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Today was a business day. We tried many times this morning to call the local FEDEX franchise to find out what we had to do to liberate a package from the customs process here in Almaty but everytime the receptionist tried to connect us the phone hung-up. So after failing to get anywhere over the phone we decided to add a visit to FEDEX to our days agenda.

About 10:00am we got a (hotel) taxi to take us to the Mercedes dealer. It took a little searching to find out how to actually get to them. They are easily visible from a main road called Suyunbaya but are across a railway line from that street. The trick was to find the entrance to their street (Stasova) at N43.33220 E76.95873. The dealers building is at approx. N43.32194 E76.95722. It took us a while waiting for the service manager but eventually with the aid of an English speaking receptionist we had an appointment for 9:00am the next day. Unfortunately they could not source a new tire for our truck. But I did get a strong indication that had we given them 3-4 weeks notice (and probably some deposit) they could have got the tire(s) from Germany for us. Something to keep in mind for future trips. Also had we been driving a more conventional Mercedes truck I am sure we could have got a wide range of repairs and service at this dealer as they had a broad range of new Mercedes trucks both for sale and in-being services. This seems like a good place for service and repairs for overlanders with mercedes vehicles.

Next stop was FEDEX and thankfuly the taxi driver could work out where they were located. It took all of 10 minutes at FEDEX to sign a paper (I assume customs clearance) and we were told "it will be delievered the next day".

Back at the hotel we tried to take some money out of an ATM and it swallowed our card - what a bummer. But the hotel reception staff eventually got hold of a representative from the ATM bank and by late evening we had our card back. This incident also caused us to spend a couple of hours using skype to talk to our banks to make sure they knew, once again, we were traveling in Central Asia and that the accounts were not locked.

At about the same time as our credit card was returned our passports returned from the Migration Police and the visa registration process was complete. We now have two stamps on our immigration card. Seems like getting an up market hotel to do the registration overcame the potential issue that today was our 6th day in Kazakhstan and registration was supposed to be done within 5 days.

In the photos below notice the round stamp in the middle of the white "migration card" - this is the registation stamp. The same stamp is in the middle of the registration card.

So we declared it a successful business day.