How to Register Your Car - Act II

The mechanic was finished with the car at around noon on Friday.  It cost $20.  However the muffler had not been fixed.  Apparently mechanics in Ecuador specialize. 

So on Saturday we took it to a mechanic that just did mufflers.  Ours was beyond repair so we had it replaced.  For $45.

On Sunday and Monday we went around town looking for a first aid kit.  When the car is inspected, a first aid kit, warning triangles, and a fire extinguisher are required.  We couldn't find just a first aid kit, only kits that had a combination of all three required items.  Even the pharmacies didn't carry first aid kits.  So for the inspection we borrowed Mami's. 

The concept of requiring these safety items is good, but the culture here has managed to make these items almost irrelevant.  The first aid kit is full of band aids, which honestly, won't help too much if you get into an accident.  No thermal blanket, no emergency water, no flashlight.  As for the triangles, I've never seen anyone use them.  Normally when there is a vehicle stopped in the road someone has torn down a tree branch and placed it a few feet behind the car.  As for the fire extinguisher - no complaints.

On Tuesday morning Mami and I drove to the vehicle inspection place.  It's about 15 minutes from town.  It was a bit busy, but apparently not packed.  The way the system works is that every license plate has three letters and three numbers.  The last number on your plate corresponds with the month that you need to get your car inspected, i.e. 2 is March, 3 is April, 4 is May (I think they use August and December for holidays).  You have the entire month to get your car inspected, but most people go during the last week, due to both procrastination and failing previous inspections.  If I had known about the inspection before last week and if we had not been in the US, I assume we would have planned to take the car in during a less busy time.  But that's not what happened.

When you arrive, a kid near the turnoff sells you an sheet of paper that is compulsory for the inspection that you can't get at the actual inspection location.  We doubt him a little, but buy it for a quarter.  He gives us the sheet of paper and a piece of carbon paper.  Carbon paper?  Really?  Is this the sort of technology we're going to be dealing with?  Apparently the inspection facility is relatively new...

So we get in line.  Between the turnoff and the facility is a 100m long potholed dirt road that connects the paved main road and what seems to be a shiny new inspection facility.  There is no signage.  There is no one around to tell you what's going on except for the people selling first aid kits, warning triangles, and fire extinguishers.  But they don't seem to know anything.

After about 45 minutes we are at the head of the line and someone actually gives us instructions on what to do.  Park the car, pay $20, and wait until you are called.  So that's what we do.  We wait for about an hour and a half.  Because even though we are at the head of the line, we had to park in a lot of about 30 cars that were ahead of us.

The inspection facility is quite modern.  They do visual tests of the muffler and lights, look under the hood, plus suspension and air quality tests.  There are about 30 parameters that they test.  And we passed them all.  And it's all done in a separate space that can be seen through a window so there is not chance of slipping the mechanic a few dollars to make sure your car passes. 

But we weren't done yet.  From there we had to get into another line so a mechanic could copy the serial number of the chassis and motor.  After an hour in that line we reached the front and I figured out why we needed the carbon paper.  It was another anti-corruption device.  The mechanic rubbed the carbon paper on to the serial number, then took a piece of scotch tape and laid it on top to pick up the impression.  The tape was then stuck to the sheet of paper that we bought for a quarter.  These numbers were then matched with the official documents in the car.  If a letter or number or two was illegible the mechanic wrote it in, but I thought it was an ingenious way of preventing paying off the mechanic for passing a stolen item.

After about three and a half hours we were done with the inspection.  But we still had some time before lunch so Mami suggested we go to the police station to hand in all the papers and get our new documents.  We have everything, it shouldn't take too long.

Once we got there it was get this form an xerox that.  We did that with ease.  We finally presented the documents to the window.  The man there asked, "Who is Guillermo Cabrera?"  Mami replied, "He's my father-in-law."  We showed the man his ID and he commented since he was a senior it was fine that we were doing the registration for him and passed our papers to the next window.  We were almost done.

At the next window we got asked the same question, "Who is Guillermo Cabrera?" plus another one "Why is his name on some of the documents and Carlos Cabrera on the rest?  All the documents need to be in the same name."  Mami replied, "The car now belongs to my son, Carlos, because my father-in-law, Guillermo, is dead."

Apparently that was the wrong answer.

The week before I had been asking Carlos why the car wasn't in his name and wouldn't that cause problems for registration.  He assured me that it would not.  He said that the process to put the car in his name would be difficult.  Since there are no records of the car being sold from his grandfather to his father and then his father to him they would need a document signed by all of his grandfather's beneficiaries declaring it could be sold to him.  But that took lots of time and needed signatures and notarizations - too much trouble.

Carlos arrived to the police station about 10 seconds after Mami gave the wrong answer (which was the truth and both Carlos and I would have answered the same way).  He was on his way home for lunch and the station was on his way.  We all stood there wondering what to do.  We asked a few more questions and it was clear that we needed to transfer the car to his name.  By the end of the week.  Or pay a $50 fine.

So Mami spent the afternoon calling Papi's siblings explaining that we needed signatures immediately to avoid paying the fine.  They were all happy to help.  But after about two hours of phone calls Mami suddenly realized that she's missing one person - Papi.  He's in Miami this week and won't be back until Sunday.  So no matter how much else we do, we will still need to pay the fine.

So there will be an Act III.