Cuba is back home! She spent almost another week at the vet, 10 days total, had a lot of antibiotics and some kind of stomach medicine. She's eating and seems to feel good. We took the dogs down to the beach at Progreso yesterday to run. It's the closest beach to Merida, about 20 miles, and is on the Gulf coast. I forgot the camera but got this picture with my cell phone.

It was chilly and grey - chilly for us means it was in the 60's F, and we stopped at a restaurant on the beach, Flamingos. I had Sopa de Lima, hot chicken soup with lime, and queso fundido, melted cheese with chile strips. Hot food on a cold day at the beach!

On the way home, we drove down the coast a little, there is a long lagoon that runs parallel to the coast along there and we had heard there were flamingos. We saw them! Usually the flamingos are found in huge numbers at lagoons a couple hours in 2 directions from Merida. I guess these had stopped off on the way to the big gathering. The phone camera doesn't do so well at a distance, still, those pink blogs are flamingos.

Today was beautiful, sunny and warm. We had our appointment at the immigration office. Got our fingerprints taken, answered some questions, signed the documents. We should pick up our new visas next Thursday.

Mimi wanted to fly to Puerto Vallarta in Nov. to see her friend Shann, who is performing at a resort there. We looked at flights online, there are several good low cost national airlines and we were hoping for a good price. Not so good really, probably because it is one resort area to another or because there isn't a non stop flight so she has to change planes in Mexico City. We decided to go over to the mall near here and see if we could find a better deal. It's a great mall, Plaza Grande, with all the usual stores, multiple levels and branches. We wandered around, found one travel agency that was closed, and then found a branch office of the airline we were looking at, Aviansca. They had a special that saved about $80US so she got the tickets. She'll be gone from the 3rd to the 7th of Nov and I'll get to manage 3 dogs and try and stay out of trouble by myself ;) On the other hand, she gets to navigate the airport in Mexico City by herself, which is making her a little tense.

Plus, we had the perfect excuse to eat mall food. Actually, the chinese in the food court was pretty good. The one difference between mall food here and mall food in the US is that as you walk around looking at all the different foods, they offer you tastes on toothpicks at all the stalls. You could almost just graze your way to full.