On Friday morning, we finally met Hugo and his wife Elizabeth. They're a lovely older couple who owned a campervan way back when and were looking forward to owning another one. Having fallen in love with pictures of the van, they were just as enamoured with it in the flesh. Our fear that they might pull out went unfounded and, after breakfast in their house, we headed to the notary to get the paperwork sorted.
It was there that our plan began to unravel. It turns out that the transfer of ownership to Paul had failed because he wasn't showing up on the Registro Civil database. This meant that the van was legally still in the previous owner, Salvatore's name!! Hugo & Elizabeth suggested writing a contract whereby Paul gave them the power to take ownership of the van from Salvatore, and for a reasonable reduction in the price of the van, they would take on the burden of travelling to Santiago to complete the paperwork. But the notary put paid to that plan, saying because Salvatore legally owned the van, any contract they signed with Paul would be meaningless.
We went to the Registro Civil to find out why Paul wasn't on their database even though we'd got our RUTs when we first arrived in Santiago. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, we finally found out that it was because the address we'd used for Paul in the original contract wasn't in Chile!!!!! Worse still, the only way to sort this out was to go to the office in Santiago where the original paperwork was done!!!!! ARGH!!!!! For $#¥%'s sake!!!!!!!! ARGH!!!!!!!
