Life in a different culture
Heading to Buenos Aires, convinced that I was arriving only two days before my provisional visa expired, the first thing I did after dropping my bags off in the place I was staying was head back to the Migrations office in the city. The idea was that I would get my official documents and then stay for a meeting here before returning. Everything was organised, except for one unexpected problem.
I missed the date.
Leaving Puerto Madryn, I never imagined that it would be all of two weeks before returning there again. Yet here I am on the bus heading south once again on the 18 hour journey that will return me to the place I now know as home.
Chasing down documents for Brazilians, finding a magic coffee bar in a perfect location, and fighting with cheap components when fixing houses… all part of just one more day in Buenos Aires…
It was time to get my police certificate and sort out most of the remaining bits and pieces that needed to be done for my residency application. If I was able to complete these then everything would be finished except for the process of presenting it all to the right people.
Immigrations in Buenos Aires (Av Antartida).
I have arrived in Buenos Aires to get my residency here. It would have been easier and more convenient to do this process in Puerto Madryn where I am now based, but the Immigration branch there could not do anything with my English language documents. So here I am in Buenos Aires trying to get everything together. The problem is that even though there is information about all of this, most people that have been through it have told me that there is always one more paper needed before you can actually start (or sometimes finish) the process.
None of this should really come as a surprise to me, since I have been through this process once before, with my old Siambretta motorbike (which I eventually gave away to a good cause after all of that). The procedure is that when you ask somebody, they will give you one answer, but when you get to the next person in the order of presenting papers, they will tell you that the other person was wrong and you need something else, or something different. This makes for a slow process in getting things done, but with persistence and a lot of time to stand in the long lines, and you will eventually get things sorted out. That was what I was about to do here in Buenos Aires.