Chris and I are still in Huatulco. We had planned to tear ourselves away yesterday, but like always, small things seem to crop up which require our attention. This time we’ve had a little trouble with our Mexican paperwork. When we arrived in Mexico, a team of officials was waiting at the dock: Immigration, Customs, and Agriculture. Mexico currently has a ban on imported beef products, and this is why Agriculture comes on board to inspect your fridge, then they fill out a form, which you sign.

Once you have your stack of entrance documents, you walk over to the Port Captain’s office where your Zarpe is dropped off and new one is obtained. Sounds easy enough? Sure it is if you’ve managed to sign the document that matches your boat! Yes, somehow in the confusion of our arrival, the agriculture official handed us someone else’s form to sign. Basically, we have someone else’s form with Chris’ signature on it. Oops!

When we tried to fix this ourselves, the immigration lady was teasing Chris about signing a blank check for her. Yes, I suppose we should really watch what we’re signing, and we usually do, but I guess we were so tired that we just signed anything they put in front of us.

Finally, this afternoon we managed to get Agriculture on the phone to fix this. Yes, they had our form. Her solution? Ah, just cross out the wrong boat name and put yours in.

*slaps forehead*

We’re still not done with the paperwork. They can only do half of it here in Huatulco. They can’t issue our T.I.P. (temporary import permit) here. Es muy importante, and it allows you to keep the boat in Mexico for up to ten years and basically exempts you from duty on any parts you need.  We’ll have to sail up to Zihuatenejo for that form.