I am angry, annoyed, and frustrated. If I could be more things then I would be too. It is not as if I didn't know... nor that I shouldn't have been aware of what was going to happen. Still, each time it drives me crazy. Archaic laws from a controlling dictatorship that no longer exists. A law that forces every person in Argentina to pay 50% of the value of every single item they receive by mail or courier just to be able to walk out with it.
Now add to this crazy law, one super legalistic letter-of-the-law customs lady, and you get this very situation in which I found myself. Christmas in customs.
Opening my Christmas gifts in the customs office.
You see, in order to charge you the 50% of everything that comes into the country, the customs officer needs to see absolutely every single item that arrives. They then put whatever price they consider reasonable, based on Argentine prices if there is no price placed on the package customs slip and charge you accordingly.
So when I went in to pick up my box of Christmas gifts, there was no way that I was going to be able to walk out without opening every one of them. At first the lady wanted to open each one herself but I told her that since they were my presents, that I should be the one opening them. And that is just what I did. Christmas in customs.
Instead of sitting down the in comfortable privacy of my room - well, if you call a room shared with four other guys private that is - to open each present and think about each person that had sent it to me, I found myself in a cold and basic customs office with an impatient customs officer leaning over me to find out what was in each packet.
One by one I pulled out my presents, reading the cards and tearing open the wrapping. The joy tempered by a resentment of the control exercised by this law, and the legalistic nature in which it was enforced. Once everything had been checked, I signed the legal document that both charged me the tax fees and allowed me to leave with my gifts.
This time however I did not pay. The first $25 USD received each year is free. It takes very little to reach that amount however, so the next package won't be free.
Each year, while I remain in Argentina and until this law is changed, my experience is the frustration of having Christmas in a customs office cubicle.
UPDATE 30 Nov: They were not in a huge box so I guess they did not attract that much attention. That is why on November the 30th I received two large envelopes with Christmas pressies in them. One had some yummy chocolate (all gone now), and the other had some book-style presents from my bro Joseph and his wife. Thanks heaps guys.
The presents that made it.
So I guess the moral to this story is to try and send things a little less conspicuously than a huge box where this is possible.