Well, it’s been like a month since the last post so I figured I’d better get off my feet and do something here. There’s a lot running through my head so this may ramble a bit. We’ve been here in San Carlos a little over three months. We spend time exploring, eating and drinking (probably more of this than we should), working (we have an online training business which is having growing pains at the moment and takes a good bit of time and TLC), and just hanging around. Every evening at five o’clock we sit on the balcony and have cocktails while the charter fleet comes in from the Sea of Cortez. At night, we’ll hit one of the local bars for drinks and entertainment. Sometimes the entertainment is on the stage, sometimes it’s provided by the other patrons. Some nights we’ll just stay home and binge watch things like The Ranch on Netflix. Life here is as peaceful or exciting as you care to make it. Expatriating doesn’t eliminate the mundane. You still need to get groceries, fuel the car, make the bed, etc. You can make some of it go away. We have a maid to clean. She charges us 300 pesos ($14.43 at today’s exchange rate) to clean the place top to bottom, including all the glass on the balconies. It seems like too little to us so we tip really well. Other Gringos will scold you for this, saying we’re screwing up the system. Screw ‘em, fair is fair, I’ll tip what I want. The minimum wage here is 73.04 pesos per day (about $3.51 per DAY). I don’t feel guilty.

Originally we said we would stay here until the first of December and then make a decision to stay or move over to the Caribbean coast. We’ve decided to extend that and give it a year so we get to see all the seasons (Hot, Tourist, and Snowbird). Hot is the summer, although coming here from the heat and humidity of the Florida Keys we really didn’t find it all that hot. Tourist season is also in the summer, when the kids are out of school and people come from inland Mexico to be at the beach. Snowbird season is just starting and will run until spring. Things are getting more crowded. Traffic, such as it is, is increasing. Nothing like a weekend on US 1 in the Keys though. So we’ll stay a while, but we will be moving into a house on 01 December. The business requires space for lights, cameras, and recording equipment so it was either get a bigger place and set up a home studio or stay here and rent a commercial space. I like the home office commute. In the meantime, if you are looking for info from the Caribbean side, check out qroo.us. Lots of great info from Paul & Linda, two expats from Florida now living in Akumal, Quintana Roo.

A lot of our readers want to know how the election is affecting us down here. “How is the election affecting you down there?” they ask. We didn’t have an election that I’m aware of so I’m guessing there was one somewhere north of the Rio Bravo. Seriously, until last week, I had not watched a news broadcast in about three years. After watching last week’s train wreck, I remember why. I don’t think I have ever seen anything so polarizing, and I lived through the sixties. Half of my friends up north want to leave the country and the other half is eager to see them on their way. Here, well, we haven’t really noticed any change. The old guy who hangs out in the grocery store parking lot and carries groceries for tips still greets me with a big smile and a hearty ¡Buenos Dias!. The security guard at the bank still opens the door for us. We were approached by a policeman, but only to sell us a we support the police sticker for the back of the car. If there is animosity towards the U.S., it’s towards the Government, not the people. Could this change if the new guy is really as off his meds as everybody says he is? Sure. People are people. We’ll see. And if things do get bad, there’s always Belize. The good part about the election is lots of our friends are threatening to come visit. (Cue Michael McCloud’s “Just Came Down for the Weekend, Twenty Five Years Ago”.)

On the medical front, Irene got to experience going to the dentist here. She was having problems with a tooth she had “fixed” in the States. Our dentist in the Keys sent us to Miami last year so she could have a root canal done on a molar. She kept having pain which I told her she couldn’t be having since she had a root canal and there were no nerves left in that tooth. Well, she went to the dentist anyway (women huh?) and the dentist does all kinds of good dentist stuff and guess what? Dr. Dumbass in Miami only did half the tooth. There was still a nerve in one side. So, the doc laid out her options: have another root canal (who wouldn’t want that!?) and try to repair / crown it, or have it extracted. At first Irene said ok, let’s try to fix it. On the way home she said “know what? I’m done with this. I’m just going to have it removed”. So, next day we went back, and in about 20 minutes it was a done deal. If you need a dentist here, her name is Dr. Maricela Arizmendi. She’s an oral surgeon and she and her staff speak Spanish and English. If you read the post about Irene’s trip to the emergency room (you really need to stop this stuff, babe), this was a similar experience (read it here: https://ourexpatadventure.com/?p=75). The doc had all the modern torture devices dental equipment, they were consummate professionals. Cost? Exam, x-rays, diagnosis: 600 pesos ($28.85 USD), Extraction / Oral Surgery, anesthetic, and follow up appointment: 1860 pesos ($89.44 USD), total $118.29 US. The root canal in Miami was like 1700 bucks, and it turns out he only did half of it.

So we live our new life, enjoying it and each other. Relaxing and growing at the same time. Stay with us and follow along. Subscribe in the upper right corner. We promise you won’t get any spam from us. See ya’ll later.