Good info on the insurance. Do you have a website suggestion for where I can find more info? $60 definitely sounds better than $300.
This was for the temporary
import papers. It is something you have to optain that is good for 10 years. It can be a bit of a run around, and it is good you only have to do it once.
No sorry I do not know of a web site....... I would guess there is no such thing. I have heard if boats coming in
California getting it done for free in Ensenada.
Someone can correct me if I am wrong (as always) But I understand it is a clearance you get from the Aduana or
customs. You have to list all the
equipment on your boat,
Engine,
Dinghy,
solar panels etc. This way they will say you came into there country with all this
equipment, and they would question you if you left without it. It is to keep people from selling off there boat part by part, and not giving the govt. a cut.
I am sure every port town is differn't as to where the office is located, how many agents, if they want to see the boat or not (mine did not). I would like to hear from someone who came into Ensenada and how it went for them.
When you are looking around the web for info. Remember some of it can be dated. We have enjoyed two big
regulations (and hassles) dropping off in the pst two years. No more auto
registration. If you are driving no farther than
San Carlos you do not need to have anything for your car except proof of Mexican Insurance. You can obtain it online ahead of your trip.
And for us sailors this is a great one. I will paste it here:
Domestic Clearing Is Over in Mexico! Reports Tere Grossman
April 19 - Mexico City, Mexico
DOMESTIC CLEARING IS OVER IN MEXICO!
DOMESTIC CLEARING IS OVER IN MEXICO!
DOMESTIC CLEARING IS OVER IN MEXICO!
"Incredible but true," writes Tere Grossman, "but today the Mexican
government published a notice in the official newspaper that says, as of today, mariners will only be required to check in with a port
captain when they are coming from or going to an international port. This means that 'domestic clearance' - clearing in and out every time you enter a new port
captain district inside Mexico - is history! They [boatowners] will now only have to let a marina know when they arrive, and the marina only has to have a
record of who comes and goes."
"I have been working on this for almost 30 years, and am very excited!" says Grossman, who once told President Vicente Fox that the clearing process was like having to go through the 'stations of the cross'. Tere Grossman is the President of the Mexican Marina Owners Association, and her
family owns Marina San Carlos and other
marine interests.
We're breaking out the champagne here at the Latitude 38 office, for this is something we've worked on for decades with Tere and others, bending the ear of every Mexican official and journalist we could find. When a Mexico City newspaper recently interviewed us about how to make boat tourism in Mexico more attractive, we told them: 1. Get rid of domestic clearance, 2. Get rid of domestic clearance, 3. Get rid of domestic clearance.
Assuming Tere has interpreted the notice correctly, we can't emphasize how huge this is for cruisers, and how much more attractive it makes Mexico. For it means that when coming from
California, you only need to check in with the port captain and immigration at your first port of entry. After that, you only need to check out when you are leaving the country. Presumably, however, you'd have to keep your tourist card
current.
In a typical Mexico
cruise of the past, you'd have to check in and out of Cabo,
La Paz, Puerto Escondido, San Carlos, Mazatlan, San Blas, La Cruz, Nuevo Vallarta,
Puerto Vallarta, Barra de Navidad, and on and on. And things were never the same, for in some places you had to pay a ship's agent exorbitant
fees - $35 one day and $40 the next day - to check in and out of a
single port. That was on top of the real
fees, which were about $20 extra for both in and out. In addition, the varying hours of port captains, banks, immigration, and aduana - all of whom had to be visited - meant it could often take more than a day, and could not be done on weekends.
The net affect, assuming Tere has read the notice correctly, is that a
cruise in Mexico will cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars less each season, but more importantly, countless hours won't be wasted standing around filling out forms that were just tossed in a corner anyway. Lastly, it means that cruisers can move about whenever they want, not just when port captain and immigration office hours allowed it.
In our opinion, the clearing process has always been the one and only major knock on cruising Mexico, which is a great place to cruise.
Great God Almighty, we cruisers have been released! Viva Mexico!
I just enjoyed a 6 week cruise on the
Baja side and back and never had to present my papers or check in with anyone. Very nice....:-)