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Day 39: finding a shipping company to take the bike to Colombia
Day 40: get all the necessary paperwork completed
Day 41: get the bike to the Colon shipping dock and into the container
Monday, today Tuesday, and tomorrow Wednesday are devoted to arranging for the shipment of the motorcycle from Panama to Colombia. Transporting vehicles between these two countries has always been a significant challenge because there is no road, but at the same time this is also part of Pan-American Highway adventure. So far it is fair to say that the last two days have been adventurous in many ways, and tomorrow promises to be even more so. The two ferries routes that have been in operation between Colon, on the Atlantic side of the canal, and Cartagena in northern Colombia, have been suspended (unclear why or for how long). Therefore, our main option now is to use a shipping company for transporting the motorcycle to Colombia.
Figuring out the logistics, timetable and operational dependencies for container shipping between these two countries has been a veritable challenge, and it has been frustrating at times to have to wait for endless hours at various offices
each day before we can continue riding in South America. The good news is that we now have a time table, and on the high level, it looks like this:
Mon 7/6: find a shipping company and make the necessary arrangements with them
Tue 7/7: get all necessary documents, inspections, approval etc. from the central national police office in Panama City in order to be eligible to take the motorcycle out of the country
Wed: 7/8: drive the motorcycle to the port of Colon, on the Atlantic side of the Canal. In Colon, we need to get the bike on to a shipping container and complete all paperwork with customs, shipping, and police and then get back to Panama City (without the bike).
Thu: 7/9: Zoe and I fly from Panama City to Cartagena, Colombia.
Fri 7/10– Sun 7/12: hang out in Cartagena, enjoy the beaches and medieval Colonial city.
Sat 7/11 – Sun 7/12: container ship (with our bike) ships from Colon, Panama to Cartagena, Colombia.
Mon 7/13: (hopefully) pick up the motorcycle at the Cartagena container terminal and start riding south.
A few more details about our recent
experiences might be in order. Zoe and I have driven around in Panama City so much over the past 5 days, that we have become really familiar with many of the major streets, we can now kinda find our way around (always with the GPS unit available though), and have spent countless hours in severe Panamanian rush hour traffic. We have endured severe heat while in traffic jams, other vehicles trying (but having so far failed) to run us over at a rate of about once per hour, and we have been caught in tropical torrential downpours while riding in the city. In essence, we feel we have become seasoned Panama City drivers!!
Yesterday, we spent a few hours looking for a shipping company that could transport the motorcycle to Colombia. We settled on a big Norwegian maritime company called Wilhelmsen. We drove to their Panama office (which was quite a bit away from Panama City center as it turns out) and sat down with one of their sales representatives. Lucky for us, she spoke fair English, something that significantly sped up the whole process. We got a good overview of the process, the costs, the paperwork required and
the timetable. Including the driving to/from Wilhelmsen’s office, it took half a day to arrange everything.
One peculiar detail is that the shipping agent told us repeated times that we needed to pay when we deliver the motorcycle to the port of departure in Colon, on Wednesday morning. It has been custom in the shipping industry for many years (as far as we can tell) that customers pay on pick-up of a shipment and not during delivery. Oh, by the way, the agent told us, you need to pay in cash. Surely, a company with a few billions of dollars in annual revenue can accept a credit card, I countered? No, the local Wilhelmsen’s Panama office can only accept cash at delivery of the vehicle to the container, was the answer! So tomorrow we will have to drive around with $1,700 in our pockets and give to the local shipping agency office at the port of Colon. I do hope that we get a receipt…
Today Tuesday, we spent most of the day at the National Police headquarters. Before we can drive the motorcycle to the port of departure tomorrow at Colon, we need to have it inspected
(unclear for what and why) by a special police unit, and then get a special permit allowing us take the vehicle out of Panama. For starters we had to find the actual inspection station. After asking several police officers at the Police headquarters (who mostly gave inconsistent and somewhat different directions) we found the right place after about an hour. One of the reason we had a hard time finding the inspection station was the fact that is was located at such a run-down part of Panama City that it was hard to believe that it actually was a police inspection station.
Once we entered the building, things only got worse. The office was so incredibly run down, small and sparse that we couldn’t believe it was a police office, let alone at the national headquarters. Two officers (we think they were officers at least), were watching a soap opera on the TV, and after me having asked them for the fourth time where to go to get the motorcycle inspected, they promptly told me to sit down and wait for somebody to come. After 45 min. of waiting, an officer showed up and took some interest in Zoe and me. On his way to inspect the motorcycle, he let himself be interrupted about 4 times by random people who had walked into the office and who all need just a quick thing from him (which he of course happily did for them). Another 20 min of waiting and the officer finally returned and the so anticipated inspection could finally begin.
Turns out that the whole “inspection” took 15 sec, and was summarized by the officer saying: “it’s a big bike and it looks expensive.” So what now, I asked? Well, the officer said, now we go on lunch break; come back in 2 hours to get your inspection certificate. You have to go to this other building and get the certificate by the way. 2 hours later we had to return, only to wait another 1,5 hour to get the highly desired inspection certificate, without which, no vehicle can leave the country. If you think that the central Panamanian police authority, based on the above account, seems to be inefficient, then you are right. However, we were lucky to get the certificate in less than a days’ worth of waiting. While we were waiting in the last lien for the day, we met a New Yorker at the office, who after a few years of living in Panama, had decided that he and his wife wanted to move back to New York and Long Island, where “things work more predictably” as he told us. The poor guy had already spent all of yesterday waiting for his vehicle inspection permit, so that he could ship his truck back to the US, only to learn that the officers had “lost his inspection application” and that he had to redo the whole application process! He did not look especially happy.
Tomorrow morning we will drive out early to the Colon harbor, which is only 73km/45miles from Panama City, to deliver the bike to the local shipping agent for further packing onto the shipping container. While doing that, we will also have to deal with the port police and obviously the customs authority. We are sure that the procedures in Colon will take up most of the day. Without the bike, we will have to take the local buss back to Panama City. I am sure that we will feel a bit handicapped without our beloved motorcycle for a few days.
If all goes well, the next travel blog should be from South America, Cartagena Colombia, where we are flying to on Thursday 7/9.
PS We will have to do the whole paperwork process over again, at the Cartagena container terminal, in order to be allowed to “import” the motorcycle to Colombia.
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