FINDING A DENTIST AND BEING AMAZED BY BOGATA
I woke up in the middle of the night wondering how I would ever find a dentist I would trust to put in an expensive implant. When I had first looked at the Colombian Dental Tourism website, I got inquiries from a number of dentists. So this morning I chose one of the two who had written to me about dental tourism, who seemed trustworthy. I decided on a woman dentist with good reviews who teaches dentistry at a dental college, figuring she could at least pull my tooth. I didn‘t think that we would be understood over the phone by a receptionist because we speak no Spanish, so Susie and I got a taxi and drove to Dr. Sauza‘s very modern office, which was also the direction in Bogata that Susie wanted to explore next. After learning that the elevator we were on only stopped at even number floors we got to 5 by the stairs and found Dr. Sauza‘s office. A girl who spoke just a little English set me up with an appointment at 11 on Friday and Susie for teeth cleaning at 1. So I‘ve resolved my anxiety about not knowing how to go about getting my tooth pulled by finally choosing, on faith, a dentist. I can at least get the one infected tooth pulled and maybe get the implant, which I could also get in the last week, after Susie and I travel.
After that we went to an area with beautiful shops and looked around a bit and then ate in a New York Times recommended restaurant. We each had a modest sized but delicious meal (and by Colombian standards expensive, $15). I had two boneless chicken thighs cruste with a lime glaze and a marvelous salad.
During the meal Susie read up on the truck strike 5that had closed the Gold Museum yesterday. It turns out that it was a huge strike by truck drivers over raising the cost of diesel fuel, or removing the subsidy by a left wing government that wanted to use the savings for education and health. Apparently a number of highways were blocked and workers could not get to work and supplies of vegetables were not going to reach the city. The city was paralyzed according to reports. Schools and colleges were closed since Monday. We hadn‘t noticed a thing or, of course, heard a thing. My sudden worry now that I knew was that taxies and buses would have stopped running and I would have to walk home. But we got a taxi easily enough, stopped at a grocery store to stock up on food in case the strike really did take hold, and walked to our apartment. But by this time I had walked two and a half miles and was exhausted and went right to sleep for an hour.
Again, what struck me today, as it has every day in Bogata, was how civilized and beautiful so much of Bogata is. Certainly in rural areas there must be poverty and the curtailing of the cocoa growing, which was the source of cocaine and cause of drug wars, has hurt rural areas. But we haven‘t seen that and have only read of the horrors of Darien Gap with refugees risking their lives making the terribly difficult journey by foot through the jungle from Colombia to Panama and beyond to the United States.
The vibrant city life, the extremely modern and colorful buildings and shops and marvelous restaurants everywhere of a very upscale life was something that I, in my total ignorance and lack of curiosity caught in prejudices about south of the border, knew nothing about.
After seeing the most elegant parts of the city which are calm and quiet, we find that we are extremely lucky that our Airbnb in a part of town not considered safe for tourists which in which the streets are crowed with people and there are all kinds of street activities.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 