January 8, 2026
Day 10: Coba (Day 2)
Ruined
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We listened to a tropical rain all night, and by dawn it was still coming down. That was strike one for our plan to cycle to and climb the Nohoch Mul pyramid, out beyond Sacbe (Mayan road) 4. So we would not be peering into the jungle from there.
Strike two was that a grumbling molar of the past couple of days had flared up, now making any chewing very painful for me. That triggered our various life skill functions. Could we find a dentist in Valladolid, our next town and only larger spot around? When could they see me? How to find a taxi for the 60 km to/from there? Or how about a van taxi that could hold our bikes, and we'd just move our whole show over there today, a day early? And so forth. In the end, to our surprise, we found a dentist here in Coba. It was Google that found him - a relatively new graduate from the school in Merida, with an additional specialty in endodontics!
The hotel man had gotten up early to make us breakfast for before our big jungle expedition. Since he was already up, he made breakfast anyway. The dentist, unlike the jungle, would not open until 9.
I could barely eat the lovely stuff he prepared, cutting it up first very finely. Surprisingly, the Wonder Bread gave me the most grief, allowing upper and lower molars to tap together.
We set out with the bikes to hunt up the dental office. We took the camera of course, and the way passed by the lake. But when Dodie pointed to the first bird out there I balked on pulling the camera, repeating (as written in the blog yesterday) that we had already scoured the lakeside thoroughly. Yeah well, this second look produced five new species for the year, three of which were lifers! Here are the three:
We had to wait 15 minutes for the dentist to actually arrive at the office, but when he came he took me in right away. The office was perfectly clean and stuffed with all the expected high tech equipment. One thing that I had not seen at home was a hand held x-ray gizmo, that produced immediate high resolution images on a couch-side PC. The first issue in these cases is of which tooth is actually the culprit. The dentist tried applying some extreme cold, but I had no reaction. This was in fact a needed clue. Under a crown I had a dead root, so no reaction to the cold. The pain was coming from ancillary inflammation of the area. Bottom line, I needed a root canal job.
Now this is an identical story to that of Bruce Lellman, who had a root problem under a crown, with the flare up in Chiang Mai in November. It was even also on a rainy day. In both cases, there was none of the North American extended wait for an appointment. In my case, the dentist apologized that he had another client at 10, and he asked me to come back for 12.
The same PC that had shown the x-rays also helped by running Google Translate.
We cycled home and used the time to go over our bird photos from the trip to the dentist. Then we walked back out, snagging some additional good shots. The rain had let up and we had a hot and humid real jungle like atmosphere, with many birds all around.
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The dentist was good about letting me know what he was doing.
Since I was lying on the couch thing, he had Translate speak to me. It worked well.
One thing that showed clearly was a root canal job that had been done on an adjacent tooth some years ago. I remember that one - my dentist had sent me to a distant specialist for it, and it was a bit of a big deal. But today, the thing was just going to happen immediately. I think I was lucky too. The dentist was what Michel in Nantes calls a "baby doctor". That is, a young person (like, under 40) who looks like a "baby" from the perspective of our advanced years. And in this case, the "baby" had had time to complete a specialty in endodontics!
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The all in cost of this dental adventure was 1800 pesos, which is less than $150 Canadian. Only thing, the defective crown that allowed the problem to happen will need repair or replacement back home. I would not be surprised if the quote on that was $1800. Perhaps we should shift our dental business down to Mexico! Our new "baby doctor" could use the work.
As we left the dentist, we walked past our Cocodrilo restaurant, where the staff now calls out hello to us. And past the Cocodrilo, we encountered the real thing.
We could see the croc's slithery track in the foliage along the road, until it headed toward Lake Macanxoc, just inside the Ruins reserve.
It was looking down into that foliage that we saw the Egret. Watch out Egret, you could become dinner. We also noticed an Anole lizard:
The final bit of wildlife that we noticed particularly today, and every day, was the dogs, who run loose everywhere. They breed freely and all tend towards the same short hair and medium build. Most bark freely at everything, but we have yet to see any try to bite. We see them as akin to the Mexican loud music, or propensity to throw trash everywhere. It's just a cultural trait, slightly annoying to us, but really ingrained here.
Today's ride: 8 km (5 miles)
Total: 250 km (155 miles)
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