Sorry, I keep meaning to write about how it went for us last Monday.
Well firstly I must say a huge thank you to Expat-in-Cabarete for writing this out for all of us. It was a massive help and I don't think I would have dared try this without a lawyer without having this. But my gosh, I am so glad we did because we absolutely did not need a lawyer, as the process was so easy and straight forward when following these directions.
We left Cabrera very early so we could get to the residency building right at 8:00am (probably got there around 8:20am). It was still pretty empty so we got our forms from window 3/4 with no line at all and no wait. The other windows are under construction so instead of window 11, we went right up to the table they had at the front to get papers checked. No line again and no wait. My husband and I were written down as # 4 and 5 that day, but noticed the room quickly filling up by then so it was good that we got there early. After finger prints and photo copies, they sent the folders of our papers to get the big check and told us to sit and wait for 1 hour then go up to check. I went up at about 50 minutes and they were ready. No problems with our papers at all. We used our land and house titles, plus car title (husband only) instead of letter fron guarantor. No questions asked about that. At this point they told us to go right upstairs for photos. No wait. After photos they told us 20 minutes for the cards to be ready. This took about 30 minutes so not much longer than they said. Cards were given to us at around 11:15am, so less than 2 hours after we arrived in the building. Oh and also, no visitor's passes required at all that day. I guess due to the construction?
We then grabbed a taxi over to the cedula building to save us driving and getting lost. Taxi driver offered to wait for us for no extra cost and didn't take any money from us before going in the building. Went into get cedulas. No line. Got photos done and printed right away and were out of there in 15 - 20 minutes.
We couldn't believe how easy the whole process was!! We kept saying all day how it couldn't possible be going any better and kept waiting for something to go wrong, but it didn't. We were finished everything by 11:45am and on the road with both sets of cards in hand.
One extra little tip to make the whole process seem so much easier?? Do what we did... have a toddler who you spend almost all of your time with, including long bank lines, grocery shopping, doctor's office waits, restaurants, etc. etc. and then on the day you are going to renew your temp residency... get the toddler a babysitter!!!
Thank you so much again Expat-in-Cabarete!!! To anyone else thinking of doing this without a lawyer... go for it! It really was so easy and worth saving all that money in lawyer fees!