A Rant

In which, the Ecuadorian Consulate in Atlanta is basically useless

So here's the post I promised about the Consulate in Atlanta. Since I know most of you are probably tired of hearing about Jethro, I'll keep it relatively short and I also promise to put up another post documenting our adventure on Saturday.

When exporting pets from the US, the governing authority is the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). They, along with the country you are planning to export the pet to, dictate the requirements you must fulfill before putting your pet on a plane. 

To make a long story shorter, basically you have to vaccinate your pet within a certain time frame, make sure they are cleared from external and internal parasites within a shorter time frame, and then have them examined by your USDA certified vet within 10 days of your flight. Your vet fills out the APHIS form with all the necessary information, then you have to either drive or mail it to your state USDA office for certification. 

This all seems relatively straightforward, but now comes the tricky part. According to previous regulations, you then had to take this paperwork to the nearest Ecuadorian Consulate and basically have them endorse it, just saying that they've ok'd everything and your pet is free to enter the country.

APHIS put out a new form in December of 2014, and it was actually very welcome, because the old form was a little tricky and I believe you had to have it translated. The new form was very streamlined and was in both English and Spanish, so no need for translation. We had also received notice from several unofficial outlets that the endorsement from the Consulate was no longer needed, but there were conflicting reports about it, so we decided to cross our T's and dot our I's and just get the endorsement to be on the safe side. 

This is where our story actually begins. There's a Consulate in Atlanta, and according to their website, their hours are from 10am - 2pm. I'd heard from other people that you needed an appointment to be seen, so I tried both calling and emailing, which had exactly ZERO results. No one ever responded to any emails and no one ever answered the phone. There wasn't any easy way to leave a message either, unless you just pushed random numbers to get out of the message loop. 

So we decided to just show up and see what happened. We went down on Tuesday and arrived at the Consulate at 1:30, only to find that nobody was there. I tried calling again and sent another email, but nothing. The best course of action seemed to return the next morning when they opened at 10am.

The next morning, I received an email (hallelujah!) from the Consulate stating that they only worked by appointment and that I should've prepared better and contacted them sooner, and that they haven't received any emails or voicemails from me and they would know, because they checked this morning. Also, they're busy all day today so they couldn't guarantee that they would be able to see us. Oh, and their hours are 9am to 2pm. 

Needless to say, I was less than pleased with the response they finally deigned to give. 

So we show up, and there was a really pleasant and very helpful young intern there. He was very nice and took our information and let us know it would be 20 minutes or so before the vice-consul could see us and endorse our paperwork. No problem, we sit down to wait. 

In the background, I can hear him talking to another lady, and what I hear makes me realize that she's probably the one who sent me the email that morning. My Spanish isn't 100%, but I could understand enough to know that she didn't want to have anything to do with us and was just being really dismissive, telling the intern that we could wait as long as it took and that it was our problem and not hers. 

So he finally comes and takes our paperwork, only to come back a few minutes later with a really apologetic look on his face. He tells us that they (I'm assuming the vice-consul and this other woman) are telling him that we have the wrong form. We tell him that this was the form that their website directed us to, that it was directly from the USDA APHIS website. He understands and goes back to talk with "them."

This went on for a few minutes, this poor young intern going back and forth between us. He was very apologetic and very nice, saying it didn't make any sense to him either, but that the vice-consul and this other woman were insisting that we had the wrong form and that they couldn't (wouldn't??) endorse the form we had. 

At this point, I was kind of panicking. We couldn't get the form they were wanting in the time they wanted it. Our flight was leaving THAT DAY. We would've had to go all the way back to Simpsonville to our vet, then down to Columbia to the South Carolina USDA office, then come back to the Consulate, all before 2pm, which is when the vice-consul left for the day. 

I may or may not have had a mini-breakdown in that moment, but thank the Lord for John! After I tried calling the Secretary of State for Georgia, he just stood up and said, "Thanks for your help, but I think we'll be fine without it," shook the intern's hand and walked out of the office. 

We were pretty scared at that point - we didn't have the Consulate endorsement, would Jethro be accepted through Immigration and Customs? Then, as we started calming down, we realized a few things. A, the Consulate was apparently looking for the OLD form. The intern had brought a copy of  the other forms they had endorsed, and it was the form prior to December 2014. B, the endorsement wasn't even necessary, we were just doing this to make sure all our bases were covered.

All this to say - if you ever plan to bring a pet to Ecuador, don't bother dealing with the Consulate in Atlanta. You don't need anything from them and, even if you did, they're not competent enough to know the updated regulations for THEIR OWN COUNTRY. *end rant*

At the end of the day, everything went without a hitch. Jethro is here now and being spoiled more than he ever was in the States. So I guess it really is all's well that ends well.