spam
Expert Class
Posts: 343
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posted September 02, 2006 12:27 PM
 Edited By: spam on 5 Sep 2006 07:59
South America part 1- Adouanes- Nov 25/04
This post was originally an email sent to our friends and family during our travels in South America Nov 2004-Feb 2005- please see the "The next big adventure.... and the previous one..." thread for more details...
Adouanes- A perfect example of bureaucratic "make work"-Nov 25/04
Hi all,
Success! After 12 hours between Lan Chile Cargo, Customs and the cargo warehouse, the bikes are free to roam South America. Actually, it was more like LanChile, customs, LanChile, customs, customs, customs, LanChile, customs, customs, customs, warehouse, customs, customs, warehouse, customs....
You get the picture. And 12 hours was after spending 3 hours sussing it out on Friday last week before the bikes arrived. Suffice to say that anyone bringing anything of value to a country such as this should make sure to have every single piece of paperwork correct, even that little piece of paper that you never think anyone will look at, and even if your "experienced shipper" doesn't mention the things you have heard are important, they are important so be a pest and ask the questions and insist things are correct before you leave home.
In our case, only my name appeared on the manifest as the consignee, but to get 2 CITs (Certificate de Importation Temporel) for 2 bikes, there HAD to be 2 names on the manifest. That "small piece of paper" I refer to is the bill for the shipping, which was also in my name only and was spelled incorrectly at that (this piece of paper my shipper said "was not important"). Eventually Aduanes (Peru Customs) decided that if we could get a couple of bills for payment for shipping in 2 names, then this, plus of course a small fine, would be sufficient, in lieu of having 2 names on the manifest, which could not be changed. We finally got to the bikes at 4:15pm yesterday (after starting at 9am) and had them inspected by a customs official. Scott assembled them with no help from 5 very eager warehouse guys while Hein (translating for us through all this) and I tried to pay the warehouse fees to remove the bikes to the parking lot and get the final Customs stamp for the stickers and paperwork. Once we got the bikes out of the warehouse, we thought we were home free but the customs guy was nowhere to be found to finalise the paperwork. We finally found him in a café with his buds drinking a beer and even though I threatened to sleep in his office overnight, he refused to complete the paperwork for us that night. So now we are in limbo because we couldn't leave the warehouse compound without customs approval but we're outside of the secure warehouse. We were helped by a very friendly warehouse guy who allowed us to sneak out with the bikes, as long as we had them back in the same spot the next morning so the customs guy wouldn't find out.
Scott with the long-awaited CITs
This am, we returned the bikes as promised and then the customs guy made us stand in the sun for 2 hours waiting for him to complete the paperwork. I thought it was punishment for giving him a hard time in front of his friends the night before, but then we found out that we have CIT #000002 and #000003, so I guess the guy hadn't had much experience in writing up these things....
The DR made it through both living room doors to spend the night in the Courtyard
The KLR didn't make it through the second door and so spent the night in the living room at Hein and Ana's
The bikes are now safely home, in the living room, after the thrill of riding the streets of Lima to get home. On this experience Scott writes:
Got the bikes out of Customs today. Any body who thinks that they are really good at riding in traffic should pop down to Lima and have a go. No one pays any attention to any kind of rules of the road. It is like being on a racetrack in a race, with everybody vying for position, but at 60km/hour!! Sheer madness and I can't wait to get on the open road. The roads are just trash here! A Dual sport bike is a must! They have 97 octane gas at the pump! Tried it but it was too much for my old 1989 dr600 (Ping, Ping!) and I went down to 90. We are staying with a nice Peruvian family for $11 US a night. Our host is Dutch and speaks English and Spanish. He has been our interpreter through all of the customs stuff. Great guy! Having a great time though, drinking Pisco Sours and Cristal Cerveza. Pisco is a 48% booze made from grapes. Very good.
So, we expect to leave Lima tomorrow, heading towards Nazca. Not sure if we will head up to Cusco via Arequipa or via Nazca as we have heard from someone who travelled the Nazca road recently that it is in better shape than it is advertised to be and not too busy. We will be sad to say goodbye to the family we are with. The Dutch fellow, Hein, has been beyond helpful to us and the Peruvian family is very, very nice, even invited us to a birthday party for the mother the other day- all the family was there and had good Peruvian home cooking- and beer for all.
Cheers, Scott and Pam
  
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frEEk
Administrator
ummm... yeah
Posts: 9660
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posted September 02, 2006 04:50 PM
quote:
Once we got the bikes out of the warehouse, we thought we were home free but the customs guy was nowhere to be found to finalise the paperwork. We finally found him in a café with his buds drinking a beer and even though I threatened to sleep in his office overnight, he refused to complete the paperwork for us that night
and yet if you had shot out his kneecap (as i woudl love to do after reading this), YOU probably would have been blamed for starting the international incident.
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