Almost buying a car

Since coming back to Peru I've been seriously tackling the job of buying a car.  And - joy of joys - I've found one!  It hits the spot in the delicate of balance of "is it too new and flashy?" versus "is it so old it won't make it down the street?", it's comfortable, has plenty of seats and is nicely within my price range.

Simple, right?

Or perhaps not.

The car is in Lima, I am in Abancay, and the owner lives in the jungle.  His brother-in-law has a legal document enabling him to sell the car.  I employed a mechanic to go and check the car over and send me the details - all good, he says.

So I arranged to go to Lima and make the purchase.  First I had to get a banker's cheque to make the payment.  Cue 3 days of waiting for the money to arrive in my account so that I could get the cheque... and eventually we discovered the bank transfer had failed.  No problem - I went with our mission bank account holder, and got the cheque from our mission bank account.

That afternoon, I meet with the seller and we go to the notary to do the sale.  "Oh, she's a foreigner" says the notary - "you'll need an additional witness".  So the seller phones a friend and we wait for him to arrive, meanwhile filling out all the forms.

When everything is ready, we go to the counter, and discover: the owner's wife's name is spelled incorrectly on the ownership document.  This means that the legal document the seller has, allowing him to sell it, does not match. 

So no sale.

I'm back in Abancay, waiting for a phone call to tell me it's sorted out and I can get the bus to Lima again.

I'm certainly learning a lot about how to buy a car in Peru. 

Or perhaps how not to?