March, 2007
The Old Gringo Starts a Business

I’m almost of retirement age and I’ve sort-of bailed out early from the States, according to Social Security and norms, so I decided to start a business here in PV. We had sold our house and business in the States and moved here with a fixed amount of money that bought us a house and gave us enough money to live for 2 or 3 years.

Most people I talked to about starting a business either said, “Don’t do it and just stay under the radar” or “Good luck, it’s a lot of bureaucracy and bullshit and bribes and fees, etc.”

Well, not being the brightest entrepreneur, I decided to give it a go. I ran a rare-plant nursery back in California so that’s what I went with for a business plan.

The #1 obstacle seems to be changing an FM3 visa to a “working” FM3. I met one person, a chiroprator also from California, who was trying unsuccessfully for months to get this classification. And I met many people who had it, but only as employees, not as self-employed business people.

Finding out where to start the process was the hardest part. Some people said, “Go to Hacienda (the tax people).” Some said go to Immigration. One friend said, “I know an accountant. Go to him first.” Which I did since the person recommending this approach seems to have survived here longer than anyone else I’ve met.

He recommended an accountant he knew that spoke English, so I made an appointment.

Sarah and I went in to the office (upstairs and marked on Fco Villa only by an ice cream sign). He saw us immediately and, as it turned out, was very easy to access at almost any time with no appointment or notice. I told him that I wanted to start a business and he asked a few questions and then typed up a letter for me to take to immigration to have my FM3 status changed to “working.”

He explained that there are 3 levels of personal business here in PV, with the distinctions being the percentage of tax paid and what it is paid on (gross or net). I opted for the lowest level since this business is an experiment for me and I won’t be desperate for another year.

I will pay 4% tax on my gross sales every two months. Seemed fair to me since my business is low-investment (I’m not reselling anything, only producing).

The accountant didn’t charge for any of the four visits to him at this point. His fee is 200 pesos a month for accounting and filing the tax payments. I have nothing to compare this amount to so I don’t know if it’s fair or not, but it’s extremely fair by US standards.

I took his letter to Immigration and they accepted my application without question. I now have a working FM3. The accountant made an appointment for me at Hacienda to get my tax numbers, but I was unable to meet it because “something came up.”

I finally went down to Hacienda yesterday afternoon (it was on the 3rd floor of the Caracol shopping center at that time) and saw about 100 people sitting and standing in a large waiting room. I asked the information person about this and he said to come back the next morning at 8:30 and it would be easier.

So I did. The place opened at 9 and I arrived at 8:45 and there were about 10 people in line. Just before 9 a man came out and asked each person in line what s/he was there for and checked for appropriate documents. He spoke limited English and I spoke very limited Spanish but things came out ok. I had everything and he gave me a number.

The door opened at 9 and at 9:05 I was inside and given another number (0001 !!!!). In a few minutes the number came up on the screen above the chairs and I went to window 5 where a very young man named Ivan (who spoke English) set to work on his computer and within about 10 minutes handed me my official tax number papers and I was a “real” business. This cost nothing.

I took a bus over to the accountant to see what to do next and he explained that I needed to have some “nota de ventas” printed up with my tax numbers and name on it (the copy was to be given to customers and the original to be kept for bookkeeping). Nota de Ventas are simply carbon copy receipts.

This is where I am now. My nursery is growing on the roof of my casita and I’m setting things up for sales. I have no idea of what’s going to happen from this venture (see the next installment….) but I have already had inquiries from people from Mexico City who want to come and buy some of my plants.

I forgot to mention that I also created a website for the nursery since the plants that I sell are extremely specialized and I will reach a larger market that way (it worked well in the States… who knows, it might work here. If it doesn’t, I’ll try a different approach).

Mexico seems to be changing from the horror stories I’ve read about the necessity of bribes to get anything done. I have had to pay some bribes (not in this process but with my move down here with customs) so things are not completely changed, but everyone I’ve come into contact with so far with Immigration and setting up the business has been great.

Took a short trip to Puta de Mita today. Damn, that’s a lousy trip. The destination, itself, is ok, if you like ‘beaches’ that don’t have any sand but do have expensive restaurants and a large, overbearing Four Seasonal Hotel hovering over the whole town.

Other than that, there is a fence the whole way from Mezcales to the Mita, between you and the beach. Big cement fences (some painted blue, some green) for most of the way, except for the side streets coming in at La Cruz and Bucerias, both extremely obnoxious locales dedicated to the over-weighted, vanillated old gringo who needs a square condo with a high fence around it to feel at home in a foreign land. (I’m a still a more than a little disappointed in this trip as I write this)

All billboards and signs along the road are in English so you won’t even know where you are. Where is that, you ask?

Heck if I know. It’s not Mexico. It’s more like S. California or Miami with slave labor.

It cost us 20 pesos each to travel from Punta de Mita to PV by bus, and it is quite the ride. If you’re a fan of roller coasters, you’ll love it.

All I can say is that the place is aptly named… “mita” means labor done by the indigenous people during the Spanish era of conquest.

July, 2007
1 Year in PV

Today is the anniversary of our arriving in PV with a truck and trailer.
This is a very truncated synopsis of the journey (get me drunk to go on in detail):

• It’s a long trip down from the States. But all meaningful trips can be long.
• Getting FM3’s (become semi-legal residents). It’s easy to do yourself.
• Make the house we bought a year before livable (by our lower-middle class, or, rather, outlaw class) standards. The process was smooth.
• Get to know the neighbors. Easy because they see everything you do and you see everything they do. People are human….
• Rebuild an “as-is” house. A fairly cheap and easy process.
• Start a business. Easy if you know how or who. (ask…)
• Watch the travelbook sunsets and experience the the hard rains of summer and dusty winters and ups and downs of a nation working to stabilize “services” we took for granted in the States. Not easy if you’re used to slave services, but a cake walk if you’re from the country.
• Learning to say and, and more importantly, to think Mañana.
• Suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
• Learning (or beginning) to smile, like we’ve never smiled, at a sunrise or sunset. This isn’t hard to learn.
• Discovering that “home” is really where the heart is. And not there… (where you were taught it was).
• Learning that there are narrow-minded, very limited people here (mostly Americans) who try to cut you down when you speak up about the freedom involved in expatriation. No big deal. People like this are everywhere.
• Discovering that the myths about the dangers here are bullshit… propagated by idiots. Experience is a great teacher….
• Discovering that people here are like people everywhere. Friendly if you’re truly (not superficially, as in “pinche gringo”) friendly and suspicious or hostile if you’re not (just like everywhere).

I wouldn’t trade this for anything.

The move here is simple, much more simple than the “books” say. Applying for an FM3 visa is easy, you don’t need a “specialist” to make it happen here. The immigration people speak English (as one of them said to me when I asked, “Only until 1 o’clock.” (when the immigration office closes).

If you’re lower or middle class, life here is much, much better than in the States, but it’s a bit of work getting through the regulations. If you’re upper class, add another mucho onto that and you don’t have to worry about any stinking badges.

It’s worth it.

A friend who owns a coffee shop here said the other day that the thing about Mexico that makes it special is that there is freedom here. You don’t have the laws that they have up in the States to get in your way. People here understand that laws and “government” means ways to control (govern) the people. Laws don’t “protect” or “serve” the people: They enslave them. People in Mexico have known this forever. Hence mordidas. Hence revolution.

Most gringos are used to laws telling them what to do. In Mexico, people are used to laws telling them what NOT to do. The difference, culturally, is extreme. You have to understand this one basic principle if you are to fit in here.

July 3, 2006
Mordidas, Ripoffs, TruckStop Whores — The Move Ends

Moving is hard.

Sarah and I had spent weeks packing and sorting out our lives and possessions. Triage of two lives is hard. We had sold our house and business and bought a house in Puerto Vallarta. Mix this with a “What have we gotten ourselves into?” feeling deep in our guts, and things get complex, emotionally. Changing cultures takes some time and we were at the end of a two year decision. Or at the start of another.

For a while I thought that that we could fit everything we wanted to take to Mexico into our small ’94 Toyota pickup, but it was soon apparent that we were hanging on to more than I had expected so I bought a small trailer that was soon also filled to capacity. The truck wasn’t really made for towing but it was strong and I was patient. 55 mph was to be our top speed, even downhill. Most of the drive to PV was uphill.

It took us two days to get to the Mexican border from N. California, with stops in Bakersfield and Tucson. In Bakersfield the attendant at the Shell gas station short-changed me and the manager of a 76 station in Banning flat-out ripped us off for $50 by switching our prepayment for gas to another pump and then denying it. The cops were called and the cop agreed with us but said that there was nothing he could do.

These weren’t the biggest ripoffs of the trip. Beware of traveling in the US, tho. You don’t see it mentioned much outside of foreign travel books, but count your change and keep your eyes open when on the road in the US. I’ve lived in a small town for too long: trust is easy with neighbors, not with the road. I’ve heard a lot of foreigners complain about how dishonest American businessmen are but didn’t believe it all that much until now.

In a similar vein, everything negative you’ve heard about moving across the border to Mexico is probably true.

We had obtained a menaje de casa from the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco (paid $127 for it). What they didn’t tell us at the Consulate was that this document was worthless at the border.

First we went to the wrong Nogales crossing. We went to the ‘regular’ one (the one that on the signs said was for travelers, not commercial trucks) and were immediately turned back because they didn’t know what a menage de casa was and we looked commercial to them because so many boxes were piled on the truck and trailer.

Getting turned around at the border after being rejected by Mexican Customs is not easy. There is no line going into Mexico but there was a mile-long line going into the States. The Mexican guard had to open a special gate and try to convince people who had been sitting in 105 degree heat for hours to let us cut in. Lots of angry looks. but he had the gun.

And then the US customs officers, even tho they had seen the whole process of us being turned back (they were stationed 30 feet away), tried to have some fun with us by threatening to treat us as if we were bringing in a load of Mexican goods (drugs). Fortunately, after getting the initial shock reaction from me (I blanch easily), they laughed and let us back in with a “Good luck…”

At the commercial border crossing, we simply drove through thinking how easy it was. Then, after about 21 km, we came to the real customs entrance. Then the trouble began.

We were told beforehand that it would be necessary to park and go to an office to declare our menaje de casa. The officer there didn’t know what it was. He sent us to another office where the officer said that the menaje would not work. We would either need to declare our possessions as “Commericial” and pay an import tax on them or go back to the US and find a customs broker to “facilitate” the entry.

It would be impossible to go back to the US with this load of possessions (I’ll explain later, maybe), so I opted for the commercial entry. In retrospect, since I had decided to stay in Vallarta for any of the foreseeable future, declaring our property as “commercial” was a good idea because if we ever do decide to leave, we don’t have to take it with us, as we would have had to with the menaje de casa permit.

They asked for a value of the load since value is not listed on the menaje de casa because it is immaterial. Bringing personal possessions in with a menaje is supposed to be temporary and is not taxed.

I was “suggested” to declare $2000 for the value (with about $300 US tax). After about an hour of discussion, I got it down to $1000, but they insisted that I also had to pay $120 US for “document preparation.” I saw no way out of this and the load was worth much more to me than the $270 official and non-official mordidas being “suggested.”

They don’t say directly that you must pay. They say that you have a choice, either pay or go through hell with the broker and US customs. The choice was always mine and the people I dealt with were always “friendly” in a non-Kafka-est manner.

The $150 IVA tax was official with official papers and paid to a government bank account, but the “preparation fee” was in straight US currency, paid to the man at the table in the last office.

After this, we got to the familiar red/green buttons at customs. For the first time in my life, it came up red. This was 10 meters from the last office where the mordidas was paid. The officer manning the red/green light was much more interested in how much we had paid the last person than in inspecting our stuff. He let us go with a knowing smile.

Next we went to an office where the truck and trailer were to be registered for Mexico. This was simple (costs about $40 with a credit card charge) but the trailer was rejected because it was new and we didn’t have a ‘real’ registration form from California (I had bought the trailer days before and California mails the official registration in a month or so). This problem required going to the aduana office which was closed. But a man walked up and said he could help.

At first he said it couldn’t be done. Then he took us to a customs official at another booth who simply stamped the form and said “OK.” No charge.

With our truck and trailer legal, we proceeded to the next and last Mexico entry with another red/green button. What a relief when it came up green. What a disappointing surprise then the guard pulled us over anyhow to inspect. Green isn’t always green.

Fortunately, there must be some honor involved in the mordidas process because when we showed the inspector our “paperwork” from the last inspection, he quickly passed us through.

DON’T stop at the first few Pemex gas stations after the border. They are swarming with ripoffs. Even the attendants are ripoffs. I lost 100 pesos in an overcharge before I could blink, Everyone at the station was in on the scam. Watch your back. The cashier made out a receipt for the correct amount of purchase, and everyone went along with the verbal overcharge. We were thankful that the ripoff wasn’t as bad as the one in California, though this was meek consolation
.
All of the other Pemex station attendants, once we got away from the border, were honest.

It was in the stretch of road near the border where we hit a very large pothole and damaged the bumper and tow hitch of the trailer. The hole was about a meter across and 50 cm deep. Hit a full speed, it did a lot of damage. But we kept on. It was dark and we were tired and depressed. The feeling was that we could die at any moment, but we were immune to the threat. The trailer held.

We took the cuota (toll) roads instead of the libre roads all the way down through Northern Mexico. They aren’t bad, most with 4 lanes divided, but they are expensive, and a lot of them still take you through city streets. Since we were towing a trailer, we were charge 50% more than for a regular car. All together, the toll charges were about $150 US, with a high toll of $30 US and most being 30-50 pesos. Pemex gas stations are never more than 50 km apart so gas was easy.

We were warned to not drive at night in Mexico. This warning seems to be true for some roads and not for others (I know: “How do you tell the difference?”). The cuotas are safe and well marked, for the most part, and we drove these at night. Regular roads are not always marked with center dividers so they are very difficult at night. Cows and horses and goats and people on foot and bikes are everywhere and are very hard to see.

Our first night in Mexico we spent in Guaymas. I should have researched traveling with pets because most places don’t like or accommodate them. We ended up in a hotel tipico on the outskirts of town on the highway. We had to talk the night clerk into letting us bring in the dogs, but it wasn’t that hard because he had a puppy and there was puppy shit on the floor in the office.

The bed was a simple hard mattress on a cement platform, a very noisy air conditioner and a toilet with no seat. The Malibu Motel. It had seen better days and was now half used as a sign company, but the people were friendly. The night guard said that he was deported from the US for 5 years for some unspecified crimes.

Sonora State is hellish, dry and hot, just like Arizona and southern California (but without the smog). I liked Sinaloa State, except for Mazatlan. Sinaloa is the start of the jungle, tropical part of Mexico and seems to be a much more friendly area. The people seem to be generally doing ok, with agriculture the main income. I didn’t see the clapboard slums there like I did in Nogales.

Mazatlan, with the limited experience I had with it, was a dump. It is crowded, noisy and looks and feels just like LA. An intersection window washer was ready to punch me out when I told him “no” at a stop light and only the intervention of his partner saved us from a fight.

We couldn’t find a hotel or motel that would take the dogs so I thought I’d try to make Tepic (this at 9pm, after a full day of driving). Tepic was only a few hours farther but the road out of town was so bad that I pulled over at a Pemex truck stop and we decided to sleep in the truck for a few hours before heading out.

A man walked up to us when we parked by the other sleeping trucks. We were worried until we saw that he had a gun. He was the night watchman at the station and he was friendly and told us that he would watch out for us.

We started to fall asleep and a woman on a bicycle road up and started friendly talk with me. Sarah wasn’t totally awake and the woman didn’t see her. Sarah woke instantly, tho, and yelled, “EXcuse me” at the girl, with all the protectiveness of a mother or a worried spouse. I was just curious: I don’t often meet truck stop whores. The girl on the bike smiled and said goodbye and road off to the next truck.

We couldn’t really sleep in the truck because of the heat and the two dogs we had with us. So we headed out down the road before daylight.

Just a few hundred meters down the road from the truck stop, the road became new and easy, compared to the unmarked road to that part. It wasn’t cheap. This cuota was the most expensive of the whole trip, topping all at about $300 pesos.

Driving after a full day and half a night and with very little sleep wasn’t easy but we made good time to Tepic.

Highway 200, the road to PV from Tepic narrows down to an alley as it passes through the center of town but soon turns into the worst downhill stretch of road that I’ve seen in a long time. Straight down with lots of curves and long tails of buses and trucks and cars with drivers angry at our slow truck/trailer unfamiliar with the road. The only people friendly were the pickups with families piled in the back. The kids always waved and smiled.

Coming into the Banderas Bay area was a shock and a relief. I was happy to be so close to home but I don’t remember Sayulita and Bucerias being so yuppiefied with fancy signs and palm tree lined roadways and new billboards for gringo housing developments and “gentleman” clubs everywhere you looked. And it has only been a few months that I was last there.

It looked more like LA or Miami than Mexico. Change is fast and disappointing to some. The north Banderas Bay used to be a pleasant getaway but now it’s just another tourist trap. I suppose that other people who have been coming to PV feel the same way about the Southside. I’ve heard that Bill Gates and Vincente Fox have bought up large tracks of land up that way for development. Makes sense since Fox started building the new highway to “nowhere” there.

It’s good to be home. I kind of wished that it hadn’t been election day and that I could have gone to Que?Pasa for a cold beer or two, but there are other nights for that. We drove into Puerto Vallarta on the only dry day of the year, election day. Maybe that’s a sign.

This first night back we just unloaded the truck and trailer and slept.

June 2006
Timeline to the Move

Today is June 20 and I’m finally packing the truck up here in Laytonville, California, for the final phase of our move to PV. To sumarize, below are the events so far:

• First we visited PV a few times for fun.
• We rented an apartment for a year while still living in California and visiting PV about once every 3 months or so while looking for a place to buy.
• Bought a fixer-upper house up the Cuale River in PV in Colonia Buenos Aires. Started spending half my time in PV working on the house and half in California working on my business.
• Set up internet, electricity, water, taxes, etc in PV. Hired a crew to rebuild the house.
• Sold my business in California, then sold my house, both within a few months.
• Obtained FM3, set up bank account at Lloyds and transferred US $$ to Mexico.
• Obtained a Menaje de Casa from the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco for moving my worldly possessions to Mexico. This is a legal document required to bring household items into Mexico without paying duty. It cost $137 and required much paperwork and two trips to San Francisco to obtain.
• Sold my old truck (a new Toyota Tundra) and bought a different one (a 1994 Toyota 4wd P/U) for the move.
• Sarah’s daughter graduated High School and prepares to head off to the University of California at Berkeley. Sarah feels a little like someone abandoning a child, but Malila is quite capable of making it as a business major at UC Berkeley. She has a great mind and much drive and capability.
• Obtained vaccinations and certificates for our two dogs for the trip.
• Today (June 20, 2006) I’m packing the truck. We have the Toyota P/U and an 8 foot long flat bed trailer packed to the sky with all of our earthly possessions. We look a bit like a scene out of the 1930s mass migration from Oklahoma to California.
• Friday, June 23, we leave for PV

—–I’ll continue this in a week or so when (if) we arrive in PV—-

And if anyone needs any help or hints with any of this process, feel free to ask. I’ve probably done almost everything wrong the first attempt or two so I’m familiar with the problems and solutions.

The weather looks like it will be in the 100s most of the way down through S. California and Arizona, with rain mixed in as we pass through most of Mexico. I certainly won’t be complaining about the cold any longer..

August 2004
FIRST NIGHT AS AN EX-PAT

OK, I’m sitting here tonight on a back street, low-rent apartment in Puerto Vallarta. It’s thundering and lightning outside and the rain comes down in a gentle torrent. There are about three different musical interpretations of this evening up and down the street. A truck drives slowly by announcing over a bullhorn the availability of pineapples, apples and tuna, cactus apples. Sounds like a theme. I’d go out and buy some but I’m very shy right now about my presence here and my Spanish is almost non-existent.

This is a first (last?) step in my master plan to move here. I’m not sure it’s a wise decision. I have a good business and a nice house up in California. Sarah, my wife, isn’t totally sold on the idea, yet, but she’s tolerant of my whims. I’m here without her on this trip.

So now what?

I’ve paid the rent for a year in advance and am hoping that I will find self-support within that time. The last few days have been hard. I flew down specifically to find a place to live here. Going back and forth in my mind about the wisdom of this action, I’ve spent 3 sleepless nights, living mostly on coffee and rum and coke. Barb, the real-estate person, tried to not so subtly hint that if the only vitamin C I was getting was from the limes in my rum, perhaps I should reconsider my diet. She’s right, of course, but these are traumatic times requiring extraordinary psycho-culinary support. No, I don’t go for that line, either, but it sounded good for a second or two coming out of these fingers…

Barb calls this apartment “funky Mexican chic.” You can tell by the description that I’m not up in the condos at the beach or in Gringo Gulch or Conchos Chinos. It’s about 7 blocks from Los Muertos Beach, up the river Cuale, right at the point where it splits to go around the upper island. The “other” side of the River from Gringo Gulch.

I suppose that by Mexican standards I paid too much for this place, about $500 a month, but by my standards, or almost any U.S. standards, it’s a deal. I NEVER trust real estate agents, but I like Barb. If she’s making a hustle out of this, it’s not a greedy one. She’s pretty easy to deal with. Certainly rough and tough around the edges, but when she lets her hair down, she’s a sweetheart. She acts as if she’s stuck here in PV, but I’m not going for that one. She told a story about having to drive in NYC in rush hour in the Holland tunnel as if that was some type of badge of valor. I’ll accept that.

The apartment is the second story of a house. The first floor is occupied by the owner, a man and his family. He’s a jeweler and works out of the house. My apartment has two bedrooms and each room is painted in a different gaudy color. The roof of the building is ours to use. If I buy a house here, I want a roof like this. The house is on Aquiles Serdan, a small street that seems like it was added to the city as an afterthought… and squeezed in.

So today I bought cleaning supplies at the closest supermarket, Rizo’s. I guess that’s what you’re supposed to do when you move into a new place. The first few days of a move, especially one this drastic, are a little confusing.

I was sitting in Cardenas Park this morning, kind of holding my head, and a local street person came up and asked me for 5 pesos, and then, after I gave it to him, offered me some advice: “Don’t worry so much about the future. You think too much.” This guy had me pegged even before the 5 pesos.

So, if you’ve read this far, you’re probably asking, “Why?”

The answer to this question is probably the same as for everyone else who’s left their country of birth for a totally different culture: I really don’t fit in where I was born. My values are different, my goals are different, and my methods of dealing with people are different.

Personally, I despise the government of the US and the culture that supports it. I hate malls. I hate Disneyland. I hate Bush and the Christian psycho-babble that he and his cohorts spout. The Bushes of the world are too greedy, too dishonest, and too moralistic (at least with other people’s lives and by my standards). The hypocrisy is up to the high-shit level and these people are murdering thousands of innocents in their war for oil and wealth. I can’t see supporting these activities with my taxes or my presence.

But these political reasons are secondary, at best. Mexico may or may not be better than where I’m from; I don’t know yet, but I do like the people and the climate here.

It’s easy to see some of the level of anger in me behind this move. I’m pretty transparent.

I so often wish that some of the Bush supporters I’ve met here could say something that would convince me of some type of integrity on the part of their Party, but all they ever do is flip out and get outraged and condemn me for being unpatriotic, as if I considered patriotism to be a virtue. I can’t see blind obedience to any country, much less to any religion or ideology as a virtue. It’s more like a handicap for those too dumb or lazy to think for themselves. This is rather blunt, I realize. The longer I stay in Mexico, the less ideology means to me.

I was so thrilled as a child to read the Bill of Rights of the US, and then I was so equally disappointed when I discovered that it didn’t apply to all segments of that society, especially mine. Now there’s not even any pretense of the US government supporting the Bill of Rights. It doesn’t exist any longer except in the Library and if you go to the official US Government web page on the Bill of Rights, you’ll see it is listed as an “Historical Document.”

Perhaps that drunk in the park this morning was wrong. Maybe I don’t worry about the future too much. Maybe I mourn a past too much. You can’t really put too much stock in the words of a drunk.

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