#106 – The Expat Files: Missing Car Emblems, Terminal Markets, and Survival Tips in Latin America

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:03] Hi everybody, I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America. The show that tells you what it's really like to live, work, play and or retire in Latin America. I tell it just like it is, not the version they give you in those glossy travel magazines, or the picture they paint for you in those international traveler websites, where they're only trying to sell you something. What's it really like for expats living in Latin America? Well, it's time to take off those rose colored glasses and find out. So let's get started. You know, a lot of new expats, visitors and travelers down here in Latin America ask me certain questions about odd things they see down here that they have no good explanation for themselves because they don't occur up in the first world. So when they see something strange down here, they just don't know what to make of it.

[00:49] So who do they end up asking when they can't get a good answer or they just don't know enough Spanish? Well, they end up asking guys like me and other long term expats. Now, here's a question I get all the time. How come so many cars and trucks down here, whether they're old or new, seem to be missing a piece of their chrome, namely the emblem that signifies the make or model of the car, made out of chrome, of course, usually located on the hood or the grill and on the backside of the car fastened to the trunk. The most obvious example, of course, being that oh so recognizable Mercedes Benz emblem, that little chrome hood ornament you see on every single Mercedes Benz car. That is until you come down here to Latin America and you find a lot of them are missing. So where in the hell did they go? And by the way, I kind of like those Mercedes Benz hood ornaments myself. They're kind of a nice throwback to the old nostalgic cars, the old boats like the Packards

[01:37] and the Lincoln's and the Hudson's and the Edsel's of your grandpa's day. Yep, those were the days all right. But what about it? Well, people ask me all the time down here, how come so many cars are missing those things? Even a car a week or two old sometimes is missing that symbol. So what's up with that? Well, the answer is very simple. There's a certain very active segment of the delinquent population who make their living prying these things off late model cars and they sell them back to the public in a very sleazy area of the city where the police, law enforcement and regulations are almost non-existent, which means basically no one does a thing about it. So it's a self-perpetuating business and those little emblem thieves are quick. They can pop one off your car in about five seconds. I've seen him do it. And after a good day's work, a kid could collect 10 or 15 of these, take them down

[02:23] to a very congested, dirty, chaotic and quite disgusting area of his city called the terminal, which means terminal, the bus terminal that is, and that's just what it is too. A bus terminal, a gigantic bus terminal where eventually every bus in the city ends up making a stop at least a few times a day. It's sort of like every Latin American city's version of Grand Central Station, only it's about 10 times scruffier because that's where the bus central offices are located, where the drivers end up changing shifts with other drivers and where buses are eventually repaired when they break down. Now, every terminal or bus terminal in the big city is a place where hundreds and hundreds of people are always loitering around trying to sell you something mixed in with all those hundreds of people trying to catch a bus. And no matter how chaotic it looks to you, there's some crude organization to it and

[03:09] in some of the bigger Latin American cities, the terminal area has turned into a kind of a city within a city. And down there in the terminal, people are selling anything and everything. And in the area where the sellers are, it's actually divided off into sections according to what kind of products they do sell. For example, there's always one big section where people are selling fruits and vegetables and fresh produce. And that area itself might be quite a few square blocks. And by the way, that is where you'll find the cheapest fruits, vegetables, and produce in the whole city. Because that's where the big trucks come in every day from the farms and sell their produce to the dozens and dozens of little vendors set up there. And those little vendors with their tiny little kiosks and tables, well, they have virtually no overhead like a big supermarket. In fact, they might not even have electricity or running water. They don't really need it because the market at the bus terminal is only open during the

[03:58] daytime. The little sellers in their kiosks down here are still doing business like they did a hundred years ago. And they're living hand to mouth too, like they did a hundred years ago. So you could say their businesses are solar powered, and they always have been. So down right next to that bus terminal area, you'll have the produce vendors. And there's usually blocks and blocks of them. And in a big city, sometimes as far as the eye can see, but also budding right up to them in the bus terminal are hundreds of other little vendors selling things like clothes and tires and radios and car parts, music CDs and DVDs and all kinds of pirated stuff, software, cell phones, shoes, hardware, you name it. And these places are not traditional stores as we know them. There's no doors or checkout counters or information booths, just hundreds and hundreds of makeshift

[04:43] little kiosks and tables filled with unimaginable quantities of that kind of stuff. And that too might go on for blocks and blocks as far as the eye can see, depending how big the city is. Now, like I said before, every city big and small has a place called the terminal where the buses all eventually congregate and you can buy practically everything and anything. And the advantage of going down there is that you can buy everything cheaper than you can buy in the regular stores down here. But shopping at the terminal does have its dangers, though I'm not recommending that you should avoid it completely. Sure, you can get a lot of great deals and it's a really interesting experience for a first world person, but I recommend that you never go down there alone. You should always bring somebody with you. Because believe it or not, when you go down to the terminal, when you're in a city off the tourist track, and you probably know by now that's where I always prefer to go off the tourist track, anyway, it won't take long for you to realize that you might be the only

[05:31] first worlder or gringo in the whole damn place. And you know what? You're going to stick out like a sore thumb. For one thing, you're not only going to be at least a head taller than most of the people walking around down there. Chances are you're going to act and dress a lot different than the locals down there do too. And by the way, the people buying and selling down in the terminal are lower class people. You're not going to see middle class and upper middle class people in the terminal ever. In fact, a good percentage of the people that work down there live right in the back or alongside their little kiosks with their kids and their families. And as one of my old hippie expat friends once said, the way those people live in the terminal is just to step up from the housing that we had at Woodstock. Anyway, like I said before, the middle class and upper middle class Latins don't go down to the terminal. Because for class conscious, upwardly mobile Latins, it's not at all the proper place

[06:18] to see or be seen. So naturally, when you're dealing with a lower class of people like that, the majority of whom are doing business off the books and not paying any taxes at all, that, along with the fact that a lot of the stuff they sell is stolen, well, that's why they can sell their stuff so cheap. Even cheaper than the regular rock bottom prices you'll find in the usual stores throughout Latin America, the ones that are registered and on the books. And once again, I'm talking about places off the tourist track now. Oh, and let's not forget all these little sellers in the terminal. They have nearly zero overhead. So that's another reason they sell things so cheap. And you know, when I say a lot of the stuff that they sell is either stolen or pirated, that's certainly true. But it's not true at all when it comes to people who are selling food and produce because they get their inventory directly from the trucks coming in from the farms. So you can trust that they got their stuff legitimately and it's not stolen.

[07:06] But as far as the blocks and blocks of all the other kiosks and tables selling all kinds of junk from radios to shoes and belts and cell phones, well, you just know there's some hanky-panking going on because you never get a legitimate receipt or a guarantee, no matter what you buy. For example, I bought a 16 gigabyte Kingston Flash, you know, one of those little USBs. I bought one of those in the terminal for about a third of the price of what I had paid in one of the local electronics stores. And it was exactly the same thing, in the very same factory sealed package. But you see, in an electronics store, they'll give you a year guarantee and a receipt. But the kiosk will give you neither. Now I ask you, why do you think they do that? Okay, but let's get back to those missing car emblems now. Well, if you're walking through the terminal, with a friend or two, of course, because I

[07:52] do recommend you go down there, but never alone. And by the way, when you do go down there, for security reasons, you should always park your car in a secure parking lot and never on the street. Even though there's always a guy standing on the curb, willing to watch your car for about a buck or two, and I guarantee that same guy will have some soap and a rag and a bucket of water, and he'll offer to wash your car for a buck and a half too. Well, when you're near the terminal, you don't want to do that. In other parts of the town, where it's much safer, you can park on the streets and let one of those guys wash your car for a buck and a half, but don't do it when you're near the terminal. And by the way, speaking of parking, here's a good tip. If you're in another, seemingly better part of town, and you get the itch to park on the street because it's much closer to your destination, and or the guarded parking lots are far away or all filled, I find it's perfectly safe to park on the street as long as the other

[08:40] cars parked alongside that same street are cars in about the same condition as yours or better. Just like when buying a house, you don't want to have the nicest house in the neighborhood. So if you're driving a Chevy and there's a few Range Rovers parked nearby, go ahead and park on the street, you're a-okay. But once again, if you're driving to the terminal, don't park on the street. Look for a guarded parking lot nearby, there will be plenty of them. And make sure the parking lot attendant gives you a dated stamp and receipt and just doesn't tip his hat and give you a wave and say, don't worry about a thing, I'll watch your car. That way you know the attendant and his place are legit. And remember to dress down, leave your cell phones at home or hidden in your car and make sure they're turned off because you don't want your parking lot attendant or anyone hanging around to hear your cell phone ringing off the hook when you're not in the car and

[09:26] you're out and about shopping. Well, you don't want to give them any ideas. So leave the cell phone in the car, hidden and turned off. And I shouldn't have to tell you, forget the jewelry, the cameras and the fanny packs too. You're going to the terminal to look around and maybe buy something. So there's no point in bringing anything of value in with you really. Just bring some cash and have most of it hidden in your secret pouch, which I talked about on a previous show. So you can check that out in your archives if you want some more information on that. And by the way, about that secret pouch, like I told you before, that's where you keep your passport and your credit cards and some real money and a tiny flash drive that has copies of all your important papers if you ever need them and make sure you have that encrypted so that if you ever lose or misplace that little flash drive, whoever gets it will never be able to figure out what's in it.

[10:12] And one of the very best free encryption programs is called PGP, which stands for pretty good privacy. So just put PGP encryption in Google and you'll get the program for free. And it's so easy to use, you won't believe it. And it's got what they call a self decrypting feature, which means you don't have to have the program installed at all to unencrypt something that you've encrypted before. In other words, you just click on an encrypted file and it says, what's your password? And you stick it in and it decrypts automatically. Whatever computer, whatever flash drive you're using, it doesn't matter. It's not necessary at all to have the PGP program installed to do that. You only need to have it installed when you want to actually do encryptions. And once you've encrypted those files, you never need that program again to unencrypt them. And since I mentioned encryption, which I use all the time, by the way,

[10:58] so I don't get a flood of emails asking me what kind of encryption I use and how I do it. So now I'll tell you how I do it. Well, suppose you want a copy of your passport and your credit cards, permanently encrypted on your little flash drive, which a smart expat will always do. Well, you use a cheap scanner and you scan them into a JPEG file, stick them in your computer and make sure the file size for each document is well under one megabyte. You don't have to be ultra high resolution with these things. I find one or 200 kilobytes is just fine for each document scanned. And if you don't have a scanner, just go to Office Depot or Kinko's and they'll do it all for you. Then you use the PGP encryption program that you've installed on your computer. And remember, the download is free. And now those scan JPEGs of your passport and your credit cards and your driver's license and your plane tickets or whatever are individual files that are encrypted on your computer.

[11:47] Now you move those encrypted files into your little flash drive that you're going to take with you. And you put that in your secret pouch. And in the future, if you ever have to show anyone or print it out, you just shove that flash drive in any old computer, click on the file and it says, this file is encrypted. What is the password? And of course, you know the password so it unencrypts automatically. And don't forget that password, okay? And here's the cool thing. PGP encryption is used by the United States Defense Department. So I guess it's pretty good. Not that I have one ounce of love for the Defense Department. In fact, I think they're an all round pretty evil organization. But if they use PGP, I guess it's good enough for a schmuck like me. All right, enough about that secret pouch. Now you're walking through the terminal with a friend or two

[12:33] and you come across a kiosk that's just loaded with chrome car emblems like Toyota and Mercedes and Audi. You name it, they've got them all. And they even have all the names of the late model cars, in chrome of course, the ones that are fastened to the trunk of every car. Like Volkswagen Jetta or Fox or Suzuki Sidekick, you know what I mean. Okay, now suppose you do have a Volkswagen Jetta and you left it at a shopping mall parking lot and you came back and it no longer said Volkswagen Jetta in the back because somebody jacked your little chrome piece. And now all you can see is a dirty outline of the words Volkswagen Jetta along with about six or seven holes punched in the metal where the thing was fastened. Well, you're going to be pissed off of course, but you've got three alternatives. You can either leave it alone and not have it replaced, which is the Latin thing to do

[13:20] after you've had it ripped off two or three times and replaced. But believe me, first worlders can't get used to driving around a late model car with a piece of chrome missing. You know what I'm talking about. So for us, that's not an option. But there's two other choices. You can go down to the dealer and pay about 50 bucks for another piece of chrome or you can go down to the terminal. Find that little kiosk or maybe there's two or even three that sells those very items. And there you'll pay about 10 or 15 bucks for the exact same replacement. And who knows, it might be the very same one that got stolen from your car a couple of days earlier. Okay, and here comes one of my favorite Expat Eddie stories. Now Expat Eddie has had a lot of cars and naturally a lot of car emblems stolen and a lot of radios too because Eddie likes to go out at night to the bars

[14:05] and drink a little too much sometimes. And sometimes it takes him a day or two to get back to his car. Especially when he's been partying with some new friends he's just met and he ends up crashing at someone else's apartment. Which is vintage Expat Eddie because he's crashed a few times at my house too. And when I ask him the next morning where he put his car, sometimes it takes him a pot of coffee to remember. And Eddie's big on losing his keys too. Not to mention he's pretty lax about that parking on the street rule. And concerning that, I always recommend to Expats and visitors. It's okay to park on the street in the big city in a big commercial district during the daytime. But don't do it at night. And Eddie, well, he breaks that rule a lot. Anyway, when Eddie's little restaurant businesses started taking off, and if you heard me talking about Expat Eddie in the past, you'll remember he made his fortune in El Salvador.

[14:52] Anyway, he went out and bought a brand new Mitsubishi Nativa. You know, one of those Mitsubishi SUVs. And by the time he had it a half year, he'd already had some of the emblems stolen three different times. And the first two times, he went down to the dealership and bought the original parts for like 50 bucks each. And the third time, he went down to the terminal and bought one for 10. Now here's the thing. Mitsubishi Nativas are not so popular down in Latin America. Sure, you see them once in a while, but they're not big sellers like Toyota Forerunners and RAVs and Land Cruisers. In fact, for every 10 Toyota Forerunners you might see on the road, you'll see one Mitsubishi Nativa, which means you might be driving around in a big city in Latin America all day long, a city of millions in that C1 Nativa. But that doesn't really matter. If you go down to the terminal, looking for a chrome insignia that's been swiped off your car,

[15:40] you'll probably be able to find a replacement. The fact is, any model of car that they sell at a dealership down here, you'll find parts down at the terminal. In fact, Eddie told me when he went down to the terminal and found his piece, there was three other ones just like it. So obviously there is a market, even with cars that aren't big sellers. Now the third time Eddie got his chrome piece swiped, he told me he had a plan. What he did was, he had that piece put back on his car the usual way, with three or four metal pin fasteners like they do at the factory. But Eddie went one step further. That third replacement was also being held onto the car by a film of double barrel epoxy, which you might know as some of the strongest glue there is. And Eddie figured, rightfully so, if somebody tried to steal it again, they'd have a really hard time getting it off and the crooks would probably give up and move on to another car. Well, a month or two later,

[16:26] Eddie found out he was half right. The chrome piece was really difficult to remove, but the crooks didn't move on to another car. They just worked on it all the harder and scarred up his paint job and put a dent in his trunk in the process. And after that, Eddie called me. He was fit to be tied. So the next day he drags me down to the terminal and all the way in the car I said, Eddie, why don't you just forget about it? Don't replace it. Leave it alone. You can live without that little chrome doodad. Who cares? But Eddie said, nope, I'm going to take care of this. I gotta have it right. Which shows that even Expat Eddie has some first world standards left. So we head down to that little kiosk in the terminal and sure enough, there were three little chrome pieces with the exact Mitsubishi insignia that Eddie needed. But now here's where it gets interesting. Eddie picked up each one of those three pieces and fingered them. Then he turned them over on the table and on the backside,

[17:13] one of them had three little straight line grooves cut into the metal. It looked like somebody had scored the backside with a Dremel tool. And then when I look closer, I noticed it wasn't really three little grooves at all. It was a capital E for Eddie. Eddie had grounded his name in the back of that piece before he had it fastened to his car. Good old Expat Eddie had set a trap. Good move, Eddie. Now the guy that was running that kiosk didn't know what was happening because Eddie and I were speaking in English. But he figured something was up because this is like the third time Eddie's been back to buy the same thing in a couple of months. And then Eddie explains to the guy that this is the stolen piece from his car and that he scratched the letter E in the backside of it with his Dremel tool so that he could prove that it was from his car if it ever got stolen again.

[18:00] But the little guy in the kiosk wasn't buying it. Instead, he just dropped his price from 10 bucks down to 7 bucks because Eddie was a good, frequent customer. And the more Eddie argued with the guy, the less the guy would budge. Until finally Eddie said he was going to walk over to a police cruiser that he pointed out about two blocks away and he was going to bring a cop over and explain the situation to him. And then Eddie said, we'll let him decide what happens. And that's when the little guy in the kiosk dropped his price down to 5 bucks. But Eddie had an ace in the hole. He dug into his pocket, pulled out his little Sony digital camera, flicked through some of the pictures, and guess what? Eddie had taken a photo of the backside of that piece of chrome right after he'd scratched his name into it. Right before he'd fastened it back on his car. And when he showed that to the guy in the kiosk and explained to him what he'd done,

[18:48] well the little guy relented and gave Eddie the piece for nothing. All the while making up all kinds of excuses saying that he was an honest man and that his business was 100% legit. Then he explained that the suppliers and the people who sell him this stuff were surely the ones responsible if there was any hanky-panky going on, of course. He's just a reseller of goods, that's it. And then he pointed to the back wall at the end of his kiosk where he had a microwave oven, a little TV, a chair, and a statue of the Virgin Mary with a couple of burnt candles in front of it. And then he said to Eddie, I swear on the Madonna. And then he made the sign of the cross, kissed his fingers, and touched the forehead of the statue. I had to say it was a real good performance. And then Eddie said to me, which Madonna is he talking about? The material girl? Meanwhile, this scruffy little street kid, about 14 years old, comes over with a little sack,

[19:35] opens it up and dumps out about 15 chrome car emblems on the counter. And then Eddie gives the kid a dirty look and says, there better not be one of mine in there kid or I'll kill ya. So okay, with that episode over, everybody's happy. We're walking back to the car. And Eddie decided he wanted to take a swing through the fruit and vegetable market. And that took about 10 or 20 minutes. And then we got lost for a bit. Then we took some more wrong turns and eventually ended up back at the car. But only after weaving our way through some very tight passages and throngs of people. Talk about putrid smells and the unwashed masses. Just take a few deep breaths when you're walking through the terminal and you'll know what I mean. So anyway, we finally get back to the parking lot and get to Eddie's car. And suddenly, Eddie starts panicking. He's digging around in his pockets and he can't find his keys. Then there's a big sigh of relief when he does locate him.

[20:22] But once we're in the car and he starts the engine up, he starts checking his pockets in a panic once again. And he suddenly jumps out of the car in the parking lot, makes a few circles around it. He bends down and looks underneath the frame and yells out, somebody freaking stole my camera. And there he was all pissed off holding that little piece of chrome in his hand that he got back for nothing. And all I could do is repeat something Eddie already knew. I said, Eddie, welcome to Latin America. And then he looked at me and rolled his eyes and he said, I know, I know, don't rub it in. I never should have brought my camera. I said, no, Eddie, it's not that you shouldn't have brought it to the terminal. It's that you took it out and showed somebody at the terminal. But that didn't make Eddie feel any better. And then I said, don't worry, Eddie, we can come back tomorrow. I know a little kiosk where we can buy one just like it.

[21:08] And you know, Eddie was beside himself the rest of the day. And I said, Eddie, you know, that camera wasn't so expensive. You can get another one like it for about 100 bucks. Who cares? Just go out and get yourself another one. It'll be half the size and half the price of that one. And then he looked at me and he said, Johnny, it's not the camera. There were certain pictures in that camera. And then he gave me that look of despair. And I knew just what he was talking about. So there are a few morals to this story. One is, don't buy a luxury late model car when you're living in Latin America. Unless you want to go through what Eddie's been going through. Not to mention, when you do have a late model expensive SUV, the cops like to pull you over. And both me and Eddie can verify that. And the cops aren't trying to cause real trouble for you. They're just trying to extort a little bribe money out of you. Because they know if you drive a car like that, a $20 or $30 bribe won't mean that much to you.

[21:54] They know you'd rather handle a $20 and be on your way, than let them hold you up for an hour going through your paperwork and rooting through your car on the pretense of looking for drugs and guns and contraband and stuff. And as for me, in the past, I had a brand new Toyota 4 runner once, which I got rid of after about a year and a half, because I'd been pulled over at least 10 times, and went through that very same kind of treatment. And once I switched over to a late model, non-descript Nissan sedan, I never got pulled over again. Alright, and the second moral to this story is, when you go down to the terminal, or any place in a big city where there are throngs of unwashed masses, dress down and don't carry anything of value with you. Because you'll be spotted as a foreigner right away, and you'll just be a target. But if you look more like you're roughing it backpacker style,

[22:40] without the backpack of course, you won't have any trouble and the locals won't even bother with you. Oh yeah, and there is another moral to this story. Don't ever take any photos of yourself, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your husband, or your wife, that you wouldn't want the world to see up on the internet. Just ask Eddie, he's still smarting from that one. And I quit mentioning it to him, because he gets a little dour when I bring it up. Oh and by the way, here's a good time to talk about car keys down here in Latin America. Now I'm sure all you guys up in the first world have lost your car keys at one time or another, I sure have. I remember calling a locksmith at 9 or 10 at night, at least two times in my life up in Chicago. And it wasn't cheap either. Well chances are, if you drive a car down here in Latin America, the same thing is gonna happen to you sooner or later. So here's what I suggest, so it never happens to you again. You get an extra key made, you wrap a layer of masking tape around it,

[23:27] and you put it in your little secret safety pouch, where you have your little flash drive, your passport, your ID documents, and your credit cards, and all that good stuff. So if you lose your key, you gotta spare. Now the reason why you wrap it in masking tape, is because there are some sharp edges on the grooves cut in every key. So if it sits for a long time in your secret pouch for months and months, even years, in time as you walk around and sit down and your pouch moves and flexes, a sharp edge on a key will wear a little hole through the mesh or the fabric or the nylon that makes up that pouch. And someday, when you're least likely to notice it, the thing will tear and you might lose that key, some documents, and maybe even that little gold piece that I always recommend that you keep in that secret safety pouch in case of a dire emergency. And just to review that for a second,

[24:13] if you do have a one ounce piece of gold in that little secret safety pouch, like a one ounce cougarand or a one ounce Canadian maple leaf, if you get everything stolen but your pants and your belt, you'll still have that little secret safety pouch. And every bank, jewelry store, pawn shop, and coin dealer in the world will recognize a cougarand in a Canadian maple leaf, and they'll give you today's spot price. And in fact, today's spot price is about $1,600 or $1,700. All that for a gold coin that's about as big as a US half dollar. Oh, and I almost forgot, another thing about getting those chrome pieces stolen off your car, those insignias like Toyota and Honda. Well, you know, even for small, inexpensive items like that, there's a pretty big market with the thieves, that is. Because you see, ripping off one of those things takes about 10 seconds and busting a car window and stealing a radio takes about a minute and a half.

[24:58] Plus, doing all that is pretty noisy. And once you're inside of a car, well, the alarm is likely to go off. And anyone who's got a late model car down here does have an alarm, just like they do up in the first world. Even though, like up in the first world, nobody pays particular attention when they do go off. Besides, once you've broken a window and you're in a car, stealing a radio or rifling through the glove compartment, there's always a chance that someone's going to catch you right in the act. But if you're just walking down the street or in a parking lot, popping off car insignias with a screwdriver, if you see anybody coming, you could take off in a hurry, no sweat. And here's the thing, I've seen in the paper hundreds of times, where thieves have been caught in the act breaking and entering a car, but I've never once seen in the paper that anybody's ever been caught for stealing those chrome insignias. So it's kind of like jaywalking versus running a red light. They're both illegal, but the cops don't do much if you jaywalk.

[25:47] Anyway, that's what happens up in the first world. Down here, the cops don't care much if you run a red light either. Hell, the cops themselves do it all the time. And jaywalking? Well, they've never even heard of that. Anyway, I just like to say that stealing those chrome insignias knows no boundaries. In fact, the other day, I happened to be at the Swiss embassy down in El Salvador, and I noticed in the parking lot, all those luxury bulletproof BMWs and Mercedes, belonging to those ambassadors, ambassadors aides, and all those worthless political bigwigs. Well, guess what? They had their share of insignias ripped off too. Not to mention the other day, I was driving alongside two late model police cruisers. These were 2010 Toyota Hilux pickup trucks, which is standard issue for the police down here in almost every Latin American country. Anyway, both of those cars, police cars no less, were missing a couple of chrome Toyota insignias.

[26:37] So it's quite obvious that the crooks don't even care who they steal from, police or ambassadors or the common man. And oh yeah, I did mention before that a guy could walk through a parking lot and pop off 10 of those chrome insignias at a crack with just a small screwdriver. Well, the fact is, that's where most of that stuff happens. In parking lots, in secure parking lots no less, enclosed by walls and fences and heavily guarded, you'd think you'd be safe. Well, you're not. And that's why the sign in every parking lot says, we're not responsible for any loss or damages to your vehicle. Which is why I think it would be a great opportunity for an expat or expat wannabe if he opened a parking lot down in Latin America in any big city and he put up a big sign that says, we are responsible for all your losses and damage to your vehicle. Of course, we charge a bit more, but you're buying a premium service.

[27:24] Now I know that everyone with a nice car down here would gladly pay a little extra if they get that kind of service. Now there's an idea whose time has come. You've been listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America, coming to you each week from somewhere south of the border. And don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America, theexpatfiles at gmail.com. Once again, theexpatfiles at gmail.com. See you next time on Spamos.