At 8 am we picked up Ali, our "Buscador" from customs in the harbour to assist us today through the next step of paperwork. As this area was unfamiliar to him, it increased the anxious mood with all three of us.
We started at Traffic Police. They explained us of the procedure (with help of friendly people who spoke English).
There are three 'windows' during the day to process the licence plates: at 9 am in the morning, 11 am and half past 12 in the afternoon. We missed the first window, we missed the second one and the throughout the course of the day, the third, final window of today slipped away too. Which means the following: Without the required licence plates, we can not leave Bandar Abbas and start our journey into Iran to Turkey.
I send Onno an SMS. He stayed with Noelle in the hotel this morning when we left at 7 am. I asked him to go down to reception and ask if we could stay another night. He went down, put one finger up: "One" made the plus-sign with two fingers crossed and the sleep-signal. They got it, "no problem" they said. International language...
Another day in this very basic hotel is not something to look forward too. The hotel is far from cosy so the earlier we can leave, the better it is.
It took us 4 hours today at different locations to arrange insurance, being a tourist. In the end we did not succeed without the help of a friendly guy who felt sorry for our hardship.
Nobody speaks English, we don't speak Farsi and it takes the system hours to get connected to put our insurance request through.
It was unsuccessful and our plan to drive through Iran, Turkey and Europe back home, seems to get more and more challenging and maybe became impossible...
We skipped plan A, went to plan B, considering plan C and slowly the option of plan Z started to spin through my head: leave the car (and the keys for the lucky finder), pack a few suitcases and leave to the airport. Nice try...
We used Google translate to communicate with the people in the insurance company. After waiting for hours and hours, trying to get the request through the system, we reached our point of desperation and called a friend in Shiraz. We just met him and his wife yesterday: he's fluent in English and Farsi and he explained to the people in the office what it is what we needed.
A friendly guy, who felt sorry for our hardship, passing by, offered to put the insurance on his name. The system accepted and the insurance was arranged!
I wrote in Google Translate: "thank you so much, you are all so friendly." The smiles around me when Google created the translation in Farsi was so fantastic!
I really hope we now have all the available paperwork to finalize our business at the Traffic Police department during the first window at 9 am tomorrow. I really hope we can leave this place and travel to Shiraz, finally being able to see more of Iran.
So far, the trip has only given us paperwork and hardship and we are not enjoying this at all. Not to mention the amount of hardship this is for our children...
We'll hopefully be able to purchase a local simcard this afternoon. We have just returned to the hotel to finally see our children whom we have left behind (sleeping) at 7 am. We have all skipped breakfast and lunch (apart from a banana).Summary so far: Would you like to go to Iran? Fine, go ahead, but do NOT consider to take your car on the boat. Forget it, make a different plan (or be prepared for at least 3 days of paperwork and make friends as soon as possible).
Thijs will, however, when things have hopefully worked out, write a complete blog on what to expect.
We hope this whole episode will be like giving birth: We hope to forget this pain and it will be replaced by fantastic memories.
On to Shiraz tomorrow, Inshalah'
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