Friday, April 1st, 2016

Happy April Fools Day!  27 days and counting!

I took photos of my health insurance bank payment and emailed them as attachments to Natalia.  I emailed my absentee ballot request to Cook County in Illinois at d.orr@cookcountyil.gov.  Thirty minutes later I received an email confirming receipt of my application.

Among new US movie releases I would like to see The Girl in the Photographs (5.3) – probably on Netflix.  Here’s something rare – a new movie - God’s Not Dead 2 - got a rating of only 2.5.  It must be a real stinker as I don’t remember seeing a rating that low.  Locally, there isn’t anything I want to see.

We left the finca at noon and I gave each of the G-dogs a dog biscuit.  We waited 15 minutes for a bus.  Today I could see clearly into one of the tunnels and I could see that it goes all the way through meaning they finished digging.  

At the Poblado station we took a taxi to Unicentro CC.  They had 3 ATM machines but only 2 were working so I had to wait in a long line for about 10 minutes to use one.  Then it would only allow me to withdraw 400mil and it was all in 10mil bills.

We had a nice lunch in J&C Delicias – surf & turf arepa and juice for Teresa and Oriental Fajitas arepa and juice for me for a total of 48,200 (about $16).  While we were there we could see it was raining hard outside.

While we were waiting for it to stop we went into several stores – I found my belt again in Bosi but it was 114,900 (about $38).

The rain let up and we walked across the street to Martha’s office.  Another gringo was there with a Colombiana talking to the (cute) young girl there who speaks English.  After about a 10 minute wait it was our turn.  

She spoke good English.  I explained I had some real estate documents that needed to be notarized in Medellin and then sent to Bogota for apostillization.  As she walked us across the street to a notary office I asked her how much it would cost and how long the process would take.  She said 70,000 pesos for the document and about 3-4 days (I assume business days).  I’m glad I remembered to bring my passport as they asked for it as another means of identification.  It took about 20 minutes to go through everything, get everything signed, dated, notary information added and stamped.

While we waited by the cashier to pay a very attractive young lady came over and returned my cedula.  I have to be more careful about that!  The total charge was 11,136 (about $3.75).

Back at Martha’s office another man checked my document and declared that because I have 6 notarized signatures then I have 6 documents and it would cost 70,000 x 6 or 420,000 ($140) which is about the total I paid the lawyer a couple years ago for 7 pages.  She told me it’s possible I could get one apostille for the entire document and then it would only cost 70,000 ($23).  She has to check with Bogota to see if it’s possible and I have to check with the real estate office in the US to see if it’s acceptable.

I didn’t have to pay anything yet but we’ll be back again sometime next week.

We picked up some things in Exito then stopped at a small bakery where we each had a coffee and a slice of carrot cake for 15,900 ($5.30).  

It was still raining slightly as we waited to catch a taxi.  While we waited a couple came up to us, Teresa asked me to give them my change (I only had 300 pesos) and afterwards Teresa told me they can’t pay their rent.  The taxi stopped at a red light and there was a man dressed as a mime and Teresa asked me to give him my change.  I already got rid of all my change so I gave him a 1mil bill.

I pointed out the new Makro store as we passed it so I knew we were on Calle 10 approaching the highway.  The taxi driver was supposed to drop us at southbound lane of the highway by the Poblado station.  When the driver missed the turnoff I told him to stop, we got out and took a slight shortcut through a park.  We were on a Tratam bus after only a 5 minute wait.  As we passed the sideroad I told Teresa “now, now, now” but she hesitated and when she finally told them we had to backtrack a few hundred yards.  She was looking for red reflective tape on a tree but she must have missed it.

We got past the killer dogs undetected.  Good thing too because I only have 3 dog biscuits left.

We arrived back at the finca at 8:05 and while Teresa was putting things away in the finca I put Luna and Peluche in the dog house.

It looks like the Colombian Peso closed at 3,035 to the dollar.  3,300 isn’t necessary but it would sure be nice if it would stick around 3,000 for awhile.

T-shirt of the day: One more time.