Visiting The Dentist In Costa Rica And Settling Into A Routine

We’re staying in Costa Rica for a full month, so it’s a great experiment in day-to-day living. One of my goals for our stay this time was trying out the health care. I decided to start with a visit to the dentist since I am in-between dentists at home.

My regular New York City dentist was on a sabbatical. I tried a neighborhood dentist in Riverdale but wasn’t 100% convinced to switch over. I wanted to try out a Costa Rica dentist now since I may need expensive work done sooner than later.

I could have bought a car for the money I have spent on my teeth

Dental care is not cheap in the US, and I was born with problem teeth. I am missing most of my adult teeth – the missing ones didn’t fall out; they’re just not there! Even 40 years ago, my pediatric dentist told me to save my money because baby teeth don’t last forever, and I should start saving now for implants.

I have had five implants so far. This entails pulling out the baby tooth, prepping the bone and gum area for the implant, measuring, fitting and inserting the implant (one time it didn’t take, and I needed to do that part twice), and finally building a crown over the implant. The whole process takes almost a year because you need time for the implant to take root before placing the crown.

The process costs over $5,000 per tooth, so my five implants have cost over $25,000. The entire time I had these procedures done, I had dental insurance but in most cases, insurance does not cover implants and even when they do, there is typically an annual cap of $1,000-$2,000 per patient per year.

I have one more baby tooth that will eventually need to be replaced with an implant and crown, so it would be ideal to find a dentist out here for when the time comes.

The dentist office I selected overlooks the beach

It was the dentist and owner of the office who got back to me personally, answered my questions and booked my appointment. She also did my cleaning and check-up. My New York City dentist always seemed to want to do more work on my teeth (for example, suggesting I preemptively remove my remaining baby tooth).

The dentist in Tamarindo told me that my baby tooth was surprisingly resilient, and I should keep it for as long as possible. If I wanted to go ahead with the implant, she had a specialist in that area on her team who could handle it, but she didn’t recommend it.

I was seen the second week I arrived. My appointment started right on time. Scott hung out in the air- conditioned reception area, and we were back to our day less than an hour from when we started. The total cost for the cleaning and check-up was slightly less than a quarter of what I pay in New York.

The implant work will vary depending on exactly what you need – e.g., how complicated the extraction might be, how much prep work is needed in the area for the implant to take, the type of crown you get. From what I could see in the price estimates for this dentist, the cost would be about half of what I paid for my earlier implants – and I had my work done more than five years ago.

What’s tricky with implant work is that there are recovery periods in-between treatments. After an implant is put in, you ideally should wait six months’ minimum before placing the crown. The crown also needs to be made to measure so you need to get fitted, then it’s made, and then you go back one or more times for adjustments. Even if I had to fly back and forth to Costa Rica to get the work done, the cost savings would pay for the trip. The more decadent option would be for me to just stay out there for the duration of the treatment!

Finding the right dentist out here was by referral – just like back home

I started my research on a general site, Patients Beyond Borders, which is an online database for medical tourism and has a dentistry section. The site focuses on more complex care, not routine check-ups, so the dentists listed for Costa Rica were in the capital city of San Jose, about 4 hours from Tamarindo. Still, it was good to see that there were several recommendations to choose from if I needed something more complex than a beach town dental office could handle.

Then, I canvassed the people that I knew. Four contacts in Tamarindo shared with me six recommendations, and three of those recommendations were for the dentist I ended up selecting. I probably would have been happy with the other names – another dentist had two recommendations so a close-runner-up.

A routine check-up was helpful to test what our Costa Rica routine might look like

In addition to finding a dentist, we have selected our neighborhood church, gym (I have been to nine classes so far!), and grocery stores. We also stopped by the new movie theater complex:

Dora, the It sequel and live-action Lion King are playing. The complex also plays a rotation of older movies once a week at a discount. Interestingly, there were a number of horror movies screening – The Exorcist, The Shining – as well as independent dramas that I didn’t think would have any global appeal (e.g., Three Billboards Outside Of Ebbing, Missouri, seriously?)

We’re just two weeks in and we know to buy our granola from the mom who has a stand at the weekly Saturday farmer’s market. She has salsas, jams, butters (pistachio and Nutella!) and various types of granola. We tried the cranberries and flax seed one week and now are onto the almond version.

We also know that Anthony’s Asian, run by a Filipino family in the food court, offers big enough portions that last two to three meals. The samosas sold at the Thursday night market taste even better left over, so it’s best to buy 12 for 7,000 colons (~$12.50) compared to 2 for 1,500. Of course, we will be adding to our list of favorite restaurants, although our early front-runners still apply!

We build our days around the beach

Whatever we need to do during our day, we build it around the beach. Sunset is reliably around 5:45p, so we finish whatever we have to do by 5:15p at the latest. While it’s the low tourist season, and typically a rainy time, we have had amazing luck with the weather so far!

We also make more of an effort to get to the beach whenever it is low tide, and our flexibility allows us to do that. There is such a stark difference between the amount of beach available for walking and exploring when it is low tide vs high tide.

At the top of the page you can see an example of how the clouds and sunset can create great colors. Here are a few of the other sunsets we’ve seen so far:

• Day 3 was mostly clear and there were lots of surfers trying to catch the last waves before dark:

• On day 4 we had a magnificent sunset where the full sun became visible between heavy clouds and the horizon, and some light clouds in front of the sun tempered the normal brightness.

• Day 8 sunset was pretty cloudy but the sun emerged just before hitting the horizon, lighting up the sky: