Documents, Documents, Documents

I’ve been in Lima since March 14 working towards ownership of a Honda CG125NL mototaxi with my decidedly non-fluent Spanish. After going through the initial hassle of establishing communication with a dealer, choosing a model, finding out how many were in country, and doing a wire transfer for the funds I thought I would be ready to go in 15 days – not too bad, all things considered.

Well, there’s some good news and some bad news. The good news: I am now officially the proud owner of a red and yellow Honda mototaxi!

All of the paperwork is mine and as far as everyone is concerned, this mototaxi is now proudly owned by me. It is still on a truck for delivery however it should be ready for me to get eyes on it and take some photos of the actual moto within a couple of days.

Now, the bad news… I have been having a lot of issues with tenses in Spanish and this problem got me again. When I bought the mototaxi, I thought it would take approximately ten days for delivery and fifteen days for the official documents, however I thought they could begin the official process immediately and thus if all went well I would be ready to go in approximately fifteen days total.

Instead, as I found out today, it was about ten days to get the initial paperwork and transfer orders ready – and after this it’s around fifteen more days to get the official documents (though I am now told sometimes it’s as fast as eight or nine days). So even though I now officially own a mototaxi, I can’t drive it anywhere until the government documents arrive and this may take an additional two or more weeks.

Like an idiot, I only asked for a 30 day visa when I arrived in Peru and at this point I’ll need to leave before all my government documents come in. I really want to fly to Easter Island (which is possible direct from Lima), however flights are all sold out unless I only go for a couple days. Time to start poking around and figuring out what to do for another two weeks!

I am really excited, but man, I can’t wait until I am officially cleared and on the road. I just hope I don’t end up missing something important when I get to a border and have to come back to Lima… ugh!

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