Next Encounter with Law Enforcement

Picture it: San Cristobal, 2009. Joy and Ken are on their way back to school after lunch when they happen upon a random traffic stop on the San Cristobal Boulevard. "License and registration", they ask for. I (Ken) hand it to him and he heads off to discuss with some of the other officers on the scene.

He comes back and explains to us that he is going to have to give us a ticket because our AAA IDP (International Drivers Permit) was not a real license. I'm guessing he has never seen an AAA IDP before... not sure how common they are down here.

We ask to speak with his supervisor and he says we'll have to head down to the office to talk with them but we insist that we need to speak with the supervisor now. This is something that was covered in our New Teacher Orientation. When the supervisor comes over we explain what the IDP and explain that the copy of my passport is a certified copy (certified by a lawyer).

She goes on to explain that the copy is fine but they need to see the immigration stamp in the passport to know when we entered the country because, although the IDP is good for one year, our VISA stamp in the passport is only good for 90 days -- which we knew. We got in touch with the school who explained to her the dates in the passport and ... in the end... everything was fine. We did not get a ticket!

CAG takes special effort to hold new teacher orientation (awesome) every year to go over do's and do nots associated with living in Guatemala. They also gave us a list of names to contact if we run into trouble. It certainly paid off.

I think in the end the police did a good job of explaining everything and in being understanding of our situation.

-knme