Driver's Licenses, Part III

Ok.  So remember way back in December when we went to get our driver's licenses?  Yeah, and then remember what happend?  And then remember that we had to take another trip to Panama?

Well.  Yesterday we tried to get our licenses again.  We knew we were cutting it close (our tourist visas ran out yesterday and while we have our residency, we thought this would be an issue in transferring our US licenses to here.  Note the key word, thought.)

We loaded the kids up, got all the paperwork we needed (and by got it, I mean we drove out of the driveway, realized we didn't have it, turned around, got it, locked the house up again, and then contiued on our way).  We had our "medical exams" from when we came in December, and we were praying that they would accept them.  We also thought we would be proactive and stop at the bank first to pay. 

Yeah, well, that was silly. Noah went in and they told him he couldn't pay until he had a ticket telling him to pay from the Consevi.  Ok.  No problem, we're all about the adventure of it.  Onward to the Consevi!

When we got there, after driving by the parking lot of dead cars and motorcycles, we were amazed at the fact there was no line!  Glory be!  This might just be a piece of cake!

Right.  We talked with the first guy and after showing him our cedulas, he asked how long we've been in the country.  3 months.  To the day.  He just sorta looked at us.  Uttohhh...He begins to tell us that we need to be out of the country for 3 month AND 1 day.  Wait, what?!  But our tourist visas (which is how we've been able to drive mind you) expire today.  If we wait one more day, then we can't drive.  This doesn't make sense.  Eventually we asked to talk to someone else. He told us the same thing.  Apparently, because we had only been in the country for 90 days, we weren't in the system and he couldn't even put us in the system.  And we had to be in the system to pay the $8 USD for our licenses.  Are you kidding me?  This can't be happening...oh but it was.  They were kind, but told us we had to come back the next day (being today). 

There was nothing to do but turn around and go home.  Sigh.  So today, we went back for a third time to the Consevi, praying that God would work this all out, because at this point, it's getting pretty ridiculous!

We got there, and the two guys from yesterday greeted us with a warm "Amigos!!"  Ha!  We were all laughing about this at this point.  Again there was no line and while we had to go make some copies (we are going to just make about 10 copies of everything from now on!), really the process went smoothly (they even accepted our medical exams from December!), resulting in these!!! 

¡Gracias a Dios! We can now drive with our Tico licenese, we have our cedulas and don't have to leave the country every 90 days!  The only thing left (we think!) is to get letters for each of the boys that says they can leave the country with one parent, you know in case there is an emergency of some sort.  We are going to save that fun for another day!

Getting Our Driver's License, Part II

Alright, so where were we? (Here's Part I if you missed it) Oh right...

So our friend Will called and told us they had just gotten back from Panama.  They had found a town called Paso Canoas which is between Costa Rica and Panama.  It's one of those strange boarder towns straight out of the movies.  But the attractive part of this town was three fold.  1.  We could drive our own vehicle, not ever really leaving Costa Rica, but still "leave" and 2.  It might be possible to get a 90 day visa in just one day instead of 3.  and 3.  It was going to cost a lot less than actually flying to Miami!

Will said the trip down the coastal road was pretty, and really, what's a 5 hour road trip?  That's just an hour longer than our trips from Barakel to my parents' house.  And so, just like that on Thursday afternoon we decieded we were road tripping it to Panama the next day.  And as the night went on, the Lord totally provided for the entire cost of the trip!  Amazing!!

As I cleaned out the 4 Runner and packed the toy baskets and snack bags, it was a weird feeling.  For the last 3 years we have spent so many hours on the road and I totally knew the drill, but here I was, getting us ready for a road trip in Costa Rica!

We took off the next day, armed with our GPS (Thank you Lord!!) and some good food.  It was nice to be on the open roads that were relatively flat and be able to cruise along at 80 kph (that's a whopping 50 mph, but we usually go around 20 mph, so we felt like we were flying!)  Our one stand by with road trips, though, is music.  We hadn't figured out a system to hook up our ipod yet, so this was our solution.  Pretty lame, right?  Yeah, we have since fixed that!  Now we have a cable that connects the ipod right to the stereo.  Anyway, I digress.

The trip down was lovely, the boys did amazing.  I think it was all the new things to look at, like the palm plantations, where all the palm oil comes from.

We made good time and were in Paso Canoas around 2 pm. 

We found parking at the Costa Rican immigration building, and unloaded all the kids, the passports and all other important documents we were needing.  And we were praying.  We had planned to stay the three days if we needed, but were praying God would work it all out so we could be done with everything in one day.  We headed to the line to leave Costa Rica.  That was no problem.  We then walked the block down the street to enter Panama.  Entering Panama, no problem.  Now we walked three lines down, and left Panama, and then walked the block back to Costa Rica and re entered the country.  We were granted a 90 day visa, which means we can legally drive for another 90 days!

Really, the whole process only took about 2 hours and that was just because we were standing in lines.  By this point, it was 4 pm and we had about two hours of day light left, so we decieded that instead of staying in Paso Canoas, which really has nothing, we might as well drive up the coast a bit and find some place a bit more fun for the night.

We ended up staying near Playa Tortuga (Turle Beach) and enjoyed a place with a pool and a restaurant right in the hotel.

Saturday we decided to just take our time getting home, enjoying the beach along the way.  We stopped at a public beach near Dominical and enjoyed the water.  It's so different weather wise down by the coast!  It was in the low 90's and about 75% humidity, and the Pacific was like bath water.  The boys all loved it.  And it was strange, Quinn's first experience in a natural body of water was the ocean, not one of the Great Lakes.

We tried pipas for the first time, which are young coconuts kept in a cooler until you want to drink the milk out.  Some of us liked them, some did not, but we tried them.

 We also saw iguanas, alligators and ate lunch on the beach in Jacó.  Overall, it was really a nice little mini vacation.  And we can continue to drive, well for another 90 days at least.  Pray with us that our cédulas will come before the next 90 days are up!

Getting our Driver's License, Part I

Last week we slammed up against the culture and it left us a little bruised and worn out.  And all over our driver's licenses.  So let us commence with "Getting our Driver's License, Part I".

Last Monday it dawned on us, our tourist visas were set to expiring on Christmas day and we needed to get our Costa Rican driver's licenses before that happened.

See, when you enter Costa Rica, you get a 90 day tourist visa.  The rule is you can drive on that tourist visa with a valid license from your home country.  We weren't too concerned about getting our Costa Rican ones quickly because we knew we had time and our bigger concern was getting our residency paper work situated so we didn't have to leave the country in 90 days.  (Ha!)

Tuesday, Elliot was on day 6 of a bad cough, so Noah took him to the doctor's office an hour away.  And while they were gone, I started to feel gross.  At first I thought maybe I was dehydrated, I was cold and then burning up, and well, turns out I had mastitis (a nursing mama problem).  I was frantic to get an appointment for the next day, and muddled my way through calling the doctor's office.  They couldn't find me in the system, although I am definitely in the system from all my doctor's appointments when I was pregnant with Quinn.  I think I ended up spelling my name, over the phone and in Spanish, about 6 times and I am sure they still got it wrong.  I then totally missed the time of the appointment because the receptionist was insistent about giving it to me in military time! Grrr.  Don't do stuff like that to a non native speaker, just saying.  I thought I had heard the number seemed to be something in the high teens and after Googling that, figured it had to be after 4 o'clock.  None of that has anything to do with getting our license, except that it's one more thing that was hard culturally, and it meant we would be down in the city that Wednesday.

Ok, so now, back to the driver's license bit.  Figuring we had to spend some time down in the capital again, we might as well work through the driver's license, because remember, after Christmas day, we can't drive legally.  And while we weren't completely sure of everything we needed, after a couple of internet searcches we had the basic idea.

So off we went, kids in tow.  First stop, after we actually find the government office that issues drivers' licenses, the CONSEVI (there aren't addresses in Costa Rica, remember?) was to find the doctor's office.  We parked on the steepest incline imaginable and Noah got out to talk with the doctor.  He told us that the law had changed and we couldn't get our licenses because we didn't have residency.  Well, after pressing a bit, we went ahead and got our exams, hoping he was wrong and that something would happen in our favor.

Next stop was to go to the bank.  In Costa Rica, people don't use checks.  Instead, you go to the bank and transfer money from one account to another.  There usually is a line, especially this time of year, because everyone needs to pay their car insurance to the government.  Noah stood in line for about a half hour and when he got to the front, they told him we weren't in the system so we couldn't pay.  Hummmm, that's intresting.

Now it was time for lunch because we had been at this for about an hour and a half at this point.  After lunch we went back to the CONSEVI and prayed that God would open the door to get this all taken care of.  We hauled all the kids out and bypassed a long line because we had the kids with us.  We told the attendant we needed to get our driver's licenses to which he replied, "Can I see you cédulas?"  (our residency cards, which we don't have yet).  "Uhhh, nope, we don't have them yet, but we have the papers to show we are in the process of getting them."

"Not good enough.  You need you cédulas.  Or you need to leave the country and come back to get another tourist visa."

"But we have our papers saying we don't have to leave..."

"If you want to drive, you have to leave."

Of course this is all in Spanish, while the two big boys are bouncing off the walls.  Uhhh, ok.

So, we walked out with no driver's licenses and no idea of what we were going to do except leave the country...4 days before Christmas.

The cheapest option was to take TicaBus (like greyhound) to either Nicaragua or Panama.  But, and this was a huge but, it's something like a 10 hour trip, Elliot and I were both sick, and the boarders were suppose to be packed with people because it was 4 days before Christmas.

So, while it was the cheapest financially, it didn't seem like a good option for us.  We began looking at plane tickets to anywhere, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Panama, Nicaragua, Florida, Texas, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, anywhere.  Nothing was less than $400 a ticket.  We finally found some to Miami, and were given housing in Miami. It looked like we were heading to Florida when we got a call from friends of ours...

Part II
Part III