September 8, 2008

Bureaucracy In Brazil - Part 2

In July I wrote about bureaucracy here in Brazil, and about the process of getting our Brazilian driver's license ("Carteira da Habilitacao"). We had a Brazilian "permission to drive", but this is only good for 1 year. It took us 3 days just to get all of the documents and things to go with the application, and then we were told it would take 2 weeks for the approval of the application. It ended up taking 7 weeks ! Things move slowly here in Brazil, especially when dealing with the government.

Once we received the approval we had to take a written test (in Portuguese) at a different place about the Brazilian driving laws and about first aid, and then we had to go back to the license department and turn in the test results to them. They told us it would be 2 days until our licenses came in, but it actually took 1 more week. Finally after 2 months we have our Brazilian drivers licenses !

2 comments:

Ann said...

Congratulations on getting your Brazilian driver's license! The bureaucracy sounds oh so familiar.....

Kevin Bart said...

Ann, thanks for the visit and for the comment.