Honduran DMV story

Like anything we do here on Roatan getting our Honduran Driving Licence was an adventure. You can use your US drivers license but your supposed if your here permanently or more than 90 days get a local permit. Well obviously Cindy and I and most everyone else had not gotten around to that so we thought we better get this taken care of.

To get your license here you need to take to the police station (yes that is the DMV) the following: Medical exam from a doctor saying healthy, Eye test saying you can see, blood type, 2 pictures of yourself (passport style ones) passport and residency cards and of course money.

So we got all of this stuff together. We went to the clinic where Cindy works and the doctors examined me. They wrote a letter for me. Then I said "my wife had something to do but you know her can you write a letter for her to?" NO problem and so we got two letters paid twice but only one person had to sit there for an hour (island efficiency I suppose).

Now we possessed everything we needed (I thought). So we went to the station. I knew there would be trouble however as the power in that part of the island was out, you can tell when everyone is sitting outside and or the doors to the stores are open but the inside is dark.

We pull up to the police station, jail and DMV and who knows what else you can do there and of course they have no generator and no power and so we have no luck. Well later that day I am driving through that area and the power literally comes on while I am driving by. I call Cindy and we go over there again. There are no signs in the small station or any obvious way to know which of the doors to go into so we just start knocking (you want to be careful in a place where everyone has M-16's and pistols about just barging in). Finally we get in one room spend a few minutes explaining what we are wanting the guy then takes us to the right lady.

It is at this point we find out that they do not need to see our passports and residency cards they need copies of them. They of course do not have a copy machine at the station so we have to leave and go make copies and come back. We do this and come back in an hour after another adventure. This lack of a copy machine is an epedemic in central america. No place hardly has one and yet everyone needs copies. When we got our residency cards we had to do the same thing and within a block of the immigration office in La Ceiba (3rd largest city in Honduras) we found 5 copy makers of those only 1 had a working copier however but I digress.

Luckily the power is still on and we proceed. The first thing is we fill out a really long sheet of things about ourselves. The usual age, weight, etc. It is all in Spanish but we only have to ask a few times and we knock that out. Then she takes the form and goes to an old IBM Selectric typewriter and punches in each key one finger at a time. She literally types 1 fingered. So that takes a while. Then she does the same thing in a computer, more time. Then we sit in front of a Polaroid machine and they take our pictures. Then they have us sign this little card sized form that and put our right thumb print on the form (this is the backside of the card). Then she takes the picture and the form and laminates them together.

I gotta tell you what you get is a nice piece of local handiwork, somehow it reminds me of something guys make in their dorm rooms at college but here it is a real license. The best part is only $55 a person at the station + $5 for pictures and $27 each for the medical exam (remember the one where they never took my pulse, blood pressure and had me read a poster from across the room to check my eyes).

So if you go to get yours down here just plan to spend about 5 hours doing it and have all of the things I have told you about.