Thursday, November 5, 2015

Long weekend, long waits

For a long weekend in November, Livia and I planned a trip down to a popular beach town in Peru, she'd never been, and I'm always down to try a new place. There was one possible issue: license plates. As a diplomat, our license plates were issued through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, instead of through the transit commission. Despite filing all the paperwork the minute my car arrived in country, the process often took a long time. There wasn't much consistency, some plates came quickly, some slowly. Mine had yet to arrive. So, I got a letter stating I was waiting on them for the plates, and made copies of the title and a few other forms and brought them along.

We arrived at the border control and it was a COMPLETE mess. The line wrapped all the way around the building, and we were hearing it was taking close to three hours to get through the process. It wasn't clear if we had to do immigration or the car first, so I went up to the car building and figured out what was going on there, and went back and talked with Livia. She graciously agreed to wait in the immigration line, while I went up to take care of the car paperwork. Between the signs and observing people go through the stations it seemed clear they were checking on a few things: that the car was registered, that the person it was registered to was driving it, and that the driver had paid for a $10 tourist car insurance required for any foreign car in Peru. This got me a bit worried, or rather, ready to do some negotiating. I had no problem buying the insurance, but my car wasn't registered and I had no proof of it being registered. I didn't even have the Florida tags that came with the car when I bought it.

Well, I was right to be worried. The Peruvian border/immigration official was incredibly nice, and showed understanding for my situation. She tried to help me out, calling her boss, who eventually called up an additional level, to the headquarters in Lima. But, alas, it was a Saturday, and the person in Lima who could approved the exception and give me permission to enter with a non-registered car was not coming in on a Saturday to do that. She did a great job explaining the law and why I didn't qualify. I was able to go back and let Livia know in between one her various phone calls that things weren't looking good. After it was clear that we weren't getting in by car, we considered leaving the car in some sort of secure parking lot in the border town, or in the border station parking lot, and grabbing the bus. (By now Livia was almost to the front of the immigration line.) But, ultimately, that didn't seem the most responsible decision, so we headed back to Machala, upset, ate a big meal at Chili's and drove back to Guayaquil. The next morning we headed towards the beach for a little coastal tour. We visited Montanita, Ayampe, and Puerto Cayo on the coast, with a stop in Puerto Lopez for seafood, and had a pretty good time soaking up the sun, relaxing in hammocks, and enjoying the warm ocean water.