We have been avoiding opening a Mexican bank account. Everyone we have talked to has told us it is a long, grueling process that takes most of a day. I certainly didn't want anything to do with that. I have much better things to do with my time than sit in a bank all day, thank you. And really, we have gotten along just fine without one. All our money is in an American bank account that we access through an ATM without problems. In fact, our bank charges us no fees to use any ATM anywhere in the world, so keeping our American bank account has been a very practical and economical choice. Until now.

I recently picked up a large corporate client who is building condos on the north end of town. Woo-hoo! New client who pays! Being a large company, they believe in keeping a large paper trail for everything, so they paid me by check. In pesos. Drawn on a Mexican account. Crap. Now I have to open an account. OK, I could frame it for posterity, but I'd really rather spend it. Plus, I hope many more checks will follow. So we open the account.

We have quite a few choices for banking in Mazatlan. I can think of six chains off the top of my head. Some of them are associated with American banks, so you can link accounts. Unfortunately, none of them are associated with my bank. Since we don't know much about any of them, we are kind of left with the eeni, meenie, miney moe approach to choosing a bank.

We really like ScotiaBanc. Their customer service is great, and their ATMs never give out anything larger than a 200 peso note, which is really convenient. Most of the other banks give out 500 peso notes, which is a really large bill. It locks us into having to visit places like Walmart and Soriana in order to break them, because our local vendors would never be able to make change. But ScotiaBanc is a little weak on other services.

We ended up choosing Bancomer because a lot of people we deal with use them, and because you can use their online service to pay your electric, water, and telephone bills. No more waiting in line at each utility.

We got up and dressed early and started to assemble the documentation we were sure we would need. We have now had over a year's experience dealing with the government and large companies, and we have a pretty good feel for what we need: passports, FM-3s, working papers, and a recent utility bill. It doesn't matter that we rent and our bills are not in our name. We always need a utility bill. Then we grabbed our folder with various copies and documentation, just in case. I half considered packing snacks and bottled water along with our papers, but decided against it.

We decided to go to the Bancomer on Olas Altas because, even though parking is a nightmare, we thought our chances of an English speaker being there to help us was higher. We arrived at the bank and stood in line to talk with a banker. There was only one person in line in front of us, so I thought we were doing pretty good. But the line didn't seem to be moving. All the bankers were busy with clients, and they looked pretty dug in. I let out a big sigh and adopted a posture that said I knew we were going to be there for awhile.

Surprisingly, before I got a chance to get really antsy (which doesn't take long), a banker became available. I expected the woman in front of us to make her way down there, but she gestured at as and pointed at the banker. I have no idea why, but I wasn't about to argue.

We made our way down to the glassed-in cubicle, and I told the man in my best (although still bad) Spanish that I needed to open an account. He invited us to sit down. I kept waiting for him to switch to English, or to go get an English speaker (did I mention my Spanish sounds very bad?) but no, we were going to muddle through.

Our banker was really patient and spoke perfectly slowly and clearly. We had no problems understanding him and answering his questions. To make things easier, I pushed my stack of documentation across the desk to him and let him grab what he needed as he needed it. I also gave him the check. As he finished with things, he would push them back toward us, and Chuck would put them in the folder. He kept nudging the check back toward us, and I would kinda nudge it back. That was the money we wanted to use to open the account.

He continued through the account opening process, and I kept waiting for the hard part. He asked us if we wanted ATM cards. We said yes. He pulled a couple of sealed envelopes out of one of his drawers and recorded the numbers in his computer. We opened them up. They had our ATM cards inside. Right there. No waiting. They also had PINs already associated with them. The instructions said to go to the ATM immediately and change them. I kept thinking, "you can do that?"

When he got all the information put into the computer, he printed out a jazillion copies of everything and then we had to start signing. It wasn't as bad as closing on a house, but it was right up there. When the signing was over, he thanked us and told us we were done. I looked at the check. He finally asked me if we wanted to deposit that. When I said yes, he invited us to go see the teller. Huh? Evidently you don't need an initial deposit to open an account here. He kindly explained to us how to endorse the check and add our account number.

On the way out we went to the teller, and then stopped by the ATM to change our PINs. As we were walking out the door, I looked at my watch. All told – waiting, banker, teller, and ATM – it took us 50 minutes. Not bad.