At last, we have our new car!

It has been a long wait, the car has been sitting in the showroom with a large notice across it saying VENDE (sold) for 4 weeks but at last we have been able to collect the keys and drive it out of the garage.

This final week has been a week of maybe's. Monday we finally got our correct certificates through to the garage to enable them to tax the car. Tuesday - well, everywhere was closed in Vera, it was a local holiday day. Wednesday, we might, just might have the tax back and be able to collect the car.......er, no the tax wasn't ready. Here, it's not like in the uk, you don't go to a post office and walk away with your tax disc. The paperwork goes in to traffica to register your car and you collect it a day or 2 or..... later.

Thursday, it should be ready today - and it was.....but too late for the insurance to be sorted. We had sorted a quote but obviously until the car was issued with a registration number by traffica the policy couldn't be issued. By the time the registration was known, it was too late to get the policy re-issued to the underwriters to allow us to have the insurance for driving the car away Thursday.

And so to Friday 13th - now surely things couldn't go smoothly today? Well, apparently they can. We had the phone call to say insurance was in place and we could collect our car. We arranged to go through at 5.00pm.

Now, in the middle of all this Spain is in the grip of a 4 day strike by lorry drivers. We had already been victims of the french protests when our furniture got stuck in the docks and now we were about to collect a new car with an empty tank with petrol stations around us running out of diesel. Stuart at the Kia garage had managed to get us €30 worth from his local filling station, who were now rationing supplies but we needed a full tank as in a few days we are due to drive up to San Javier airport to collect some friends. Was this going to be another problem for us or was our luck with the car about to change.

Well, in short, yes - we collected the car and had a small lesson on what we needed to keep with the car - paperwork wise in case we get stopped by the police. Stuart explained if we were nervous about keeping the originals in the car we could have official copies signed & stamped by the local notary which would suffice, and then received directions to the nearest filling station that would probably still have some diesel - and it did.

New car duly full of diesel, Neil set off for the drive home (about 30 mins) with me in the wreck (sorry Peugeot) and before any of you start shouting that he should have let me drive the new air conditioned car with stereo - it was my choice that Neil should be the first to drive it. He had waited so long for the car, it only felt right to let him drive it - boys and toys etc.

But just as we thought we had got away with anything going wrong on Friday 13th, I got a phone call to say that we had driven away - and left all the insurance documents on the desk at the garage - so, a quick detour back (fuel shortages? No problem, lets just drive twice the distance we need to!) and we were again on our way home.

Now, what shall we tackle next? Registering with the local doctor may be a good idea, so, how do we do that?...........................