the land is nearly ours!

It's not quite celebration time but we are one step closer to becoming South American land owners!

Today we signed a document to say we would buy the land (well at least that is what we hope it said -hehe) and then we went to the bank to transfer 1/2 the money to the vendors bank. We walked into the bank and couldn't believe our eyes with the queue - it was miles long to go to the teller, which thankfully we didn't have to - it made me laugh because when I worked for the bank in New Zealand - customers would complain if there were 3 in the line waiting - if only they knew hah?

Anyway our queue was only short, with about 10 waiting so it wasn't too bad. While we were waiting though, I said to Mark that things really were going to easily so something was bound to go wrong soon - sure enough, the bank transfer system wouldn't accept my passport number so we couldn't do a bank to bank transfer. {As a side note, I want to tell you about the security they have in place here - we have an account with a local bank,  have a debit card attached to the account and also they have our fingerprints on their system, which we always have to place our finger on a special button for identification, but we still have to show our passports, which they then copy every time - so weird! Oh well I suppose I can trust that no one else will get into our account easily}. Anyhoo our next option was a bank cheque and after filling out what seemed like a dozen forms and they checked our shoe size (just kidding) we were able to toddle off to the other bank - phew!

So next week we should be (don't hold your breath though, anything could happen) proud owners of prime beachfront property. I tell you what - when we finally do get our residency - there's going to be one big party with a heck of a lot of yahooing going on!