#227 – The Expat Files: Car Theft, Insurance, and Hygiene in Latin America

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

[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now as I wonder My thoughts ever straight 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 so let's get started Now today due to Overwhelming email demand I've been asked to talk a little bit more about what happened at the seminar Not that anyone's holding their breath to see if anything bad happened It's just that quite a lot of people wanted to attend the one we just had but due to money scheduling work or personal things

[00:51] They just weren't able to attend But I do have a growing waiting list for the next one whenever that one might be who knows how many months from now Anyway, as you might imagine with a group of 20-something very smart very educated and very opinionated people on that tour and adventurous types to boot Actually, I wouldn't have it any other way You got to know we got into some very profound deep and interesting conversations since we were with each other day and night And of course a lot of very interesting questions came up regarding the expat lifestyle and some of those questions We'll get into in the upcoming shows But as for now, I'd like to get to an email that just caught my eye It's from a guy who wrote me and he calls himself the wise old owl now first before I get to his email

[01:38] He sent me a link to a news article about a guy from Chicago who's had his car stolen a few times now this guy An order to stop people from stealing his car again And because he doesn't want to pay those sky-high insurance premiums Naturally his premiums have gone way way up from what I remember every time you make a claim They go up and by the way when you're down here in Latin America And you get car insurance and I do recommend third-party liability coverage from 100 to 175 bucks a year Anyway, if you do decide to get full coverage collision and theft you'll find that unlike the US if you make a claim Your premium does not go up. Now. I'm not saying that in the future They won't catch on to those first-world tactics But as for now at least as long as I've been down here long-term

[02:24] Expats are just amazed that their premiums don't go up after an accident though Of course premiums do go up on an annual basis like everything else due to inflation So for example my liability insurance coverage, which runs about 150 bucks a year where I am well last year It was about a hundred and forty four bucks, so it went up about four percent But it had nothing to do with my driving record. It was an increase across the board for everyone you get it So anyway I was talking about this article about the guy from Chicago who'd had his car stolen a couple times and now he's got an Idea of his own a pretty cool idea actually What he did was he went on eBay and he bought himself a Denver boot. You know what those things are, right? It's one of those yellow or orange metal clamps that cops put on your tire when you've committed a parking violation

[03:12] Well, I never knew you could buy those things on eBay or on the internet, but they're there I checked it myself little did I know but you could buy anything on the internet these days You could buy a tank a jet a gattling gun or even a scud missile Looks like the only thing you can't buy on the internet these days is peace of mind Sorry, but you'll have to move out of the country for that Anyway, the Chicago guy bought one of these Denver boots for a hundred bucks And he carries it in the trunk of his car and every time he parks on the street. He clamps it to his front wheel Obviously with a boot on his car. No one's ever gonna steal it. They'd be nuts to even try and As a secondary effect most cops will just drive right by and not give him a ticket Even if he is violating a parking ordinance

[03:57] Anyway, this guy the wise old owl sent me this link because he said hey look if new car theft is such a problem down there In Latin America, why not do what this guy did? Well, you know, that could be a solution All right, and it seems there's no law against it at least that I know of even up in the States But to tell you the truth in my experience down here people don't get their cars stolen when they're in a guarded parking lot They get their cars stolen when they park them on the street So as long as you find a guarded parking lot, you're okay But if you do intend to park on the street that Denver boot trick will work just fine But there's no reason really to park on the street except to save a few bucks Since guarded parking lots down here will cost you anywhere from a half a buck to two bucks an hour

[04:43] Depending on the size of the city and the section of town you're in so obviously parking in a guarded lot is secure And it's not gonna break you but you still have to take precautions When you have things in your car of value when you park in a guarded lot In fact just a few weeks ago I parked in a guarded parking lot went to a restaurant came back out an hour later and the police were standing around and a woman Was crying the car right next to mine had its side window removed and it was on the ground Someone had gotten into that lot silently removed that piece of glass and stole her computer, which was on the front seat The some people never learn yet They didn't touch me and I had my computer in my car But it was tucked on the floor in the back seat with a painter's drop cloth over it a very used looking painter's drop cloth

[05:30] I might add the perfect foil and by the way about those Denver boots down here in Latin America They do use them in medium to large cities But only in the very busy government and business districts You'll almost never see him on the outskirts of big cities or in towns of 50,000 or under now about a year and a half ago I was talking to a cop in Tegucigalpa Honduras and I asked him about the Denver boot Which they don't call the Denver boot. They call it a sepo here. That's sepo Anyway, he said a lot of first-world do-gooder police forces like up in Switzerland and England and Japan in the US They send things like Denver boots sepos down as donations And they also send things like radar guns and fingerprint readers and breathalyzers, too

[06:18] And he said that their first donation of about 25 sepos that came from some police force in Austria Well, they sat in a bodega That's a storage room for over six years before anyone even bothered to try to figure out how they worked now He said that was about six or seven years ago But still that says a lot about the police and transit departments down here now Doesn't it and it also says a lot about stupid first-world governments So what if the transit department down here puts a sepo on your car? Well, you'll pay about 25 to 35 bucks, but it's not that easy and here's the catch Because this is Latin America the third world and all the government officials are on super manana time Depending where you are you could be sitting around for a half a day or more waiting to get that thing removed

[07:06] But we're talking about car theft here and the solution for expats is simple like I said so many times just don't have a brand new upscale car and you're not gonna get it stolen and Of course parking a guarded lot But you know there are a lot of ways to skin a cat and Eddie knows a guy in San Pedro Sula Honduras who figured out a very cheap and dirty way for foiling would-be thieves from stealing his upscale SUV And then you got to hand it to the guy. I'd call it a nice case of Latin ingenuity Though his solution is a time waster. It really does work What he does is when he parks his car. He lets the air out of one of his front tires completely and of course He only does that when he's in a kind of a questionable or bad neighborhood and he can't find a guarded parking lot now

[07:53] No thief in his right mind is gonna steal that car Right, and if they have a mind to steal anything they're gonna move on to the next one now in the trunk of the car The guy's got a tank of propane gas the kind that you use for your Weber grill But he's got the thing charged up with regular old air from the gas station not propane gas And since there's a pressure gauge on the thing well He knows if it's charged up with air or not that means when he's ready to leave He just pulls it out of the trunk charges up his tire and goes and Eddie says it takes him all of about a minute And a half to do it sounds pretty nifty, right? but if you want to avoid all that crap and rigmarole just go to expat wisdom calm or email me and I'll send you my Ignition cutout circuit, you know the one I told you about a long time ago You just put a five dollar switch between your ignition coil or your starter wire and switch that thing off

[08:45] Anywhere you park and only someone who knows where that switch is hidden like you Will ever be able to start that car and though it may take an hour or two to install that thing It'll give you a tremendous peace of mind and you'll never have to have your car covered for theft But always remember that the best fallback position is to buy a car That's a couple of years old a common car That's not all that flashy and forget about buying an SUV if you do you're just asking for trouble Okay. Now, let's get to the meat of the wise old owls email. He says dear Johnny I've been working my way forward through your first shows and I'm up to July of 2011 and so far the thing I keep hearing that would stop me from coming down more than anything is how dirty

[09:32] Everything is I'm kind of obsessive compulsive about cleanliness Sort of like the TV detective monk, but not quite that bad I'm especially that way in regard to what I eat So it sounds like I would starve to death down there Plus I would probably not make too many friends because I would simply not eat anything cooked in someone else's home After what you said about the way they store and sell meat down there And I would definitely want to be able to flush my used toilet paper after use toilet paper and garbage cans yuck My question is are all Latin American countries that dirty with nothing approaching first-world concerns for sanitation? Isn't there even one place in all of Latin America?

[10:19] Preferably in one of those eternal spring climate zones where they have higher standards Where the local food might be at least as clean as what you might find in a first-world McDonald's or Burger King Which is still a pretty low standard The thing is I don't cook or prepare my own food and since I am retired Most of the time I simply microwave a frozen prepared dinner such as the type made by Marie Calendar Boston Market or Swanson Do they even sell frozen dinners like that in supermarkets and are they safe to eat? And yes, I know that frozen dinners may not be the healthiest things to eat either But at least I don't have to cook them and up here there's a reasonable expectation that the food processors will have some regard for cleanliness and you should know that I've never been out of the

[11:08] United States except for Canada and that was before you had to have a passport to go there So basically all I know about Latin America is what I've heard on your programs And you know, I really shouldn't laugh there because in reality he's right I can't find anyone on the internet that tells all of it the good the bad and the ugly Without trying to sell you something at the end of the spiel And if there is someone out there doing this kind of stuff, please tell me so I can have his legs broken No, just kidding. Okay that emails from the wise old owl and here's what I have to say about that First of all, yes, Latin America is dirty sometimes filthy and even occasionally repulsive compared to first-world standards But that's not at all the standard that we long-term expats hold for ourselves

[11:53] The fact is very few of us who aren't backpackers ever go native in the hygiene department And no, I didn't say naked in the hygiene department I said native in the hygiene department But speaking of naked the next time you're in a hotel room and you're sitting naked on that bedspread Don't think you're the only one who's ever done that Yuck, huh, or maybe not depending? Anyway in order to maintain our basic first-world standards of hygiene. Here's a few tips Now like I said before almost all long-term expats have full or part-time maids Sometimes live in maids and they're gonna come to you with very very bad habits And it'll take you a while to whip them into shape But you'll have to do that or else they're just gonna spend all day pushing the dirt around and that's why I've repeated

[12:42] Time and time again that there's a great business opportunity in that any first-world expat who offers up a maid training School and I'm talking just a day long or a weekend course here And if you present it and market it right You'll have every upper-middle class and wealthy woman sending her maid for training at your little Institute And the funny thing is that Latins won't send their maids to that kind of a school because they're actually Dissatisfied by the way their maids are cleaning their houses The fact is Latins who have maids really don't know the difference because that's absolutely the way it's always been So the boss lady won't send her maid to your little school Because she actually hopes the maid is gonna clean better when she's finished with the course They'll send them there because of the first world connection because they're sold on everything and anything that comes out of the US

[13:33] The maid will come out of your course with a diploma in hand and the boss lady will have bragging rights It's that gringo advantage working for you again and I'll tell you you really do have to whip your maids into shape because remember where they're coming from the vast majority of them live In houses where they burn wood for cooking and they drink wash and cook with unpurified tap water and in their little houses They don't even have water 24 hours a day since they're hooked up to the local Municipal water supply which is nearly always at very low pressure and rationed and you can bet that most of them have a couple of chickens in the driveway and some stray dog pets that often wander in and out of the house and They never train those dogs and chickens You can't train so that gives you a kind of an idea what kind of hygiene basics they bring to the table and with that

[14:23] Shortage of household water. Obviously, they're not washing up after they hit the bathroom. Not like we do That's for sure and they don't wash up before they eat They just learn to get by with very little water and those are the kind of habits They're gonna bring into your house and your maid and your cleaning lady Of course will be your cook to if she's a living she'll be cooking all your meals And if she just comes in every day on a day shift, she'll probably do at least lunch and breakfast for you Now expat Eddie owns a couple of restaurants more than a couple of them and what he says is if you want to see just how unsanitary the average Latin is when they cook dinner or Prepare any kind of food. All you got to do is stick a camera in your kitchen and watch your maid prepare lunch Warning be prepared for a shock

[15:10] for one thing they Barely clean fruit and vegetables before they eat them or serve them to you and like Gary Nall says the average piece of fruit or vegetable gets touched at least 20 times before it makes it to your mouth a Pretty revolt and thought I know but it's even worse down here because people don't wash their hands And I know this isn't much of a consolation But the men are ten times worse than the women and let me tell you something else You didn't know down here first world hotel chains Franchises and restaurants don't want their clients to get sick. Well, that part's obvious and it's really bad PR, right? Even though here in Latin America, there's nobody to sue word gets around if people get sick at a particular restaurant So, is there any government department minding the store? What about restaurant inspections like up in the first world?

[16:01] That's a very good question And basically a restaurant is only inspected right before it gets the permission the paperwork to open and except for high-volume Tourists areas like Costa Rica and Panama unless somebody dies from food poisoning at that restaurant. It'll never get inspected again Not so encouraging right, but there is some good news In every medium to large city in Latin America. There's a kind of a health department You can usually find a little office the so-called health department located in Municipal buildings in medium and large cities and don't think for one minute. It's like a health department in the United States They'll usually be just one desk with a bureaucrat who is clueless about anything you might ask

[16:46] But those little so-called health departments provide at least one valuable service Kind of and it was something that expat Eddie clued me in on now when Eddie or any legitimate restaurant owner We're not talking about people in kiosks selling tacos and burgers on the street now Anyway, when a legit restaurant owner hires a person from a general want ad or even a person off the street from a sign They put in a window most restaurants and hotels will ask for a certificate of manipulation in Spanish Certificado de manipulation from the government What they're asking for is that the person has a certified food handling certificate? Now you get that down at one of those little health departments by going to an afternoon class

[17:32] To learn the basics in hygiene and that little class is held about once a week in the local municipal building Well, I take that back Sometimes it's not held in the municipal building at all because Eddie says Often he'll send a new employee down there to get the training and they'll come back saying that when they got there There was a sign on the door that said the date was changed and the building was changed Usually to some unknown place in another section of town, but this is Latin America, you know That's why you hear the words lo siento so much down here, which means I'm sorry or sorry about that It's the catch-all phrase for everything that goes wrong and everything that doesn't work lo siento Not to be confused with the even more common phrase no priacuparte, which means don't worry

[18:18] Which can really mean just the opposite so anyway Just in about the last five or ten years all these little health departments have created this certificate of the manipulation Because the nicer restaurants and hotels kind of demanded that the government stepped in to make sure that the lower classes who are Employed in all that food handling work know about sanitation and how to handle food properly Now eddie says in that four-hour class. They actually do learn the basics pretty well But here's the rub if you're local and you want to sign up for one of those classes First you got to go down to the municipality and get your name on the list Then you have to go down to the central police station and get a good conduct police report And you have to bring your national id and a copy of your birth certificate now

[19:05] I don't know why they need all that crap But this is latin america and they just love their paperwork in triplicate, too Whoops, there goes the rainforest Then with all that in hand you get an appointment and a card then you wait a week or two For the day that they hold that class But just because you have a ticket and a number doesn't mean you're going to get a seat Eddie says you got to start lining up at five or five thirty in the morning just to get a seat in a class that starts at nine And when the seats are all filled they'll turn away all the other people and then they got to go through that whole process again Just know that in latin america all these little permits that the common people are required to get Take huge chunks of time out of their day They have to stand in line after line and sometimes like I said

[19:52] You'll go to a building and there'll be a sign on the door that says sorry We're closed today. You have to go somewhere else or you have to come back tomorrow And that's why us expats use lawyers. We almost never have to stand in lines like that for anything I'm talking about those huge lines in front of government buildings now Because our lawyer has a guy called the tramita door, which I talked about in a past show He's the guy that goes down and stands in lines for us and when your signature or photo are actually needed They'll call you up and tell you to come down and you'll take cuts right to the front Why because standing in lines is an actual business down here There are a half a dozen people who hang out in front of every government building and their job For cash and off the books, of course Is to get in line and as they move to the front of the line the tramita door who's working for a lawyer

[20:40] Buys his way in for like a buck and the guy who sold him that space in line Just heads to the end of the line and repeats the process because you know Some of these lines at government buildings could be a two three or even four hour wait So anyway, like eddie says to get that certificate of manipulation. You got to go through a lot of crap But because this is latin america If you have the extra dough you can actually buy one of those certificates of manipulation and skip all that rigmarole Now the going rates about 20 to 25 bucks, which the average person can't afford. I mean, how could he he's unemployed? That's why he's going down to get that certificate and according to eddie only about 20 percent Will actually come in with a certificate that they bought on the black or gray market And restaurant owners like eddie will never know if they bought it or actually went to the class and learned basic hygiene

[21:31] But eddie being a first world guy Trains his people himself. So he doesn't have to count on his employees having that certificate But he does require it because at worse if it's fake it'll do nothing and if it's real it's a good start Now in this discussion, there's something for you to learn here, too All you have to do when you hire a maid or a cleaning lady is to insist that she has her own certificate of manipulation That's certification If you didn't hear me before Then she will know all the hygiene basics at least as far as food preparation But she still won't know how to clean your house She'll just push the dirt around but that's another subject And remember even if she does have that food manipulation certification That doesn't necessarily mean she's gonna apply anything she learned because after all what's three or four hours of hygiene training

[22:23] When you've been cooking and preparing your food in a totally unhygienic unacceptable way unacceptable to us finicky first worlders that is So the trick is to keep a very good eye on your cleaning lady or maid the first few weeks that she starts working for you And make sure you watch her as she prepares the food Especially if she's making salads or sandwiches or she's cutting up fruit and do make sure that she takes all the raw fruits and vegetables And she lets them soak completely In a plastic bucket in the sink for five or ten minutes and that water should have a couple of drops of chlorine bleach in it too and make sure she agitates that stuff while it's in the water and don't let her cross Contaminate things that's their biggest problem these cleaning ladies and maids who cook they go from cutting board to sink to

[23:14] Refrigerator using the same knife and cutting board for raw meat and fish and then going over and cutting a couple of slices of bread With it and then she's off to another part of the house touching doorknobs and chairs and everything else Then she's back in the kitchen again slicing up food on that cutting board all without washing her hands And if she does actually give washing her hands a try It's usually a joke, but believe me you can whip those ladies into shape in about a week or two But they absolutely will fall back into their bad habits again So think about putting that camera I was talking about somewhere in your kitchen And even if it's a phony a decoy that doesn't work, it'll keep her on her toes Talk about big brother in reverse, huh? And speaking of big brother my sister up in chicago just told me of another rather depressing development up there

[24:02] Did you know that u.s Cities are beginning to install sensors on parking meters that detect when a car has left a parking spot And usually, you know, you've got some time left in the meter, right? Time that gets credited to the next guy who parks there always a nice little gift when you arrive and don't have to pay Well, these new sensors will immediately zero out the parking meter as soon as your car leaves and the next guy's got to start from ground zero Nobody gets to borrow that extra time when the last guy left even though it's been fully paid for by the last guy I know it might sound like small potatoes, but it's just another straw on the camel's back, you know But back to wise old owl and his email Now truthfully, I don't think he's such a wise old owl if all he's eaten is tv dinners In fact i'll be willing to bet that swans and tv dinners have more fat sugar filler preservatives and additives than actual

[24:55] Digestible food and on top of that wise old owl you're doing it all in a microwave oven, aren't you? Now actually you can continue with that pattern of eating pre-digested cardboard if you want Because just about any frozen and processed foods you find up in the first world you can get down here I mean they've got cost goes in every medium to large city in latin america and at last count they've got over 3000 walmarts down here not to mention some of the big local latin food chains that carry all that frozen stuff In fact when you're in a big supermarket down here if you didn't know any better If everything wasn't in spanish, you'd think you're back up in a big supermarket in denver or cleveland Oh, and by the way regarding cleanliness and restaurants You'll almost always be safe if you go to a restaurant that's owned by a first world national

[25:43] And they're easy to spot because they're organized clean looking and seem first world all the way And isn't it funny that at least 80 of all the high-end restaurants down in latin america are owned by foreigners And i'm talking italians canadians austrians germans french people from the states and canada Like expat eddie says if you go into a decent latin american restaurant, you can often see an open kitchen on the premises He means a kitchen that's open and on display for everyone to walk by and see now eddie says foreigners do that all the time But most latins just don't have the balls because they know their kitchens are a mess So obviously you can find very nice clean restaurants All you have to do is follow two basic rules before you eat pop your head in the kitchen and have a look in the bathroom

[26:31] If there's no paper hand towels or just a cloth towel hanging up. Don't eat there And here's a word of warning Skip all the chinese restaurants in latin america Except the very special high-end ones that are kind of expensive and you can trust those chinese restaurant Many ha ha style franchises too, you know where they fillet the fish at your table and stuff And don't eat at any sushi restaurant unless a first world foreigner owns it Latin style sushi could look good and taste good, but the hygiene's just not there Oh, and by the way, I forgot to tell you remember that story about expat eddie's friend Who let the air out of his front tire on his nice suv when he parked in bad neighborhoods? Well one day he did just that went out to do some errands came back

[27:19] Went in his trunk and guess what? Someone stole his propane tank Not realizing of course that there was no propane in it, but just air bottom line skip the suv and drive a used toyota For the border Down mexico way That's 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 the expat files at gmail.com See you next time most famous Ah, she was a picture