Things are different, but are they really...

For those of you who are following our adventure blog you know that we got broken into and the robbers took the safe. In that safe was our passports. For us to replace our passports we had to get new ones by going to the US Embassy in Montevideo (1.5 hour drive). On our drive to Montevideo we thought we would make a day of it and catch some sites around town and Karen joined us. ( Thank Goodness) So, we all fit into our little red car and started on our journey. Cory was driving...along just fine. Driving here is interesting, they drive fast sort of in their lanes sort of not. The cops parol the roads by sitting in their cars and a few of them are besides the road with whistles. They are very aggressive when they whistle you over. How do we know this...well Cory ran a yellow light just like you would in the states. Actually it would of been worse if he would stomped on his brakes because the car behind us would of probably rear ended us. Anyway, try explaining that to a police officer who just gives you the citation and then tells you to go down the road 3 lights take a left and there will be a white building where they will tell you how much it is and you can pay it there. Before we get into that, keep in mind we don't speak Spanish and the policeman doesn't speak English except "you go"! Luckily we had Karen with us who speaks and understands Spanish. She tried to talk our way out of it, but nope. "You Go" to the blanco building. (okay that is my Spanglish, buy also his bad English). Anyway...we get the "citation" we have to go figure the rest of it out. We find the white building and when we walked in I felt like I had just entered a DMV in the States. The ones in the States are better organized believe it or not. So, we wait in one line to find out the cost of the citation by a young girl at a computer who consults with 3 guys behind glass who give her the amount $3000 ($120usd) and that is with a 20% discount if we pay today. But, we don't pay her she issues us a number and we have to go stand in a huddle of people who are all waiting for their number. Amazingly enough the mood was calm considering they were 50 numbers from our issued number. Oh, yeah this is all just written down on a piece of paper; the amount and our number. Karen tells her we need to get to the US Embassy by a certain time to get our stolen passports replaced. The lady was nice enough let us go and told us we could come back whenever and pay it. So, we leave with a citation in a foreign country on a rental car we are turning back in tomorrow. Moral Dilema! The whole situation was funny...because Department of Motor Vehicles are really the same everywhere. We also decided this is how they have such nice roads here. Toll roads and hight citations. I am also convinced that red cars do get more tickets, since we have been pulled over 2 times in 1 month here. We only got a citation one time. The first time he was just doing random checks to see if people had the correct paperwork. Which we didn't have and he was nice enough to let us go back to the house and get it.
Chow