de Chocolate’s specialty – the chocolate therapy, and it was a totally unique and fun experience. It’s not so much of a massage as it is a skin treatment. First, they let you taste the chocolate. This is really important, because if it tasted horrible, how could I let someone douse me in it? But it was tastily awesome and awesomely tasty. The chocolate is muy dulce and warm and smelled AWESOME too!

Next, you get on the bed and the chocolate is literally drizzled on you, bit by bit. From there, the chocolate is rubbed all over your body in a massaging way. After a few layers of sweet cocoa , they then use a sugar scrub to exfoliate. I didn’t really know what exfoliate truly means or does, but Cheli explained to me that it gets rid of dead skin. So, that’s good.

They do both sides too, but funny, when it’s time to flip over, as anyone who has had a massage knows, you sort of need to roll to your side and shimmy your way over to lay on your back. Well, as I shimmied, I kind of stuck to the sheet, ya know, because I’m half-covered in chocolate. So flipping over was an adventure, but being the trouper I am, I persevered once again and rolled over and the process was repeated on the sunny side of my bod.

And I’m sure some people are probably wondering…no, they didn’t cover my bits and pieces with chocolate, just a towel, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have wanted it covered in chocolate because;

1. When it’s time for the sugar scrub…well, let’s just say no thanks! And…

2. See #1.

After our awesome choco-treatments we lounged by the pool for some tasty beverages. I had a michelada, which is similar to what Canadians might call a ‘beezer’ (beer-caesar) or a Bloody Mary for other parts of the world. It was Worcestershire, tomato, lime, chile pepper, salt, and you topped it up with a beer. It was so good it tasted like another! Cheli went with a macua, the national drink of Nicaragua, which is rum, guava, and lemon/lime. And what do you know, Cheli’s tasted like another too!

So after 1 amazing treatment each, then 2 drinks apiece from the bar, we were both feeling 3 sheets to the wind, so we said goodbye to the sweet Mansion de Chocolate and grabbed some pretty sweet 4 cheese pizza in town!

Another amazing life experience that stemmed from selling all our stuff!

Now go sell all your stuff!