Off to the dentist, and good news!

Yesterday was dentist day!

We've been going to Dr. Lisette Gomez here in Valle de Juarez for quite a few years. She's really good, and of course we get charged the same prices the locals pay. Nobody likes going to the dentist, but at least the reasonable prices make it bearable!

We had another beautiful sunrise...

The start of another beautiful day in Mexico.

Ruth headed in to the 10:00am appointment, and I followed a half an hour later. When I arrived, Ruth was almost finished and I only had to wait ten minutes or so.

The entrance to our dentist office.

Nobody else in the waiting room.

Ruth just wanted a cleaning. In Canada and the U.S, a teeth cleaning is normally performed by a dental hygienist, which of course is just a profit center for the dentist. Here in Mexico (and at our dentist in Albania), our experience has always been that the cleaning is performed by the dentist her/himself.

Ruth also has a crack in one of her front teeth which she wanted looked at. Dr. Lissette said that she thinks it's just a crack in the enamel and shouldn't cause any further issues, but she's going to check with her brother who is also a dentist. It's a family operation because their father is also a dentist, although he's partially retired.

I went in for my cleaning, and I also thought I needed one small filling which turned out to be the case. She also cleaned up two older fillings that were discolored, and ground down one tooth that wasn't seating properly.

Total cost for the two of us was 1,500 pesos ($104 CAD, $72 USD, £59). I never asked for a breakdown, but I'm assuming that was 500 pesos each for the cleaning, and 500 pesos for my extra work. Not as cheap as our Albania dentist, but still extremely cheap compared to Canada!

We walked back to Igor and had some lunch, then mid afternoon Sue and Roy came over to pick us up to take us to nearby San Jose del Gracia where they knew of a seafood restaurant we wanted to try for dinner.

Roy, Sue, and Ruth in the central plaza.

This tree has all kinds of little plants growing on it.

This town does an orchid festival, and Sue says that some of the plants growing on this tree are orchids.

Every Mexican town has a sign.

The main church in San Jose de Gracia.

I noticed on Google maps that there are a couple of hot water parks just north of town, and they were on the same road leading out as the restaurant was on. So we took a drive out there just to check them out.

They were pretty much closed down, in fact I think they are closed at this time of year. I walked around and stuck my hand in some of the pools, and they were lukewarm at best. Although maybe if it was open, they would have refreshed the water and it might be warmer.

The place is quite well done though.

The kiddy water play area.

I can imagine the place would be packed on a hot weekend during the summer.

Totally empty. I didn't see a single person while I was out wandering around.

At the restaurant, Ruth and I each had the surf and turf molcajete.

Not much in the way of vegetables, but otherwise it was really good. A bit pricey by local standards at 269 pesos ($18.65 CAD, $12.95 USD), but it was a higher end restaurant. 

Just a butterfly.

Oh, some good news!

Remember when we were in Playa del Carmen with Lindsey and the grandkids last month? And we had arrived at our accommodation to find that the pool was closed and didn't re-open until two days before we left?

I asked the host for compensation, since the pool was one of the reasons we booked the place. I received no response, so I registered a complaint with booking.com which was the site we had booked the place through. They agreed I was due a refund of some kind, and they also contacted the host, but didn't receive a response. The place is now no longer available on booking.com, and booking.com processed a refund for me of $70 USD which I am totally happy with! I was only looking for $50 USD.

So, I am pretty pleased with booking.com customer service.

We have now been one week at the campground, but we are moving on. Not very far though... we are going to camp in an empty lot beside the house Sue and Roy are living in. We asked the owner of the empty lot, and he said sure... whatever you like!

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