This is so surreal, here we are four days later in Mexico heading to our new lives. I am not really sure where my emotions are right now. A lot has taken place for us to here right now in this country together. Happiness is one emotion I am able to make sense of, happy to be here with Brad and our dogs. The last step is to hit the vehicle permit station its like a mini boarder crossing about 30mins into Sonora which is the region we just entered. To bring vehicles in to the country you have to buy a permit this allows you to drive legally within all of Mexico. If you get pulled over you must have proof of a permit or you will be in lots of trouble and very broke quite soon.
This next stage should be the simplest of them all, I mean hell we just made it across the boarder and customs getting the permit would seem easy, well think again. It would have been easy if the truck and the trailer were all in one name, but they aren’t. The truck is in Brad’s name and the trailer is in my name. For what ever reason we could not understand they are unable to write up two permits one for truck and one for trailer. They said it had to be in both names or we had to be married and have proof or certificate. Now there is only one way to change the insurance papers and thats to go back to canada and do a transfer, that was not going to happen not even an option. The second option we had was to go back to the boarder town and get married. So guess what? That’s right we didn’t go ahead with that option either. I would be lying if I said it didn’t cross my mind because if our third option did not luckily become one I would have. The third option was we went to the office next door to talk to immigrations and customs. They too could not understand why we could not purchase two permits, so one of the head guys in customs came to talk to the permit guy. The end result was that the customs guy told the permit guy he would sign a document giving his permission to allow us to take the truck and trailer in as one vehicle. So after two hours of this back and forth we are all good to go. We have been cleared now we just have to pay for the permits hurray!
I spoke too soon. I went to pay for the permits with my Visa and the permit guy said no it has to be in his name. “Sorry WHAT?” “Si credit or debit needs to be in owners name.” I was thinking every curse word at this point and could no longer contain my ‘miss nice smile’. This is bullshit....buuuuuullllllllshhhhiiiiittt! What are our other options? Oh that’s right he wanted us to go back to town as I did not have enough AMERICAN cash on me to pay the permit deposit. So here is a little info on how the permits work:
To cross in to Mexico with an RV or vehicle you need to leave a deposit and pay a small fee for the permit. When you exit Mexico you must go back to one of these check points to return your permit and collect your deposit. This way they know that you are not selling the vehicle or leaving it in the country. Because our truck is newer we had to leave $400US as a deposit. Of course I don’t have that much US as I am Canadian in Mexico, so we had to drive back to the boarder, I had to pull pesos out of the ATM and than go to a money exchange to get US. I don’t even know how much I lost on that transaction but whatever, I have the money and I just want to get through!
So back to the permit guy give him the cash, go next door get our immigration slip, go back to the permit guy show him get stamp and were done! Now we just have to drive through customs which is set up like the one at the boarder red for stop, green for your free! We got green, but still got stopped. The customs guys was curious why we sat the for so long, what issues we were having. Brad got out to show him what was in the trailer and when he got back inside he said the guy just wanted to talk, practice his English. Thank goodness, now lets get far far away from here.
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