Cabo San Lucas - still!Feb 18, 2009
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Pirate Party Ship at Chileno Bay
Pelican at Chileno Bay
Shannon relaxing at Chileno Bay
| Still enjoying lovely Mexico! Interesting morning though ... I mentioned in a previous post that when we drove into the country we weren't asked to stop, show a passport, etc. But we had read that we were supposed to have obtained a tourist card and were to have gotten it at an immigration office at the border and then paid approx. $20 U.S. to a bank to pay for it. But because we didn't have to stop we were sort of disoriented and didn't see any immigration office so we kept going. When we got here we decided to go to the local Canadian Consulate office and see if we could get them. We were directed to the local immigration office and got ourselves there this morning. After driving around a little to find the place we went in and "signed in." Then sat and waited for our names to be called. We got talking to an American guy (who lives here and was waiting for some official papers to be renewed) and told him what we were doing. He told us that we would probably be fined for not having obtained the tourist cards when we came across the border and then advised us to say that we were there to get replacement cards because they were stolen, i.e. not admit that we never got them in the first place. As we chatted he discovered that we were Canadian and told us to forget what he said because the Mexicans liked Canadians and we'd probably not have any problem getting the cards. When our name was called we went up to the counter and said we needed tourist cards. No problem. He didn't even ask why - he just took photocopies of our passports and we paid the fee and left. He even shook our hands. What a relief! Then we got back to the car to discover that our rear licence plate was missing and there was a ticket on the windshield for 400 pesos (approx. $32) which we were to pay at the police station in order to retrieve the licence plate. The traffic cop was a little further down the sidewalk writing up another ticket so we approached him. Through a combination of hand gestures, pathetic whimpering and limited Spanish, we offered him 200 pesos and he consented to relinquish the licence plate and destroy the ticket. We had successfully bribed our first (and hopefully only) Mexican government official. Having completed our bureaucratic business we headed to the beach to enjoy the rest of the day. We are currently trying to extend the term of our Mexican insurance policy in order to stay here longer. If we can't figure out how to do that we'll head back up north on Friday. If we can, Shannon will fly out from here on Monday and we'll enjoy a little more of Baja California! We're really enjoying some of the local food. Fresh tacos from a street stand and fresh stacks of tortillas sold by the kilo at the local grocery store. And some really amazing salsa. We've also bought some great and incredibly cheap pastries from the big grocery store - a few croissants, some donuts and two homemade Twinkies for about $1.60 total. Our next door neighbour (in an enormous RV of course) gave us a bag of frozen mahi mahi which we cooked up tonight - delicious. Last night's fresh tuna was also amazing. Hasta la vista! |
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