Feb 14, 2013

JUST A 18 HOUR DAY IN MEXICO

Ken and I got up at 5am to leave for San Megele de Allende.  By the way, Allende is pronounced without the ll's.  An expat that I know, has a trailer that we were going to load the car onto.  The trailer - truck would cost me 5,000. mx to have him take me there.  The plan was to drive out - get my car - and come home.  

This person was later then expected and had two people with him that we had to drop off at a location that was on the way. We dropped them off in where they were going to paint numbers on electrical polls for the government.  I did not think that it was not "on the way".

We did arrive at the hacienda after 2pm.  A six hour drive.  The gardener was suppose to be there to let us in.  He was not.  I walked up to the back hacienda which is maybe a mile or two between sheep and cows.  When I got up there to the other hacienda and asked for help of course no one spoke English.  So I told them that I was going to call the federal police and brake into the gated hacienda and get my car.  Gee go figure, three minutes later the gardener showed up - but with an attitude.

He would not stop his car to talk, He opened the gates and drove in and when I asked him for my keys - he would not give them to me but had to call the owner to get her permission?

Just to update and backtrack a little.  We stayed at this lady's hacienda with  the thought of renting it.  But my car broke down while I was there and Ken lost the remote control for the gate.  When I went to see this property, I did not realize that the hacienda had other renters living there also and we would not be by ourselves.
So I told here that I was not interested. The gardener who works the property and also lives on the property went with me to try and find a remote control for the gate.  I also went and tried to get my car fixed.  None of that worked out.

A person has to be under 65 years of age to get a loan on a car in Mexico..  A car can not be used as a trade in if it is over 2 years old.
Now here is the topper - the auto loans at 12.5 percent.  So, I could not get a car loan, could not purchase a new car, could not get the car fixed.  The gardener offered me 900 usd for the car and had his friend tell me that it was not fixable.  His "friend" told me that it was the drive shaft.  So I did not want to drive the car home.  

I left my car at the hacienda with the keys and Ken and I took a bus home.  To make a long story short - when the person who was offering the hacienda for rent found out that the remote control was lost she emailed me.  I had told the gardener that I would be back to get my car and bring a remote control with me.  Now she wanted me to mail the 29.00 dollars for the remote to Texas where she is immediately and she was glad that she found out what kind of "person I really was".  Now it seems that she is holding my car ransom for the 29.00.?

The gardener was given my keys in case he had to move the car while I was away.  It seems that he did move my car and creamed out the front right and the front left sides of my car.  He wanted me to sign a paper saying that the car was not damaged.  I did not sign.

I did manage to get the keys to my car after giving him the 29 dollars for the remote. The man and the gardener looked to me to almost have gotten into a physical fight over trying to get my car. Both men were over heated and face to face yelling in Spanish.  I did not know what they were saying.  I put 29.00 into the gardeners pocket and grabbed my keys out of his hand and drove the car out of the hacienda.  He was still on the phone with the person that I got permission to look at the property from, her name was Julie.

Now that the car was out of the hacienda  - we could not load it onto this mans trailer cause the trailer was not wide enough.  I drove the car home and what a drive that was.  We picked up the workers we dropped up by the area we dropped them off in and then the man who was helping me with my car wanted me to drop the car off at his friends place to fix it.  However I do not know anything about this man so I drove the car home.  

We had nothing to eat the whole day.  When we got back to Patzcuaro all the places were closed except a store that is like 7Eleven in the states.  We stopped in there to get a hot dog and something to drink.  

Getting back into the car I dropped my hot dog on the ground and had to go back and get another one.  Getting back into the car I could not find my keys.  We looked for about one hour - in the store and everywhere else that I could think of.  NO keys.

There were a bunch of kids in the parking lot and I offered them a six pack if they could find my keys -- lodged between the seat and seat belt.  They did and got a six pack in return. I got to go home and to bed. 


HASTA LA PROXIMA VEZ

de Ken



y Donna






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