Dogs

19 Aug Roger and I starting to get frustrated with the whole shipping process. Puerto de San Antonio is a small port, and so far we don't have any information as to when our RV is going on a ship. Every time we ask, there's another form that needs to be completed, not necessarily by us, but by the shipping agent. We don't like not having control over the situation. We did stop by ADUANA (customs) to ask what paperwork we needed to have. The man asked if we had the form for our RV when we entered the country, which we did. He told us that it would be an Express process, no more than 10 minutes, since we had the entry form. Hopefully this will prove to be a fact, because so far nothing has bee Express. We are perplexed about the work hours here. For example the ADUANA opens at 8:30, closes from 2-3, and is open from 3-5:30. It's just hard to get use to places closing from 1-3 in the afternoon, with no consistency as to which hour is taken. It varies from store to store. In the meantime it feels like we always get to the place right during the mid-afternoon close window. Some random thoughts about dogs: - There's no animal control in the towns or cities we've been in. There is no neutering program in place from what we've seen, anywhere in Central or South America. - Puerto de San Antonio is the barking dog capital of South America. The stray dogs in El Centro, bark constantly or else they are asleep right in the middle of the sidewalk, strategically placed amongst their minefields. - There's one dog we've seen that only barks at black taxis. It stands on the edge of the Main Street and ignores traffic until a black taxi comes along. Then it barks until it has passed by. - Stray dogs must be born with highly tuned traffic sensors, because they get in the streets and know just when to move when an oncoming car approaches that merits their effort to get out of the way. On occasion the dog appears to be offended by traffic's need for it to get out of the way. - The majority of stray dogs are of the larger variety. So far these dogs don't look like they are suffering much from their free roaming lifestyle. So right now we're in a holding pattern, until we can get the RV shipped. I've defrosted and dried out the freezer and refrigerator. We are eating canned goods for meals, which I still had from when we left Garden Ridge. Of course there's also PBJ for lunch, no refrigeration necessary. Tuna's what's for supper tonight. Hopefully we'll get our paperwork tomorrow.