Mexican visa adventures

                                                                   Oct 24 2014

Greetings,

          We have big news aboard Second Star. We have a new crew member joining us. Alexis is a 34 year old, Dominican “marinero”. He has been working for us here, in the marina, cleaning and polishing the boat. He wants to get more boat experience, learn to navigate and get enough sea time to get his captains license. We have decided to sponsor him and teach him so he can get the experience he needs. And, as a bonus, our Spanish will improve. While Alexis understands a lot of English, he doesn’t speak much.

Unlike traveling on a USA passport, a lot of people have to get special visas to visit most other countries. Alexis needed such a visa to go to Mexico with us. And getting it wasn’t easy. It was quite a process with lots of questions to the port captain’s office here, phone calls trying to get information from the embassy on what he had to do, and a long day in Santo Domingo jumping through Mexican embassy hoops.

When we arrived at the embassy and, after a long wait, they told Alexis he wasn’t on the list. He needed to have made an appointment online. “No, we can’t see you. NEXT!” You would have thought from the look on his face that someone had just killed he’s puppy. He would have given up but Capt. Johne said “wait. Being American Captain carries some weight if not much. Let me see what I can do.” He put on his best Captain-manners and schmoozed his way in, passed the little security guy and the round guy at the front desk, to see the Consul. He explained how important it was for this young man to have the opportunity to further his education and better his life; that we could only be there that day and wasn’t there anything the Consul could do to help, Please? He was told “Maybe I can fit you in at 11:30. Come back then. No promises.” (That’s not really a quote, it’s a translated paraphrase).

 So, Alexis stressed while we had a bite to eat waiting for 11:30 to come. When they went back to the embassy they got to meet with the Consul. The next hoop to jump though was they needed to see three months bank statements to show he wouldn’t be ending up indigent in Mexico. Since we were sponsoring him ours would do. So, then it was off to a little mall-internet-place to get printouts of our bank statements. But we had to be back before 1300 when the Consul was going to lunch. More stress.

We got it done and were back at the embassy by 1230. They took all the information, his picture and his passport. The Consul signed his application and said come back at 1630.

At that point Johne said it was a done deal. Alexis relaxed some but he was still antsy. We went and did our Pricesmart provisioning and at 1500 hrs Alexis started pointing out the need to get back. Now, Santo Domingo is a big city and there was lots of traffic, but we had an hour-and-a-half. I tried to reassure him but it wasn’t until we got back to the embassy with ten minutes to spare and they had his passport, with a beautiful visa in it, almost as fancy as the main picture page, that he believed it. Then he looked like a kid at Christmas.

After cocktails to celebrate, we headed back home. We had left Second Star at 0540 and got back at about 2100. A long but very productive day.

On Sunday we will have Alexis’s family over to the boat so we can meet them and so they can see where/how he will be living. We’re already starting to integrate him into daily life. We’ll try it until we get to Haiti. If it’s working well he’ll be with us at least until X-mas. If any or all of us are hating it, he can take the bus back from western DR or Haiti and life will return to “normal”. But I think it will work out well for all of us.

                                                          Oct 28 2014

On Sunday Alexis’s Mother, Father, Sister and Brother-in-law, three nieces, his wife and two sons came to Second Star. On Monday he said they had all talked and talked about it all evening. They felt much better about him coming with us having met us and seen the boat. I showed them how to follow the SPOT on the blog so they can always know where Alexis is. So I guess I have to be better about sending out a weekly SPOT even when we aren’t moving.

It looks like we’ll be move on later this week. First out to Isla Catalina then back to Boca Chica…Stay tuned for more.