Buying a Car

It turns out that buying a car is easy getting a license plate is not.

We got a 2005 Kia Sportage from a used car dealer on the island.  They get used cars from Holland, Dubai, Japan and other far away places.  Everyone drives Kia's here. There is a Kia dealer on the island so we thought it might be a supported car for the island. 

The owners of Yvonne's live a few houses from us in Belnum.  Harry and Yvonne put new tires on the car and held it for us for 5 days while we got all the things needed for licensing the car. 

I thought that we had government bureaucracy in the US but it is nothing compared to Bonaire.  No one seems to know all the steps in the right order to get the licenses.  It's like a treasure hunt with partial clues given at each location.

We start the process with obtaining a CRIB number from the tax office.  You apply one day and pick it up the next day. The tax office is only open certain hours and they do not post them and there is no web site telling you when they are open.  They do, however, close for lunch 11:30- 1:30 or 2:00 pm. We had to go to the tax office twice to find them open.

We text the CRIB number to our insurance company and they reserve a license number from the license plate department. We had  choices for license plate number. So we picked one that did not have 13 in it.  We are not superstitious but we thought we would not take any chances. 

We had to pay for insurance but insurance agents don't accept cash or credit cards.  We could have paid for it through a local bank account which we don't have. So the insurance company sends us to their bank, three blocks away to pay for insurance. The bank actually takes cash when we show them an insurance invoice and our passports. We had to run to the bank and back to the insurance company before they closed to get proof of insurance to get the license plate. It is now raining.

Then we were told to go to the post office to pay the road tax.  The post office actually takes cash. We get a receipt so we can show it to get the license plate.

It has been four days since we purchased the car and we still don't have plates.  We have a Crib number, paid insurance, and paid road tax. We are off to the license plate office to get plates.

Our insurance man tells us to go to the Bon Bini bar/restaurant and look for a gate behind the restaurant.  The gate leads to a complex of government offices that are totally unmarked from the road. The gate is lock when we arrive at 10 am. We head back to the used car place and ask them when the gate opens at the government offices.  He gives us yet another circuitous route to get to the license plate office.

We finally find the office, go inside and give them all the paper we have collected over the past three days. In all of our stops not one person told us we had to pay $8.40 to buy the plates. They send us back to the post office. In the mean time, the government office closes from 11:45 am to 2:00 pm. I am learning what island time really means.

After a nice lunch at a beach restaurant, we return to the government office with all of the paper we collected only to find a line of three people ahead of us. It took us 40 minutes to get to the clerk to get our plates.

Success! We bought a car and in five days got licenses plates.  Harry was nice enough to put them on the car and we were off. 

Another check the box moment for me.