This week we returned our attention to legal loose ends. It's one of those things that can soooo easily be left on the back burner since it usually entails hours of research to figure out where to go, what documents are needed, and last, but not least, how to get there.
But thanks to some perserverance, we are now one step away from having our Costa Rica drivers license. This is something we could have accomplished during our visit last year, but at that time we would have needed to hire someone to walk us through the process - a cost of around $200 for the two of us. Being frugal folks, we declined and chose to wait until we had the experience and skills necessary to go it alone.
I'm not sure we're really at that stage, but chose yesterday for the day because we needed to make a trip to San Ramon to pick up a package -- and because the 90-day deadline to use our U.S. driver's license to get one in Costa Rica without taking a written test was fast approaching.
Less than a half-hour after leaving our apartment we picked up our package and asked for directions to the MOPT office (9 blocks "that way") and we were off. We weren't really looking for MOPT at that point because we knew that the San Ramon office only issued renewals. For our initial license we will need to make a trip to the Uruca district of San Jose. But we had read that the clinics that provide the official medical exams required to obtain a drivers license line the streets near the MOPT office. So that's where we needed to go. (MOPT, by the way, is the equivalent of our Department of Motor Vehicles.)
We passed up the first clinic in favor of the next one, which looked a bit more welcoming and less third-worldly. Greeted by a woman with a stethoscope around her neck, we took seats at her desk and produced our passports. She entered our vital statistics onto two separate forms and walked us through a medical questionnaire, checked our vision by having us read a series of eight numbers from a chart across the room, asked us our typical blood pressure readings, collected 10,000 colones from each of us, signed the docs and we were on our way -- almost.
Before we could tick this one off our To Do List we needed to find out mi esponsa's blood type. (Mine [O neg] is indelibly etched into my brain, but not so for him, and our forms would not be official and complete without that tiny piece of information.) For this, the stethoscope lady sent us around the corner up the block and around the next corner to a laboratory.
Five minutes and 5,000 colones later we were finished and on our way in search of a new soda (Costa Rican coffee shop) for lunch.
Tomorrow, when we make a trip to San Jose to get our actual license, will not go as well... It's a given.
First, we have to set off at the crack of dawn -- well not actually dawn. Let's say before the fog lifts off the mountain in front of our apartment. In other words, by 6:00 a.m. The bus will surely be crowded at that hour, so hopefully we'll get on early and get a window seat, which is always my preference.
When we get off the bus the real fun will begin... as it always does when we cover new territory. This time, though, we'll hire a cab, which will save time, effort, and emotional energy.
We'll have to complete application forms - in Spanish, of course. Of course, we expect to wait in who knows how many lines, answer questions we don't understand, and in the end hopefully walk out with a little card with our photo on it... and the relief that comes with knowing that if we never let it expire, we'll also never have to take a written or behind-the-wheel driving test. That alone is enough motivation to get me up, dressed, and out the door by 6:00 in the morning -- with my dictionario in hand.
Pura Vida
