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By Margie Farnsworth
 On the ground floor of the downtown Harbor Club condos, Spa Tiki debuted in July. The 8,000-square-foot facility charmingly re-creates a little-grass-shack atmosphere, with lots of fun touches designed to mentally whisk you off to the South Pacific.
Owner Katherine Stuart,
who’s enjoyed a successful career as a meeting planner, anticipates the spa will become a hot spot for locals and visitors whose collective achy bones and tired muscles are housed at the convention center, just across the street. In addition to offering body-pampering treatments, the spa soon will open a skincare clinic under the direction of a board-certified plastic surgeon.
On day three of her
spa adventure, your correspondent meets body therapist
Kimberly, who introduces her to the two-hour Thai
Contouring Body Ritual, a truly magnificent experience.
Beginning with the left foot (obligatory in all Thai
treatments), Kimberly begins to detoxify the body
with a cucumber-and-corn body scrub. Then comes a
heady ginger-clove-pepper body mask to improve circulation
and ratchet up your metabolism to, as the brochure
says, “increase the immune system and the body’s ability to burn calories.” A shower follows, as does a long, aromatic, pressure-point massage using essential oils of pepper and cinnamon. The artful Kimberly then swathes her client in a heat wrap, after which she massages the face, using cold stones. Who, at this point, can be bothered with slim contours?
Somehow, your correspondent
finds her way to one of Spa Tiki’s private cabaña “thrones” for a 90-minute Royal Island Pedicure, tenderly administered by Norma, whose technique should be patented.
Spa Tiki, 200 Harbor
Drive, Suite 200, San Diego, 619-231-4363, www.spatiki.com.
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