Yesterday we took care of our formal international entry requirements. I'm going to walk through our experience here in the hope that it might be interesting or useful to anyone who follows. The disclaimer I'd add is that our experience was very different from what we had expected, and I have the feeling that part of the experience is that everyone's experience is going to be different. I would venture that a good bit depends simply on the mood of the officials that day, did they like their lunch? Did they get enough sleep? Did the guy before you in line piss them off? All of these things are probably at least as important as the 'official' process.

In the "Mexico Boating Guide" they say that Cabo has a ventanillas unica (basically a one-stop shop for all your clearing in needs) just like Ensenada. In to town we went, and without much trouble at all we had found the port captain's office, which the guide says is right next door to the ventanillas unica...After walking around the neighborhood a bit without any luck finding this fabled unica we went into the Port Captains office to ask. Our questions garnered some seriously blank looks, and we were told that we would need to go to immigration and then come back. Now, I'll be the first to admit my Spanish is not that strong, and it's quite possible that there is in fact a ventanillas unica in Cabo, what was clear however is that we were not destined to be taking advantage of that streamlined process.

So, across town we walked to find the immigration office, guided by Daniel, a local sailing school instructor who had helped us out in the Port Captain's. The immigration office had a bit of a train station feel to it, high ceilings, a small desk in the corner with 3 immigration officers, a couple of tables and waiting chairs all the way across the room, and a lady mopping the floor in what seemed to be a perpetually revolving cycle. The agent we spoke with didn't seem to care very much, but he entered our information and printed us an 'invoice' that we needed to pay by walking across the street to the bank. At the bank they stamped the invoice, and then back we went to Immigration. They took these invoices, and then a flurry of stamping ensued, including one stamp that was about the size of a half sheet of paper. After this (which took about an hour and a half with miscelleneous waiting included) we were issued our Tourist Visas for 180 days.

Sweet! Back to the Port Captains office where we waited for an agent to be available. This was actually a little tricky, as there was no clear queue, and the agents seemed to approach people's requests in a non-linear fashion. They might get the ball rolling on one person's paperwork, then put it down on the counter and start someone else's. The agent we got (who was very nice, clearly knowledgeable, but spoke no english) was sorry to tell us that we needed to have gotten stamped crew lists from Immigration. While Immigration had indeed stamped our crew list, they had kept it and we didn't have a copy. So, back across town, this time in a hurry because Immigration is only open from 9-1, and it was already 12. Luckily, when we got back to immigration they recognized us, and relatively quickly we had 3 copies of our crew lists + stamps.

Back at the Port Captains we handed over our paperwork, and then proceeded to wait. The waiting area was incredibly hot, as in 'wow, I might pass out hot'. They actually had air conditioning units, but they weren't on, at that point we realized that this was not the hot season, and we had to toughen up a bit. There was a nice bit of non-American logic on display in the port captains office: they had no photocopier and only one printer, which inevitably meant that things were quite slow, so to avoid the people being bored by the wait they had purchased a TV for the waiting area to play music videos. We paid about $40 USD in fees via credit card there (the other option would have been to go back to a bank and pay cash), and then we were 'done'.

(translated from choppy and incorrect Spanish)
"Uh don't we have to go to Customs?"
"You? no."
"Uhm...we need a temporary import permit for our boat"
"You said you're going to La Paz. You can get that there."
(another guy chimes in)
"Actually it's not in La Paz, it's in Pichilingue, near La Paz."

So, that's where it stands, we are checked in (mostly), and we'll have to finish up with customs when we are in La Paz. It was relatively painless (especially in comparison to the Australian guy next to us at immigration who had a stack of pages at least an inch thick, each page with a multitude of stamps, who was arguing with the immigration office about one missing signature on a stamp buried deep in the middle. Or the lady who seemed to be finally getting her problem resolved and was literally clinging to the immigration officers hand saying 'gracias gracias gracias'). Of course, who knows what'll happen when we visit customs in La Paz and try to explain why we need our import permit from them and why we didn't visit customs in Cabo...