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Published: February 14th 2011
Suggestion one. Tranquilizers and sedatives. Lots of them. They might be the only thing that keeps you from turning into a raving anarchist in this process. By the time you drive all the way through Central America, you are going to feel like a battle-tested road warrior who can easily handle whatever the next border can throw at them. Well, as the wise philosophers of Bachman–Turner Overdrive said “You ain't seen nothing yet”.
Plan One: Ship our '77 VW Westfalia via RORO (Roll-on, Roll-off car transport ship). RORO has one big advantage which is that it is less than half the price of shipping a car in a container. Because we don't have deep pockets, we were sold. However, here is the thing; shipping companies don't like shipping single cars RORO. It is not a big money maker and it is a big hassle for them to do. Shipping thousands of shiny new cars is one thing, shipping one lonely hippie van is something else altogether. When we arrived in Costa Rica, everyone at the various shipping companies we were considering passed us along from employee to employee and company to company (multiple times over the course of six days
or so) until finally one beleaguered office worker finally informed us that the RORO ship was arriving the next day but we were too late to do the paperwork to get on it. She said “If you had only gotten in touch with us a few days ago we could have helped you”! ARGH!
Tip One: Don't bother with e-mails, call, call, call!
(And when calling doesn't get you very far, go to their office in person! Not their offices at the port, the offices in San Jose.)
Well, it turns out the next RORO ship wasn't due in the port (Puerto Caldera, Costa Rica) for a month! Now, looking at our budget, we realized it was literally going to be cheaper to wait out the month in Costa Rica than switch to a container ship. (Also, not the worst place to be trapped a month.) During the wait, we drove to San Jose and paid our passage on the next ship and bought our plane tickets with a four day cushion (in case the ship was a little behind). After we waited out the month, the shipping folks (the day we were to get to the port
to start the paperwork) sent us a cheerful little e-mail saying “We are sorry to inform you that the ship is running a little behind and will not arrive in the port for two weeks to a month”. Wait, what?!? (See, I told you. Sedatives.) As I was passing out, the last thoughts racing through my mind included non-refundable plane tickets and travel visas which were due to expire in less than two weeks. With no remaining options, we were forced after all this chaos to ship our van in a container.
Plan Two: The container ship. When shipping a car/van (RORO or container), it is necessary to contact a customs processing company (agencia aduanera) which is separate from the shipping company. They process the government and shipping company paperwork for you. We used Oscar Rodriguez (Oscarín) in the town Mata de Limón whose office is less than a mile from the port itself and who was very helpful. His fees included the cargo warehousing area (el almacén) and the truck to drive the container to the port. He personally drove us around to get the things we needed to prepare the car for shipping and at other times
sent one of his employees with us. Oh, and Oscarín did a great job securing the car in the container. While we were there we saw a car which had been shipped without being properly secured and which was heavily damaged all up and down the driver's side.
Tip Two: Make sure that Oscarín (or whoever you use for an agencia aduanera) writes down the container status as “consolidado”. Customs will go easier on you if you do.
Tip Three: When calculating the cost of shipping, don't forget the approximately $350 in fees these aduana companies charge. Also, add in the gas and time needed to drive to San Jose and back to deal with the shipping company (in our case twice!).
Note: We found out AFTER our trips to San Jose that there is a brand new highway between there and Puerto Caldera which was not listed on our fairly up-to-date country maps. It is only a one-hour drive instead of the three hour route we took. Fun huh?
The shipping company (NYK's local agent Barlovento Agencia Marítima, S.A.) felt sorry for us that we had waited a full month and then had to ship
the van in a container anyway so they made us a pretty nice discount on the shipping. Still, between the shipping and the aduana/almacén fees we were still a little over $1,200 before we left Costa Rica. Really more if you include the four days of hotel fees between the time we put our van (which was our home on the trip) in the container and the time our plane left. We were told the ship would arrive in five days from the time it sailed.
Tip Four: Don't trust what day they say the ship is going to arrive, get it in writing. (more on this in a minute)
Tip Five: If you are not going to be driving through Panama, make sure you arrange a 9-10 hour layover in Panama City and definitely go to the Canal and take at least a taxi tour of Panama City. It is very much worth it!
Back to tip three (Don't trust the arrival date). We arrived in Ecuador and took a bus to the port (Guayaquil) only to discover that the ship carrying our van would not be arriving for THREE MORE WEEKS! (Yes, at this point
I was looking to join a well-armed anarchist group.)
Tip Six: Try to avoid shipping your car/van to Guayaquil. It is dirty, crime plagued and very corrupt.
Once you get to Ecuador, there were more bad financial surprises waiting for us. Not only did we have to pay three more weeks of (hotel/hostel) fees that we were not expecting, it is also necessary to get a customs company (compañia aduanera) on the Ecuador side as well. Another $200. Note: Ecuador recently changed the rules on needing a Carnet de Passage (you no longer need one) but the compañia aduanera you choose may not be familiar yet with the rule change. Also, be aware that the port in Guayaquil will stall you on getting your container at least a week from the time you start the aduana paperwork so they can “up” their storage fees at your expense.
Tip Seven: Start the paperwork even before your container gets there if you can to avoid this. The storage fees for seven days was another $250. That is not including the multiple bribes we had to pay along the way.
Tip Eight: Avoid unnecessary bribes when you can but
pay the necessary ones (the aduana company in Guayaquil helped us to determine which ones were important). Trust me, the process will take longer (more storage fees) if you don't hand out five dollars here and ten dollars there.
Tip Nine: When you actually go to the port, be super cautious. It is quite dangerous. Getting robbed is a very real possibility so call for taxis from reputable companies if you can and make sure someone from the aduana company goes with you to the port at all times.
The aduana company we used in Guayaquil was Aduanesa (phone: 04 2-510754). Note: the “04” in the phone number is if you are calling from outside the Guayaquil area. They were very helpful and friendly and their office was very easy walking distance (a block over) from the shipping company which was highly convenient. However, unlike Oscar Rodriguez, their fees did not cover the warehouse (el almacén) which charged the aforementioned $250. As for the warehousing area, we ran into the following bit of irritation... The warehousing area did not permit us to drive our car out of the container there on the property. They made us load it
on a third-party truck (which charged us $100) and take it off-property to another company which charged us $40 to lower it to the ground, let us drive it out, and then re-loaded the container onto the truck. As an aside, after two grueling days at the port, the truck was just about to leave the gate when it was stopped. Customs forgot to sign one piece of paper and the container wasn't permitted to leave the property for another hour while that got worked out (and while we stood in the very muddy street in the light drizzle waiting for the officials to find the customs agent).
Tip Ten: Be very careful who you get to lower your container to the ground.
The people who the truck guy recommended to us turned out to be a very sketchy group of characters on a frightening side street who lowered the container using two raggedy forklifts (one on each side of the truck) trying to coordinate their movements. Yikes. Oh, and the sketchy characters also stole a few minor items from us despite trying to closely watch them. Better pay the $80+ and have a more reputable (and insured)
group do the work. (We were led to believe before we got to the place that we were getting something reputable for $40. Nope.)
Note: One of the best people we dealt with was Ginger Rodriguez from Trans-Nippon which is NYK's local representative in Guayaquil. (Phone: 2-598060 Ext 1332 / 593-4-2598360) She was both very friendly and very efficient. She was the quickest to reply to our e-mails with actually useful information.
So the total bill came out to a little under $2,000 when you add up all the shipping process fees (and that was with the discount we received from the shipping company). Over $2,000 if you count the hotels, taxis, and other expenses during the week the Guayaquil port stalled us. Well over $2,000 if you include the extra three surprise weeks the shipping took. Even more money if you include being hospitalized with chest pain during the process even though I am a reasonably healthy and not easily stressed out 35 year old (true story!). Our plane tickets cost around $1,000 (for the pair). All told, shipping and traveling between Costa Rica and Ecuador ran us around $3,350. We had foolishly budgeted about $1,850. Also,
even though I have lived in Latin America for over two years and had just traveled through all of Central America, I was still surprised how irritating and stressful the process was. Both my wife and I are fluent in Spanish (she is a native speaker) and so add more irritation and stress if your Spanish is not at a high level. Well, hopefully all of that information (along with a good bottle of Scotch) will help you get through the process a little easier than it was for us. I will let you know if we learned our own lessons once we do this all over again shipping the car from Chile or Argentina back to the States at the end of this trip. Happy traveling!
The crew of “MVG” (our happy, yellow '77 WV Westfalia)
Thomas and Sandra Kunkel
www.missionvango.com
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jacob
non-member comment
incredible
you two are no strangers to trouble, but you handle most with grace and poise. these are my favorite excerpts from your account. "Yes, at this point I was looking to join a well-armed anarchist group." and "The people who the truck guy recommended to us turned out to be a very sketchy group of characters on a frightening side street who lowered the container using two raggedy forklifts (one on each side of the truck) trying to coordinate their movements." hilarious. go Thomas go.