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Motorcycles shipped from Colon to Cartagena: 1
Hours spent at the port of Manzanillo in Colon today: 8
Times we almost didn’t pass the customs inspection: 1
Today we spent the entire day taking the bike to the Manzanillo port in Colon, at the Atlantic side of the canal, to load it onto the container that will take it to Cartagena in Colombia. Even though the day went well, it was indeed a very long one, and we set a new record in process steps and paperwork “management”.
We started the morning by repacking the aluminum pannier bags on the bike, to include only things that we won’t need over the coming 4-5 days, until the container arrives in Colombia. We packed vital clothing, electronics and other items in the handbags we will be carrying with us on the flight to Colombia tomorrow. We then drove the bike to Colon, only to find out when entering the town, that there are no less than four major ports in the town. Once we figured out which port to go to, we located the shipping agent’s local office. It immediately become clear that we had hired the right
shipping agent, because they were waiting for us, had the necessary paperwork ready, and spoke pretty good English J
Alfredo, who is the representative from the shipping agency we hired, took us in his car and drove us around the various port authorities that we needed to get documents from, have documents verified and stamped by, or generally make arrangements with. At one particular stop, we were looking for the special
vehicle export customs office, which of course if separate from the
people customs office. It turns out that the office was hard to find. A quick look at the attached photo probably explains why. The office entrance was at the corner of a remote parking while the door itself was rather inconspicuous. Well inside the office Alfredo bypassed the long line of waiting truckers and various import/export firm representatives (that’s what a good handler does apparently for a living) and got straight to the right vehicle customs officer, handing her our documents. It immediately become clear from her vehement head shaking that something wasn’t right with the paperwork we had submitted.
Turns out that, the vehicle import form we got when entering Panama, coming from Costa Rica
last week, wasn’t the right one. To be more precise, the vehicle customs officer told Alfredo that the information on the form was accurate, but that she did not recognize the form layout itself (go figure). The form simply wasn’t the standard issued from that the Panamanian customs authority uses. Zoe and I tried reasoning, always through Alfredo as our potent translator and mediator, that a) the border crossing into Panama from Costa Rica was rather chaotic and that b) that was the only form we got and c) that we as travelers of this beautiful country obviously had no idea what the right form layout should actually look like. During 10 whole minutes the vehicle customs officer was adamant that there was nothing she could do. If we didn’t have the right customs from layout she could not issue the vehicle customs export approval – period.
For a moment I imagined our PanAmerican adventure trip ending at a hard-to-find customs office in Colon, Panama, with our motorcycle stuck in an eternal limbo at the dock, without us being able to ship it to either Colombia or Seattle. This is where Alfredo, our shipping agent representative, got to earn
his money, because he somehow convinced the vehicle customs officer to do the right thing for us and issue the required vehicle customs export approval, despite the fact that our vehicle import customs form from last week had not been issued on the right customs form by her colleagues at the other end of the country, at the Costa Rican border. Thank you Alfredo!
The rest of the stops along the various authorities at the Manzanillo port proceeded smoothly, thanks to Alfredo’s experience, connections and skills. The final station for the day was the vehicle physical inspection office (no idea why it is called so to be honest) which consisted of two separate inspections. The first inspector checked the frame of the bike (?!?) and the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN). The second inspector turned out to be the toughest of them all. She asked me to pretty much remove all parts of the bike that were not welded onto the frame. Straps, saddle parts, tool box, foot pegs, all the items in the aluminum panniers etc. had to be removed and inspected. She then brought her narcotics detection dog and let him spend a good 10 minutes sniffing around
the various parts of the bike to make sure that I wasn’t attempting to export drugs…to Colombia!!! When she asked me to open the gasoline tank, and let the narcotics detection dog sniff inside it, I kinda felt sorry for the dog, because I instantly saw his revulsion to the strong high-octane fumes. And so after a total of 8 hours of paperwork, inspections, form filling, waiting, paying various fees and taxes and running back and forth with receipts, we were cleared at the export terminal and are now declared good to ship the bike to Colombia.
We handed in the key to the port authority security that will apparently take the motorcycle tomorrow to the packing and loading area and put it into the container we hired. After a relatively short bus ride back to Panama City and to our hotel, we completed the final packing of the bags we are carrying with us on the flight tomorrow morning to Cartagena, Colombia. Zoe and I are looking forward to closing the Central American chapter of our PanAmerican riding adventure and for a fresh start in Southern America.
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