Celeste

We were desperate to buy a car, not because we eagerly embrace driving in this country, but because with kids in school and our distance from town, it was clearly going to make life much easier to have one. Plus, we were having to pay $45/ day for our rental car for every extra day we had it over our rental period. After following all our leads and talking with lots of used car salesmen, we were lead to "Dick", an expat from the U.S., Vietnam vet, and chain smoker. He worked as an intermediary between us and a local lawyer, who sold us "Celeste", our sky blue Nissan Sentra--the same kind of car that Tim owned when we first met 16 years ago.

It's a 1997, in decent shape but has already been to the shop and has no air conditioning. For this we paid nearly $6,000! Crazy as it sounds, cars are really expensive here, largely to a whopping import tax placed on any vehicles coming into the country. We're hoping Celeste does her work for us getting up and down the mountain and that we can sell her again upon leaving without too much of a loss. Getting Celeste registered in our name was its own interesting process whereby we sat in the lawyer's office and were read the long document detailing everyone's (even the secretary's) passport and license numbers, former marriages, full names, former names, and other details in a solemn ceremony, betrothing ourselves to our beloved Celeste.