two lingering topics

I’ve found the motivation to recount the tale of my shipping adventures but first, La Policia.

 

So Chile has reminded me that I need to expand upon my experience with the officials through the countries of my trip. Chile only has one police force.  It is the first since the US.  All others have 3 basic forms of legal enforcement.  The names may be different but they are essentially as follows.

 

Military

Usually on the road, random checkpoints, first stops after border crossings. Very abundant in Guat, Colombia, Peru, Panama.  These guys are usually serving their mandatory one year in the military. Young, cool, like to joke around. Usually check the papers, make fun of me for my bad Spanish and wish me well on my trip.  Give me a military checkpoint any day.  I like these guys. Make me feel safe and always have a good time.  They are the ones who were so helpful during my lost hours near Medellin, Colombia. I am grateful for all the military guys I have met along the way.

 

Tourist Police

Primarily found in the larger cities. There to cut down on petty theft and crime.  Oddly enough most are female. They are PERFECT for asking directions when lost, are always helpful when not distracted with traffic duty.  The name may change country to country but essentially there to help out the tourists, gringo and otherwise, in the larger cities.  Not as cool as the military guys but still amiable and good to have around.

 

Transit Police

These are the petty little bastards that as far as I can tell are around to do nothing but harass Americans.  These are the guys who will walk 75 yards through 4 lanes of traffic in Mexico City to single me out for $20. The guy who stole my knife in Panama from the center console, when I caught him he just asked if he could have it, meaning I am taking this or you’re not getting your passport back. The same guys who will stop me and justin at 4am, keep asking questions until they find one minor thing they can charge me with then demand $200 for the made up charge. I refused to pay and spent an hour arguing with them. When we finally paid a far lower price they pretended like they had done US a favor by taking our money.   I’ve begun taking the approach with these people that I am going to try and say the most ridiculous thing I can to them just to make myself laugh.  Things like ‘you know your belt doesn’t match your shoes does your commanding officer know that?’ I need to find a way to entertain myself in those situations.  When I quickly pay the bribe I get mad. When I fight it I get frustrated.  When I try and negotiate I just get tired.  Not once have I had a good feeling coming out of one of these transactions. I’ve paid probably $500 to these jokers on my trip.  I’ve yet to figure out how corruption is the ‘latin way’ but it is frustrating. If I was breaking the law, or acting inappropriate fine me. Don’t do it because of my fancy truck and your perception that I have money. All gringos have money is the theory. The one that really pissed me off was a guy in Peru just south of Lima.  Transit police. Looked at all my docs and was set to let me go.  Then he says he wants my sunglasses. Oh I’m sorry. He wanted something ‘American.’ I was not giving up my sunglasses to some petty bully with nothing better to do than harass me. I need them and no way in hell was he getting that expensive of a bribe.  So he kept demanding something ‘American’ before he would let me leave. I searched and searched my car for something cheap to give him.  What did he end up with?  A DMB concert t-shirt from the fall of 1998.  Yep that’s right a 10 year old tshirt from my trip to a Halloween concert in Oakland. Worst of all he sat there and smiled through the whole thing like we were bonding as some sort of friends.

 

If I had to venture a guess I’d say I’ve been stopped 200 hundred times on my trip so far. Only about 20 of those have required a bribe to continue on.  It’s obvious those 20 put a sour taste in my mouth for the ‘authorities’ of latin America.  I try to remember all the good experience and long term I’m sure I’ll forget the bribes.   Most of all I wish that I had all the money these guys think I have. If that were the case I could just keep going and gladly pay the bribes along the way.

 

Now I am sure you are just dying to know what it is like ship a truck around the Darien Gap.  It all begins with trying to forecast what day you’ll arrive in Panama.  Once you establish that date you email 25+ shipping companies/agents trying to get information on shipping a vehicle to Colombia.  You think 3 weeks notice is enough to get replies.  You finally get replies 6-8weeks later. That is not an exaggeration.  I was in Peru and still getting replies to my initial inquiries.  After spending 3 days in the Hotel Montreal in Panama City still trying to track down a company you finally find a name after a 6hr Google search.  You call this name, Evelyn Batista at Barwil and find a true saint. You go visit her and she explains to you the entire process and it goes like this.

 

When you enter Panama you get a vehicle stamp in your passport and sign a document stating you will not sell you car in Panama. When you leave the country by plane you have to have proof that you didn’t sell you vehicle and that process goes like this.  You wake up at 8 am and go to Evelyn’s office to get all the shipping documents.  You then proceed to the Policia Touristica and they inspect your vehicle to make sure it is the same as when you entered the country.  That process takes about 2 hours. Then you roll, on foot, across the street with the document confirming your car is the same one and fill out more forms. Here you sit as you watch one woman take 3 hours to type up 5 forms. If you’re lucky yours is on top. If you’re not it’s on the bottom. You spend most of that time fighting the urge to offer to type the document yourself but don’t want to offend so you sit and watch as she hunts and pecks and moves the electric typewriter around the preprinted form only to be interrupted every 30 seconds by flirting co-workers and telephone calls.  After you get permission from the police to leave the country you then have to go to customs.  Fortunately Evelyn gave you a map to find the customs office buried in the back of some industrial park with no sign.  Even then you have to ask for directions 3 times to find it. This process goes smoothly with the matronly old woman very excited to hear your story and almost forget to stamp your passport. All this done you have to hightail it back to Barwil finalize the paperwork.   At this point you have 3 days to get your vehicle out of the country.  Of course you can only shop up to load you truck in the container one day in advance or else you pay a fee for each day it sits there.

So back to Hotel Montreal for another night where the employee apathy and disdain for hospitality and customer service make you question why you have stayed in the same hotel for over a week now. Two days go by, including a mandatory detail and wash of the truck, and you drive up to Colon on the Caribbean coast.  Luckily Barwil has an employee that will help you get all your docs stamped and negotiate the enormous maze they call the port.  This only takes 6 hours.  Another 2 to enter the port and load the truck in a container. I talked about the separation anxiety I had with my truck at that time but it needs to be remembered. 3 months of making sure you truck is nice and safe and suddenly you are alone. Truck is locked up in a container out of your control.  Back to Panama City on a bus and one more night in your stunning and memorable hotel

 

The next day you check out at noon for your 8pm flight at the airport and eventually find yourself in Cartagena at 11:30 at night.  A 3 day delay on your boat leaving Colon gives you a chance to explore the amazing city and hang out with friends.  One of the few positive benefits of this awful process.  Finally you get an email stating your truck is in port.  You’ve managed to track down a Colombian shipping agent who can get your truck out of the port. They hook you up with Lucedes, one of their runners, to walk you through the process. Day one starts at 3pm after the email arrives. Some paperwork (I don’t even remember anymore what it was) get filled out and stamped. Day 2 arrives and you finally get your truck out of the container.  You park it and go to lunch. Why? Because you get a randomly assigned customs agent and that is unchangeable.  Mine, a nice portly woman, very friendly and hard working.  8-11am and 3-5pm. Yep 5 hours a day.  So after a great lunch of chicken and patacon you return to the port and wait.  As you wait for your inspector to finish with her other containers you get in the most bizarre conversation ever with one of the dock workers.  For 20mins you try to figure out why he wants to buy your shoes.  He keeps saying he wants them and asks how much they are. You continue to inform him you will not sell your shoes and if you do what are you expected to walk around the burning hot dock in?  finally it dawns on you, he doesn’t want the actual shoes on your feet but shoes like yours. A good laugh is had by all and still you wait for inspection.  Finally you get your inspection.  30 seconds of it.  Papers stamped and back into the office. More paperwork done, and finally 8pm on day 2 your truck is back in your possession.  Just in time to get gas for your empty tank that you had to have before you loaded it in the container.

 

Grand total: shipping, agents, extra nights in hotels, meals, calls, flights etc just over $2k to get your truck around the Darien Gap.  The money is one thing. The days of delays and hours spent waiting for a paperwork is the real killer.

 

And yet I’m glad the process is so difficult.  It separates the wheat from the chaff. Yes I just compared myself to a grain.  Although I’m not sure which part.  It requires a commitment to which the casual traveler is not willing to acquiesce.  The satisfaction of traveling with your own vehicle through South America is that much greater due to the difficulity of getting it here.

 

Lots of words tonight. I hope they were enjoyable. J left for home earlier today and now instead of talking to friends I’m back to conversing with my keyboard. That bodes well for more than SPOT posts between now and Ushuaia.