She is with us

4 août 2009

As I said in the blog introduction, our first idea with Carina was to backpack from Mexico down through Central America and then South America. Having no way of knowing the severity of the influenza A, we did not feel like going to the center of the epidemic. So we changed the program and "reduced" the trip to South America on the same basis: backpacking and using the bus as mean of transport. This type of travel has many advantages: easy to meet other backpackers in hostels, travel by bus at night to save on lodging and avoid losing time (distances in South America are so big that the time factor is not negligible), possibility to choose at each stage what will be the next destination, etc.

One day while passing by bus next to a Volkswagen Combi (you know like Little Miss Sunshine), I told Caris that when I was traveling in Australia I bought myself a station wagon in which I had all my stuffs and that allowed me to go to the beach, sleep in the car and get up every morning with the best view you could imagine, but the Combi was like a dream. The travel car in which one can do everything, because, let's be honest, my Australian station wagon, rather big, did not allow me all the fantasies in terms of interior design! Caris, who never traveled like that, was thrilled about the idea. We therefore imagined doing the trip in a van. Without waiting, we started to search for information and see what would be the best vehicle for this kind of trip. On websites of used cars, the Renault Trafic quickly emerged as the most interesting in terms of price/quality/year of manufacture. A long search followed (LPG or diesel? What year? Price? Etc.), then we made appointments. A few days passed and we saw the first one. In pretty bad shape, it did not convince us much. The second, according to its owner, had a few details to fix... We rather felt that it had a few good details and everything else to repair. Continuing to search for ads, we quickly realized that all the Trafics in our price range, used as commercial vehicles with little maintenance, were all going to be in the same condition. Thinking about increasing our budget or looking for the one in good condition, we finally decided to return to our first love, the Combi Volkswagen, a lot cheaper than the Trafic. New ads search on the Internet. Being aware that we would be facing vehicles more than twenty year old and that most of them were going to be in poor condition, we extended the search to the suburbs of Buenos Aires, which are large, very large, very very large! Fortunately for us, Caris’ father helped us and drove us to see some, because everything is accessible by bus (see my post on "colectivos") but at what cost in terms of time! A suburb up north, one down south, one to the west (not to the east as it is the delta of the Plata and therefore no suburbs!). Sometimes more than four hours were needed to go see Combis and they turned out to look like garbage. Sometimes searching for streets that Google Maps locates perfectly but once on site it is impossible to find since there are no street signs and that you are in a neighborhood where the streets are made of mud and an "avenue" is a simple paved street. (For info: Buenos Aires with its Paris style seems rich and developed, but as soon as one goes to the suburbs it is another story.) Appointments give us the opportunity, in addition to visit the country side of Buenos Aires, to meet with a few weirdoes. One to whom we’d like to award a prize: Caris calls to make an appointment, they chat for a few minutes and then she asks him why he did not put any picture in the ad. The guy gives her a 25 minute answer (watch in hand) based on mechanical explanations and stories about his life, telling her all the incomparable qualities of his Combi without giving Caris the opportunity to say a single word and without answering the simple question of why there was no picture... Not willing to exclude any possibility, we went to the appointment. The dude went to his garage to look for the car, arrived at full speed in front of us, jumped on the brakes and at the same time opened the passenger door. All this to give us the opportunity to see the totally rusted body of the car and an obvious lack of repairs. At this point any normal human being would have tried to justify himself a bit. Not him! He went on to explain to Caris how wonderful his car was. He even made her kneeled down to look at the engine and explain her other mechanical items. And in the end, he justified the relatively high price of its Combi… Good god!

Going from one appointment to the next, we started to learn about the common defects of these vehicles and how to check the important details, all very interesting but we still had not found one in decent shape. After ten days of intensive research, we gathered motivation to go see one in a suburb a little far away. Caris' father being unable to come with us, we had to go by bus. Without any change in our pockets, we went to the bank to get some coins to pay the bus. Being a day between a public holiday and a Saturday, all banks were closed and so we were unable to take the bus for lack of change (example of what I explained in my previous post). We had to take the subway until the end of the line and then a taxi to finally arrive. The Combi was impeccable! A motor so clean and so well maintained you could make it sleep in your bed, the original painting of 1987 without any scratch! An acceptable price. We finally had found what we wanted. Very happy, we knew that we had another appointment that evening to see one Combi that seemed very good as well. Having found a few cents in our pockets, we decided to go look for the missing cents in order to avoid the taxi plus subway. We tried to purchase a sweet for 80 cents, paying with a two pesos bill. First « kiosko”: sweet not for sale. Second: no change, so no sale. Third: no change, so no sale. Fourth: Finally! Location of the bus stop: at the end of the street on the left... indeed it was at the end... 20 minutes walking. An hour and a half later we were back at home. A total of five hours to go see the Combi, but it was worth it!
The evening appointment was finally canceled. Caris was all stressed out because she wanted that Combi since the beginning but a friend of the owner had told him he would buy it if he was able to sell his current car. As he did not manage to do it, the owner put it back on the market. The next day he told us that he would organize an “appointment day” on Sunday. Caris used all her girly techniques to get an appointment on Saturday evening even if it was late in order to be the first ones to see it. And fortunately it worked. It needed some repairs but it was superb! Love at first site. We told him that it was ok for us. No being a big fan of paperwork, he did not want us to sign anything and give him a deposit, but he promised not to sell it to a higher bidder on the next day and sell it to us on Monday with all the paperwork. Yessssss!

We spent the Sunday a little stressed, but on the Monday morning, the guy had kept his promise and was waiting for us to start the process. First step: checking with the police that the chassis number and engine number match and are not on the list of stolen cars. It took a few hours but everything was ok. During that time we received a call from a seller that we had contacted about a 1960 Combi so beautiful (the white and blue one above) which was finally back on the market for the same reason that the one we were just buying. Such a shame we had to refuse. After this first step, we quickly went to the "Registro", registrar of vehicles, which was closing ten minutes later. Caris had to stay in the car that was badly parked, so I had to do all the papers by myself... Sweet Jesus, I think that since my physics exams in university I have never felt such confusion. "Sign here, passport number there, chassis number here” and so on. I got out of the office with a very vague idea of what just happened. Back in the car, the guy then realized that he had legally sold me his car but that I still had not paid him (he had not asked for the money before!) and we are not in a country where there are laws to protect against this sort of thing. Moment of tension, because he did not want to leave the car without getting the money. Caris went to the bank to make the transfer, but impossible for such an amount without prior notice... The situation was a little twisted but we found a solution by leaving the car on a parking lot, the keys with him and an appointment the next day to give him the money. Payment in cash. Some slight troubles about fines he had sworn he did not have, but that the "Registro" had revealed (thanks to a document I had asked the day before).

Indeed, the purchase process could have been a little bit smoother but no big deal.

Once paid and the transfer done, it was finally ours! The story could begin.