Looking for a Catamaran Cruising Blog?

If you found this blog via a link from a cruising site ~ we did cruise Mexico on our Ocean 49 cat for a season. See the first text box on the right for links to our preparations, trip down Baja, life in Mexico, cruising and trip back up to SoCal. Unfortunately we are back to the grind in the USA...

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

One Down, One To Go...

Jim and I turned in our FM3 paperwork to the Mexican Immigration office last week.
Same exact paperwork.
Same exact day.
Same copies of bank statements.
Same letters from the marina.
Blah, blah, blah.
Our file numbers were sequential.
We pay the bank fees at the exact same time.
The nice lady in the office told us to come back in a week.
No mention of any particular time, just next Monday.
So we go yesterday and are too late.
They only help the lawyers after 1 pm.
Even though the homeless guy who was in line in front of us was helped.
So we go back today in the alloted time for stupid idiotic gringos and can see that Jim's FM3 has been issued, but they can't find my file.
Twenty minutes later they find my file.
And ask us if we paid for both.
Yes - see the receipts.
But you only paid for the assessment, not the actual FM3 fees.
Okay - no mention of that last week.
So back to the bank, pay both of the second fees.
Back to immigration.
Here are the new receipts.
So then they use a gluestick to stick Jim's picture inside his FM3.
A gluestick.
Uh yeah, that's going to last a year in this heat.
They give Jim his FM3 and tell me to come back in a week.
What - do they have to send my FM3 to the only typewriter left in the world in Guadalajara or did they run out of the little green passport books?
Does it take a week to type up a quarter of a page of information?
Or maybe the typist only works on Fridays from 2 to 4 pm.
Oh, I get it now - it's Mexico.

6 comments:

judith said...

As bad as I want to go to Mexico.. this is what scares me most about going.

Jim and Heather on Meerkat said...

I was just having a bad day... and you won't be trying to get your annual visa - this is just so we don't have to leave the country every 6 months to renew our visas. No big deal...

Ray and Lucy said...

Oh oh, how I remember when!! It is always amazing how difficult they can make a simple procedure. Don't even try to make sense of it...you'll go crazy.

We went through that rigamarole only once (I'm not one to have patience for such stuff), then we paid Vilma's Documentation Service $100/year for her to do it. How sweet it was...she would do her thing and then come to the shop for signatures... done deal!

Ray and Lucy said...

To Jomamma,
You must experience this procedure at least once...it is a right of passage!!

Anonymous said...

greetings from Oregon: Heather, this is preparing you for mortgage lending, there is no such thing as commonsense underwriting these days. It makes sense to us, but not the Gods of making it happen!!

Jim and Heather on Meerkat said...

Ha ha ha Tony! Remember our new motto: Mexico is consistantly inconsistant!