So today, John Mark and I took the Canadian team who has been with us for a week to the airport in Puerto Vallarta. We were driving La Fuenta's new 15 passenger van. Now this van is only supposed to be driven by one specific guy. When they tried to legalize it and bring it over the boarder, the government arbitrarily decided that they would not legalize any more cars for the year. They made that decision the day before the pastor from La Fuenta got to the border and tried to register the van with Mexican plates. After waiting at the boarder for three days, they decided to bring it down under a different vehicle classification, which means only one person, the only American on that trip, is supposed to drive it. Because legal complications and technicalities, this is not uncommon. John has been driving it all week, ferrying the team around.
Today, we passed a police checkpoint. We have passed this checkpoint several times, and rarely do we see anyone pulled over. This afternoon, John Mark was questioning the purpose of the five speed bumps at the check point, when a police officer motioned for us to pull over. We were both curious how this was going to go, considering John Mark was driving the van illegally. John Mark rolled down the window and the police officer asked for legal documents in Spanish. John and I looked at him blankly. He asked us "No espanole?" We shook our heads no. "en Mexico?" We smiled sheepishly.
He said in a thick Mexican accent, "When I was in San Diego, they were always telling me, you are in America. Speak English! Now you are in Mexico, and you do not speak Spanish!?" He started to smile.
We laughed and John said, "We've only been here a couple of weeks. I'm working on it."
The police officer shook his head, laughing at us, and motioned for us to merge back onto the highway. We lost it, and the three of us laughed heartily as John merged and we continued back to Bucerias.
Thank you, Jesus for turning a sticky situation into a funny story.
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