My husband and I went on a cruise for spring break alone with a friend of ours. We had a great time on the Carnival Dream. It is a beautiful ship that we were on last year for spring break too. It has a wonderful crew that is very friendly and the service seems much better than on other ships in their fleet. The ship took us to the ports of Belize, Costa Maya, and Cozumel Mexico. We had to forgo the port of Roatan in Honduras because of weather problems but it was still a great cruise.
The only black mark on the vacation came at the very end when we went back through customs at the end of our voyage. We are both teachers so we have to save for our trips and we don't have tons of money to spend so we are always WAY under our customs allowance of 800 dollars/person. Dare I say it...hundreds or even a thousand dollars under the allowance....lol. We spend no more than 10 minutes in line and they scan in our passports and we are welcomed cordially back into the USA. This time, for some reason, we were pulled for a customs inspection. We can't figure out what triggered it. We don't know if we were just the 100th person and every 100th person had to go through one....maybe it was my engagement ring that was cleaned by the jeweler in one of the ports and it looked "new". Maybe I look dishonest...who knows. The man asked if we had bought any jewelery. I said yes two necklaces and he said follow me. We got to a back room where an officer at the desk asked to see the necklace. I pulled it out and he looked at it and said it was beautiful. Dummy me...I thought that was it. NOPE he asked to see the rings off my fingers which he inspected, then to see everything in the suitcase we were carrying off. It had my computer in it and my friend's computer - he asked if I bought them in Mexico? I informed him that computers were cheaper in the US.
Then he went through my jeweler that I had purchased on other cruises and wanted to tell me that they were all to be taxed. I told him they were purchased on previous cruises - He told me to prove it so you know what.....I did. In my bag where I had my passport, I happen to keep all important documents like the receipts for the expensive jewelery purchased. (One reason is that the stores offer an exchange policy. If I were to get tired of it I could exchange it with the receipt for something new getting the full value. That is why I carry the receipts) So he started matching the jewelery to the receipts piece for piece. Yes my friends, I had them all. there was nothing he could say. Then he wanted to look in my zip bag where I had my passports. He went through that looked at our birth certificates, the husband's DD214, passports, ship boarding papers everything that was in there. That is when he found my friend's jewelery receipts. He wanted to know why I was carrying her receipts. So I told him the truth. We are traveling together we just put everything in one back so we don't loose it and asked what the problem was. He now tells me he has to inspect all of my luggage, my husband's luggage and my friend's luggage. BUT before that, he wants to look through my purse. Yes he went through everything, my wallet, my check book, even my medicines. He had the nerve to ask me which I had purchased in Mexico - even though they were all in CVS bottles. I told him that Mexico wasn't regulated by the FDA and therefore wasn't safe so I wouldn't be taking any meds from there.
Now, I think he realizes I am honest but he is in too deep and has to keep going. So he makes me sit in the office and he asks my husband if he would recognize our best friend again if he saw her down stairs at the luggage? My husband is a smart ___ by nature and answers..."well, I haven't seen her in like 20 minutes so I don't know anymore". That goes over really well with the officer who has decided to police my world. While they are gone, the couple next to me asks how much we were over our limit (with great fear on their faces) because they bought a 5000 dollar ring. I told them I was WAY UNDER the limit and had no idea what was happening. They got even more scared.....I felt really bad for them. One officer came up looked at their ring, shut the box, and had them move on - no money even paid. I was astonished at what was happening - so were they. That officer then went and got the "boss" to come talk to me. He had me sit down and explain everything that happened. I went over it all again. Handing the passports and the customs form to the man outside, he didn't even look at things and just brought us straight back, looking through everything, looking at my jewelery which I showed him too, matching the receipts to the jewelery, the man searching my wallet, the drug comments, where the officer was now. The "boss" asks how much we were OVER our custom allowance I told him we were WAY UNDER. He just shook his head and said don't worry Mam...It will be fine.
I wanted to ask how I wasn't to worry. My name was on that form that says you go to jail for things even though I know that I was way under but this officer seemed determined to find something that I did wrong even though I had no idea what it was. I kept asking everyone there...."If you just tell me what you are looking for I will gladly tell you exactly where it is or that I don't have that". Finally, after almost an hour and a half, the man comes back upstairs and tells me that I am free to go and my party will be waiting for me down stairs, he had been through all of my luggage already. I shake his offered hand and say thank you (because my mom and dad raised me to be polite to people who are only doing their job even if I don't agree with it or understand it). I go down stairs to find out the rest of the story. On the way down to meet my friend. The officer tells my husband not to speak to anyone, no eye contact, no gestures, etc. He will do all the talking. Of course, the husband wants to yell across the luggage area "RUN THE COPPERS ARE AFTER YOU...RUN FOR ALL YOU ARE WORTH" but he tells me that he restrained himself because the man looked way to serious and he didn't like his last joke about not recognizing our friend because he had held us so long upstairs. (Thank the Lord for a little restraint) The officer then makes our friend sign her customs form again saying it is what she is declaring. Then matches all of her new and past jewelry purchases just like he did to me. I don't know what would have happened if the receipts wouldn't have been there?????? Finally we leave feeling like we have done something wrong when we actually over estimate our money every time to make sure that we are not going to be over our allowance. It was just a strange experience with no rhyme or reason for the beginning.
Now the new question is do I take my jewelery with me on the cruises? If I do, do I make sure that I take the receipts? Is it not worth the hassle so just don't take anything? What caused this? How do I make sure it doesn't happen again? Who knows.....all I know is I could never truly have lied on that form! I felt so bad and I had done nothing wrong and I knew it, I can't imagine how bad it would be if I would have done something wrong.....rest assured that will never happen.
