You Are Done Here

Buenas dias! The full moon last night was beautiful from our backyard. It was so bright that even the man in the moon needed sunglasses!It is so good to be home after such a miserable trip to Hermosillo. However, we did come home to a huge pile of rubble as Umberto continued to take the roof off the old Hilton Garden Room while we were gone. That is good though, it gets us that much closer to the new roof.We left Alamos on Wednesday around 8am and arrived at the immigration building in Hermosillo at 12:20pm, exactly 20 minutes after they closed their doors for the day.

After talking with the guard and hearing more about the new hours we drove an hour and a half back to San Carlos where we had already reserved a room.

If there is one bright event in this trip we made I would say it is staying in San Carlos at the Tetakawi Best Western. It has such a tropical setting, and is across from the sea, very relaxing, great restaurant and always, soccer on the television.

We left the Tetakawi at 6:30 Thursday morning in order to arrive at immigration at 8am. Before leaving Alamos, I googled 'what it takes to renew an FM3' and scoped out the blogs and sites that had updated information about the changes that went in to effect on April 30th.

I had alot of paperwork to take into immigration even though some of the sites said much of that paperwork would no longer be necessary. I felt very prepared.

First in the door, we were thrilled to find the man at the desk spoke English. We told him what we wanted and he proceeded to start the process. By 9am it was looking good. He had been able to locate Senor's application and pulled up mine, had us sign them and even gave us the statement to take to the bank where we would pay for the renewal. Wow, real good, we thought.

He went around the corner and into the back for some reason and he did not return. A non English speaking young woman came back and took over and everything went to hell.

She wanted this and she wanted that and we had it ALL. The bank statements, the utilities, the SAT tax filing, the letters, the photographs. None of it was good enough for her.

The letters, requesting the renewal and stating nothing had changed since last year, which I printed off of a blogsite, were not right. She refused them. By 10 am, after we had rewritten the letters twice, she sat down and wrote the letters herself on the lobby computer and told us to sign them.

Around 10:30am she told us we did not have enough money in our bank account. She said we had to have 44,500 pesos. We argued....................that is not right..............Senor said................ no, it is only supposed to be 1,500 pesos and it is really even less because we own a home. She changed her mind, gave me back the bank statements and began to look at our visas.

By now, a young woman in the lobby is translating for us. The immigration woman gave us a long speech in Spanish. The translation was......you must give up your FM3 and return to a tourist visa...............

OFF WITH HER HEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am almost ready to go ballistic. I could be over that counter in 5 seconds or less!

By now Senor is patting my hand telling me to take deep breaths.

We own a home! We can't have a tourist visa! Look at the utilities we pay! For gods sake we have a friggin' deed here to the casa! We pay Mexican taxes! We already have FM3's! What is wrong with you? Are you crazy? I do not say any of this, deep breathe, deep breathe...........says Senor.

She goes around the corner and into the back room. The translator girl who has been so kind to help us has to leave. OMG, I am going to scream.

Nurse Ratchet, who cannot be more than 25 years old, returns from the back and points to Senor's application. I have accidentally put Washington as Senor's place of birth. She calls me on it and is not happy. Senor says........oh, let's just cross it out, it should be Minnesota. She smiles at him and she leads me to the computer in the lobby and tells me to do it over. So I do that.

It is now 10:45 am.

I tell her the new application is done. Senor has checked it twice now as I have caused the delay in the first place. The building is getting on my nerves. The air is humid. The lobby is filled with people waiting their turn. There is another helper on the scene. Nurse Ratchet takes EVERYTHING we have and goes around the corner.

The English speaking man comes back to the counter! YES!!! I feel great!

You need to go to the bank and pay..........he says...........But all of a sudden she is back, the woman from hell, who is trying to be nice enough, but is really a very deep thorn in my side by now.................photografias............she says, where are they? Of course I have them and pull them out, passport size, very recognizable, nice looking couple, just up for the day, just want to renew their FM3's.

WRONG size, she says.....................they have to be infantile size...................4 fronts and 2, right side only.............................and she looks at me..........................your hair must be completely off your face.

I am going to explode.

We have to go looking for a Kodak shop and get new photos. An American couple has come to the counter for their turn. The man says to the English speaking man that their FM3's expired in June of 2009 and could they just get that new combination FM3/FM2. I am staring at the them in disbelief.

Another American couple has come from Kino Bay to renew their FM3's and did not know they had to file applications online.

Nurse Ratchet asks ME to 'explica' that to them and I want to shove my fist in her face. But I 'explica' because I am a nice person most of the time. The wife begins to fill out the online application, her husband tells us where the Kodak shop is and we blast out of there.

The KODAK shop is absolutely not where the man said it was and by 11:00 I am going to break down, running in to this shop and then that shop to try and find someone who can tell us where it is. Senor turns right and there is the KODAK.

We rush in, get infantile photos, there is a special going on, we get 8 for the price of 6. Just give us the photos please!

Look! There is a bank across the street! We rush in and show them the immigration statements and pay the bank, 2,10.00 pesos each, ask for separate receipts and drive back to immigration.

We walk into immigration at 11:40am.

A new American is sitting in the front row, he says................you have to take a number.

OFF WITH HIS HEAD TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I walk straight up to the counter and shove the photos and bank receipts into the hands of the English speaking man. He stops what he was doing with another person and looks on his computer where he can tell that we did truly pay the bank.

He looks at us and says.......................you are done here.........come back in 2 weeks.....................

Into Mexico

This is not the greatest photo, but it is certainly a photo of what we see alot.....cars and trucks loaded to the max with what appears to be all of the family belongings. We call these the IKEA trucks....

The only thing I can add to Bill's post (which by the way, generated quite a few emails and/or comments) is that there is another border crossing at Kilometer 21. You know it's coming, but it just shows up out of the middle of nowhere and when we did see it, the aduana there (customs officer) was leaning on an orange cone and barely flipped his hand up.

We drove straight through and were almost to Hermosillio, when we realized we had not bothered to stop and get the car permit which allows us to be driving in Mexico......fortunately we were able to get a permit in Enpalme, which is outside Guaymus.

Once we got to Enpalme and breathed,

Bill said, "hey' let's just go unload in Alamos and turn around and go back and get more stuff and cross again. That was easy."

Linda said,"hey, that's what you said after we had our first child..are you CRAZY????"

The photo above is the Sea of Cortez, in Guaymus. Very beautiful landscape..... on our visit to San Carlos (located outside Guaymus) last fall, we found too many foreigners. Well, they were still there on this trip and they have brought all of their friends and families with them. But we did love the area and we actually stayed in San Carlos for several days. It is very low key, very relaxing, very popular with both foreign and Mexican golfers who take turns hitting golf balls off the decks of local seaside restaurants. We would go there again.

But, we are not looking for a town with quite as many foreigners, and that is one of the many reasons we have chosen to live in Alamos.

The shrimp boats below are taking the day off.

Bahia de Kino mountains and saguaro cactus at sunset.

Bahia de Kino was not at all what we expected. We thought we would find rows and rows of development and hotels along the beach. The opposite was true. There is one main road that stretches for miles and miles along the seaside. There are wall to wall homes of varying architectural style on the seaside. There are many rundown, abandoned homes on the opposite side. But, it also looks like efforts are being made to repair some of those. There were only a handful of motel/hotels, but alot of rv campgrounds. And not many places in which to eat. Bahia de Kino does have a gorgeous beach and gentle waves. Lots and lots of Mexican families were lounging in hammocks under palapas along the beach, playing in the waves and it was just a very quiet place to be.

If you are wondering why we did not just blast off to Alamos and instead took this scenic route, it is because our realtor had a prearranged meeting for the closing of our new casa, June 19th, in Navajoa, at the officina of the notary public. So we did have some time on our hands even though our cats think differently after being in the truck and various hotels/ motels since May 26th..or 28th, I can't remember now...I have been in the truck too long as well....June 19th has come and gone and I will tell you all about it in my next post.