island car #2

It's amazing: The most stressful thing all of our coworkers talk about is car shopping. It's incredibly difficult to find a car you're satisfied with in two weeks time! No one wants to spend a lot of money on a vehicle that only needs to last two years, but everyone is terrified of buying something that will break down every other second. I don't want to break down any more than anyone else, but honestly, the island is so small, you're no more than a stone's throw from someone you know who could give you a ride.  So in the end, everyone ends up buying a car that they'd NEVER consider back home (case in point).  Like one guy I met today apparently is a pretty high maintenance guy - he wears Gucci shoes and gets pedicures and has had his hair straightened (which is MIND BOGGLING because his hair is really short). But he ended up buying an infamous red Maruti Gypsy - some car that is purportedly only sold in India - which doesn't have a door on the back, or A/C, or a radio.... but it was only $900! So we're all kind of jealous.

Maruti Gypsy. Except this one is nice compared to K's.

So, bearing all that in mind, and remembering that our first car is a station wagon, I'm pretty excited about car #2. Once again, it's not flashy, and it's certainly not new, but it has an island vibe, it'll go through all kinds of puddles, and the A/C works just fine.  Readers, please welcome to the family our '98 Mitsubishi Pajero.

We bought it off of a guy from NS' firm who is leaving the island. He wanted $4K CI, and we paid him $3.6K CI.  (EVERYTHING is negotiated here.)  The mechanic found nothing wrong with it! You don't understand what an unheard of statement this is regarding island cars.

Oh, and that little periscope thing above the passenger wheel (remember, it's a right-side drive) is for seeing the lines when parallel parking. Brilliant!

One funny note about the title transfer process: So I take the vehicle and my new insurance policy to the driver's licensing center in West Bay, and the lady behind the counter looks over all my paperwork and I'm almost set to go when she asks me to sign a couple forms, which I proceed to do. However, in comparing my signature to the one on my new Cayman license, she wasn't satisfied I was the same person, since I had taken my time signing the driver's license and had basically scribbled on title transfer form. I had to sign three times before she was convinced! At least security measures are sufficiently tight here.