Or, like Scuffy the Tugboat: there is only one way to go and that was with the rushing river
On Friday, April 26, we sold the camper. The man who bought it did not have a vehicle big enough to tow it so we towed it to his work, which was a well drilling company, and spent two more nights in the camper.
On Saturday, we went to Fantasialandia! Fantasialandia was a great amusement park that was modern, clean, had fabulous rides and there were NO LINES. We rode rides, had ice cream, generally a fun day.
On Sunday, we began the task of leaving. Everything came out of the camper and the van. We made four piles – trash, stuff to give away, things we were shipping in the van and what we needed for the last month in South America.
After a very long, long day, the van was packed up and the camper was empty and 8 different colored LLBean duffel bags were stacked outside. We went to town and bought champagne and ramen and a cuban cigar for a celebratory dinner!
and even Ryan is smiling!
The next morning, we packed up the van with 8 duffle bags, 8 carry on bags, 2 dogs, 2 dog kennels and 8 people and Mark dropped 6 of us & 2 dogs off at the Santiago International Airport. We had done some recon there a few days before and Jack had picked out a place that was tucked away in a loft with a wide open space and no people. We had some kind of flatbed thing as a table and 6 seats. It was perfect. We carted all the stuff, dogs and children to the spot and promptly made a fort of duffel bags and hung out. We played travel Monopoly, Quibbler, Memory, Magic and Boggle. We colored. We played with little cars. We played Mother May I and Red Light/Green Light. We had a picnic lunch. For 17 hours.
Meanwhile, Mark & Ryan went back to the camper and loaded 8 plastic tubs + all of our blankets Shana made us into the van. They drove to Valparaiso to meet with Sergio, our freight forwarder. They spent some time doing paperwork and then drove the van to the staging area so it could be loaded into a container. The city is built around the shipyard in Valparaiso but the logistics part is through three mountain tunnels on the other side.
The van was supposed to fit in the container with less than 3” to spare wide and 1” to spare on the top (with the front bumper and light removed). But of course we didn’t really know as we have never driven the van into a container. At the shipyard, the men didn’t think it would fit.
There was a lot of measuring and then they got a ramp with a long straight run so the van would not hit the container at an angle and Mark drove it in – and it fit!
The van shipped on the NYK Lodestar. It left Valparaiso on May 2. You can track it here:
We could only use a container because we had a back door on the van, otherwise you would be trapped inside the vehicle you drove in. Mark and Ryan made a quick stop at a grocery store for essentials we knew we couldn’t get in Peru (coconut milk and chocolate bars) and then hopped a bus to the airport, which is a 2 hour drive away. They arrived at the airport around 7pm – it is a 2 hour drive from Valparaiso to Santiago.
Then – it was date night at the Santiago International Airport! Nescafe and a pastry and 30 minutes of adult conversation.
One problem with the airport was that no internet worked, our smartphone didn’t work and no place had wifi. We had things we needed to do but we needed internet! At about 11pm, Sylvia began to throw up. Of course. At 2:25am, we were able to check the dogs and our bags and head to the plane! We flew on LAN which is a very nice airline with free movies and games and food and drinks and it’s fancy. Sylvia perked up and seemed to feel better as she ate her entire breakfast. They let her keep the LAN blanket because she told the flight attendant it was so so beautiful. It’s solid orange. We arrived in Lima and proceeded smoothly through customs. We had to wait for the vet, who was late and arrived highly caffeinated.
We found a beach house south of Lima to rent. But, like all South American things, it was very casual and that was not reassuring. No deposit. No confirmation number. Not even an address. The woman we rented from, Karina, was very nice and told us someone would meet us at the airport – which is in Callou, 35 miles away. We walked out of customs with 4 carts, 6 kids, 2 dogs and we were exhausted – and a guy was standing there with a sign that said Michel De Corz, and I knew that was us! He took us to a van, we all piled in and we began a slow, slow, slow drive. Here is a fun fact we learned last time we were in Lima: most taxi drivers don’t know Lima. They move from very rural places, where they never had a car, to Lima and pay to share a taxi with relatives and they take turns driving 24/7 but they don’t know where anything is. This was the case with our van driver. Even we knew shorter ways to get around Lima.
Part II: From Lime to Peace (Lima to La Paz)
We were feeling kind of pressed for time because, well, this is a long story too. Once we knew we were selling the camper in Santiago, we needed plane tickets back to Lima. We had already bought plane tickets out of Lima in February. Plane tickets to Lima were expensive but tickets to Bolivia, which route through Lima, saved us more than $3000. We bought tickets with a 16 hour layover to make sure we could get all our bags off the plane. Tricky thinking, eh? Then we started thinking about actually going to Bolivia. We decided that Ryan, Jack and Michelle would go to Bolivia for a week, take a bus to Puno, visit Puno friends, take a combi to Juliaca and fly back to Lima. In order to do this, we needed to make it to the beach house, help everyone get settled, make hotel reservations in La Paz, find a 4cm passport photo for me (required for entry and I didn’t have one but Jack and Ryan did) and get back to Callou at the airport. The beach house was better than we imagined. It has three bathrooms! Like a palace, a mansion, so much space, and a pool!
We were so tired, you cannot imagine. Mark, Ryan and I were now at 30 hours without sleep. In order to make hotel reservations and find a passport photo place, we needed wifi so Ryan and Mark left to recharge the trusty old Claro stick. They returned, we checked email but no confirmation on our reservation. We had to call, which we did. Now there is another little issue with Bolivia. When I made the reservations, I was only concerned with getting to Lima. If we get into Lima at 7am and have a 16 hour layover, our plane to La Paz leaves at midnight – and arrives in Bolivia at 2:55am. This is a bad time to arrive. Especially since the airport is actually in El Alto, the notorious barrio with more than 2 million people. I really wanted a hotel reservation, you know? We called our hotel, La Joya. Our conversation went something like this:
“Did you get our reservation?”
“No, we have internet problems.”
“Could we make one?”
“Yes sure see you then.”
“Wait! Do you need the dates and our name?”
“No it is no problem”
“But we arrive tonight”
“Tonight?”
“Yes tonight”
“Ok. No problem, see you tonight”
“Wait! We come in very late”
“Ok. No problem, see you tonight”
“We come in at 3am”
“Ok. No problem, see you tonight”
“How do we get to the hotel?”
“Ok. No problem, see you tonight”
“Do we take a cab?”
“No.”
“How do we get there?”
“We will be there”
“At the airport?”
“Ok. No problem, see you tonight”
“OK! You will pick us up at the airport tonight at 3am?”
“Late tonight or early tomorrow morning?”
“I am sorry. I don’t know what you mean”
“Ok. No problem, see you tonight”
Skype drops the call.
So we took showers in the beach house but there was no hot water. We called to ask how to turn it on and the Karina’s husband came over. He said there were no water heaters, was that OK? I said no, it was very cold water so he said ok, we will put in a water heater. And they did! As we walked out with our bags, we asked Karina’s husband where to catch a bus to Lima. He said he would just take us so we climbed into his car and headed to Lima. Karina’s husband likes to surf. We talked about surfing. He took us to his office and called us a radio cab to the airport in Callou. It took over an hour to drive the 14 miles. We got to the airport and found an IPeru office where they gave us the address of a photo place. We put our one bag into bag storage, took a taxi to the photo place and got there just before they closed. We ate dinner at a little restaurant and then headed back to the airport, retrieved our bag, checked out of Peru and boarded our plane. 38 hours without sleep.
Bolivia is a very interesting place. The Spanish took all the silver from the mines of Potosi and used it to fund 200 years of Spanish projects, like the Inquisition. Bolivia got independence in 1825 with the assistance of Simon Bolivar (who would be one person I would love to have dinner with) but civil war erupted and Bolivia has had 198 distinct governments since they got independence from Spain. Chile took their land that bordered the ocean because they wanted the saltpeter. You may remember that from the blog post about the battle of Iqueque. Bolivia appeals every year to the UN to get the land back. The loss of the sea is a Bolivian tragedy. They mourn the loss of the sea. They celebrate the Dia del Mar, a day of mourning and sorrow for the loss of the beloved ocean. Bolivia now has their first indigenous president, Evo Moreles, who I think is pretty great. I feel bad for Bolivia, a very disenfranchised country.
La Paz is in a deep canyon at 14,000 feet. The roads here are very, very, very steep. The airport is the highest international airport in the world. Special planes need to land here as there is less oxygen and they need special tires. Our plane looked unspecial, like a 737. The guide books say that when you leave from sea level and arrive at 14,000 feet you will get sick. They say that when the plane lands and they open the door and unpressurize the cabin, people pass out. Lan carried oxygen for this purpose. I was not looking forward to landing. We spent a month in Puno, just a hundred miles away and at 12,800 feet but we got there gradually and I still had some altitude sickness. We fell asleep. Slept hard. I tried to wake up Jack right before we landed and he hit me and told me to stop hurting him. The plane landed. The door opened. The cabin lost all pressure. The German tourists all took their sorochi tablets. And nothing happened. No one passed out. Nothing. We went through customs, bought our visa ($135 each), filled out all the forms and they didn’t want my 4cm passport photo because you know what they did? They bought a camera! We cleared customs. We were the last people out, as buying a visa took some time. Only Americans have to buy a visa because Evo Morales is irritated at the US. In fact on the second day we were in La Paz, Bolivia kicked out the USAID Program (very dramatically here but on US news it wasn’t even a blip). The La Paz airport looked a lot like the Bethel Airport but browner, not gray. Very small. No place to spend the night if we had to – and it was cold. But there – standing in the airport in the cold at nearly 4am was a man with a sign that said La Joya. I was so happy I actually cried. We piled into his minivan which had a cholita woman in the front seat and no back window. They offered us a blanket. We drove through El Alto and into La Paz and to our hotel where we went straight to our room and went to sleep.
]]>I wanted to say how easy this has all been. For a year, we researched how to get the van & camper here, reading many other travelers accounts of shipping across the Darien gap. People got robbed, vehicles got damaged, folks got fleeced. None of this has happened to us. In fact, the cost of shipping turned out to be $1000 less and faster than we anticipated. All of the details that seemed so stressful when we were planning the trip have simply fallen into place. Everyone has been kind and helpful.
We were worried about so many things. It turns out that we will be traveling with trucks and there are places trucks stop to spend the night – just like in America! It turns out that there are parking lots with big walls around them and you park there and pay a small fee and your stuff is guarded.
Officially clearing customs with your shipped vehicle takes three days and port costs are $350 per vehicle. Our bill was $700+ and the two vehicles arrived Monday morning at 8:15am. Mark, the Awesome Latin Negotiator, somehow got the port fees reduced to just $200 and got the vehicle out in a day and a half.
]]>My flight left out of Miami. To fly out of Tampa meant turning a three hour direct flight from Miami into a 9 1/2 hour one stop through Bogata. Also, the dogs needed a new APHIS (http://www.aphis.usda.gov/library/forms/pdf/APHIS7001.pdf) form to get on the plane (required by Avianca) and to get into Colombia (required by Colombia). The form could be prepared by any vet who is state licensed nationally accreditted and willing to do it. Then it had to be stamped by the USDA. It turns out there was only one vet (that I could find) in the Tampa are willing to do the form, Air Animal (www.airanimal.com). To get the USDA stamp, I had to go to Miami.
My sister Sara and her boyfriend Jeroen had arrived from Amsterdam the night before the family left and helped get them all to the airport the next morning. After the family left, I spent Wednesday and Thursday tying up loose ends, repacking, mailing stuff to people and places, and generally freaking out. Then everyone proceeded to help me out anyway the could to get me ready to go, often without me knowing it was happening. Thanks for everything, guys! We did get in a great meal Thursday night at a local steakhouse in Dunedin whose name escapes me. Thanks, Jeroen!
On Friday morning I picked up the rental car, packed it up with the two bags of everybody’s stuff (Michelle took only one bag with her and the kids as it cost money on Spirit and mine were free, sorta, as my ticket was twice the price), the two dogs and their kennels. I left about 10:30am. I had a 3:30 pm appointment at the USDA office in Miami, the last of the day. So five hours to drive what the GPS said was five hours and ten minutes away. Needless to say to those of you that know how I drive, I got to the appointment a half an hour early. I got the stamp, which took about ten minutes, then had nothing to do until my flight left the next day. I found a dog park on Miami Beach and took the dogs there for about two hours. I got there at dark and was the only person there the whole time. The dogs had a great time sniffing around and marking everything.
Then plan was to spend the night in the car and head to the airport in the morning. I found the closest Wal-Mart to the airport, which was back in my old stomping grounds in Doral (see Shipping Adventures part 1 and 2). For those of you that don’t know, Wal-Mart is often a great place to stop for the night. They usually don’t mind, figuring you’ll spend money there. They are generally pretty safe because they are open 24 hours a day, have well-lit parking lots, security cameras, and even police hanging out. So I found a spot away from the entrance, tucked under a couple of trees and next to somebody from Michigan “overnight parking” on there way to somewhere. Safety in numbers. It turns out this Wal-Mart was also conveniently located about 300 feet under the flight path to one of MIA’s runways. This ensured I was awake early enough to get to the airport by 10:00am, my required car rental return time.
Even more conveniently, a Hooters was located in the parking lot. My inaugural visit (yes, really)to Hooters took place on my last night in the U.S. What could be more fitting? I was starving. I tend not to eat on days like this when I have a lot to do and am carrying a lot of stress. It was about 9:00 pm and I needed some food. It was Friday night at Hooters in Miami (well, Doral). I heard Hooters girls sing the Hooters birthday song about seven times to different parties of bellowing, screaming man parties around the restaurant. I got to watch some basketball, each some quality fried food, and generally enjoy America for a few hours before heading back to my overnight parking (key phrase here, not “camping”) spot for several hours of jet landings, solitaire and a couple of hours of sleep.
My alarm clock, er, landing came at 6:32 am, courtesy of LAN Airlines. I headed into Wal-Mart (see, they were right, I did spend money) to get some packing take to de-doghair the rental car before turning it in. After that and a couple of lengthy dog walks around the parking lot, I headed out to the airport. I got there about 9:45 am. It took me about 20 minutes to get everything out of the car and organized enough to begin the big trek to the Avianca ticket counter. The Miami rental car return is a 5 level parking garage about a mile from the terminal. You drop off the car, walk about 300 yards to the elevators, take them upstairs to the rental car counter area, find the monorail, and take that to the terminal.
I got a little help from a couple getting on the elevator who had traveled with six dogs before (Really?! Why?! WOW!!). Mostly it went like this. Two kennels on the cart with dogs inside, with coffee (which I should have been drinking) and carry-on in the little basket thingy, and the two 45 lb bags over each shoulder. After about 35 seconds of travel by the rental car counter area, the dogs started whimpering. I got on the train about five minutes later. By now they were crying. Five minutes later we got to the terminal. Now it was time for yelping and howling. The Avianca counter was located in the J section of the terminal, the furthest possible (of course) location from the train. Also, at least half of the speedy walkways were not working. HOORAY!
It turns out dogs are really popular when you’re hauling them through an airport. Everyone wants to stop and see, especially kids. Twenty minutes later, my whimpering, yelping, crying (dogs), sweaty, muscle burning (me) parade arrived at Avianca. I was three hours early for the flight, and SOOO ready to turn the dogs over. The line was short and I was done in a bout twenty minutes. However, I had to keep the dogs until 11:30pm, so they didn’t have to drive the Avianca luggage crew crazy with their collective unhappiness.
I took them outside and walked them around as much as I could for the next 40 minutes. Then took then in and dropped them off. Louie was $80, Trek $130. The total price was cheaper than the $125 each I was quoted on the phone, so there’s a small victory. Security was a breeze and I got to the gate an hour before the flight left. I just sat and relaxed for a while, eagerly looking forward to being back together with the family.
I was very happy to get on the plane. I had a great window seat. HOLY COW!!! I’m going to Colombia!!! The flight had great food, nice people, wonderful service and a great entertainment selection. The view flying over the Carribean was awesome. I feel asleep for the last 40 minutes or so of the three hour flight and woke up when we touched down. No for some real fun.
It was about 90 degrees when I got off the plane. The customs receiving area was lacking air conditioning, and many I was fairly worried about how this process would go. I had a one way ticket into Colombia and had heard that generally, this was pretty frowned upon at customs. The line moved pretty quickly for the amount of people in it. I got to the agent in about 30 minutes. It was easier getting into Colombia that transferring flights in the Amsterdam airport. Very few questions, a passport stamp, a finger print scan, and that was it. Maybe three minutes.
Al the bags and the dogs were waiting for me in the baggage claim area. Trek and Louie were making a racket. I got everything together and hired a porter to help me with all the stuff. A woman came up to me and said she needed to see the paperwork for the dogs and I needed to come to her office. The dogs and I passed through inspection (there was no inspection for me) and I then spent about 20 minutes getting new Colombian paperwork for the dogs. She kept the original APHIS for her records. I tried to give her a copy, but she said no. Then she brought in an english speaking young man to translate. He explained that the new very official looking document was all I needed for the dogs inn Colombia and to get them into Ecuador, she had to keep the APHIS for their records, and all was good. The whole time this paperwork process was going on, the dogs were whining, crying and yelping in the hall with the very nice porter, who was trying unsuccessfully to distract them. Then off to the taxi.
I was wondering if there would be a taxi big enough for my stuff and the dogs kennels. Not quite, but close enough. It was $15 for the taxi from the airport to the vet where the dogs were to be boarded. Louie started howling (like a wolf at the moon) about 10 minutes into the 15 minute taxi ride. I still don’t know if he was happy or not. The taxi driver was quite popular with all his other taxi buddies. We stopped next to many taxis full of passengers on the way so they could see Louie on the roof. Kids were especially enthralled. We found the office easily enough and the whole family was waiting for our arrival. What a great moment!
The dogs were placed in their accommodations, we walked around the corner to the hotel, and I had officially arrived in Colombia!!
]]>We got to the officer about 8:30 and gave Arturo the receipts. He then had to go to customs to do things that are still unknown to me. He dropped Ryan and I off at a Starbucks near his office where we were going to wait until he was done. Then we could get the titles to the van and trailer back.
While at Starbucks, SC Line called and said we needed to have Hazardous Material paperwork filled out for the two propane tanks we had on the trailer. After a little investigation, I again found that this was something I needed a customs broker to do, and it would cost about $150 to $200. Arturo was already costing us $170 and I didn’t want to spend more money, especially to ship two tanks I could buy when we got to Cartagena for less money. So SC said they would take the tanks off for us. I hope someone gets to use them on their grill or something.
One more mysterious piece of paperwork we needed was called the Bill of Lading. I am told this is something like your boarding pass to a plane. Arturo wanted to know who was going to handle it for us. He could not. We ended up contacting Martha Gonzalez, a freight forwarder, who was suggested by SC and said she could help us. This turned out to be a great thing.
Martha was also in Doral and picked Ryan and I up at the Starbucks and took us to her office. It turns out the bill of lading isn’t supposed to be issued until the vehicles got on the boat. She works with SC Line regularly and personally know the owners. Since we were a special case (hey now, you all pipe down!) she was able to get them to issue the paperwork early. Also, Martha is from Colombia, and handles freight shipments all over South America. She spent some time setting up our arrival in Cartagena so everything will go smoothly once we get there. She also got me the opportunity to travel ON THE BOAT with the van and trailer (it’s about who you know)! Unfortunately, the dogs could not accompany me, so I had to let that one go. More about that later. It’s too bad…..they even have a pool!
After about two hours of hanging out with Martha, everything was done. She did have to hang onto the titles for the vehicles until they are loaded onto the boat. This was in case customs had to inspect them to determine if they were stolen or not. Apparently this is the biggest concern US Customs has for shipping vehicle out of the country. Martha drove us to the metro station and we began our journey home. It was about 1:45 pm.
Ryan and I were taking a Greyhound from Fort Lauderdale to Tampa. We took the train from Doral (or wherever it was Martha dropped us off at) to Fort Lauderdale. This took about an hour. We then walked to the Greyhound staion, which was about 2 1/2 miles away. We got there around 5:15 pm. The bus left at 7:00, so we went to get some food, our first of the day. At this point I was pretty beat.
Our bus stopped in Orlando where we had to switch to another bus. We had an hour layover and then head out to Tampa. We got in at about 1:15 am. Michelle and Max picked us up in my parents car and we got back to the house about 2 am. Finally, the adventure within an adventure was over.
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I had some work I needed to do to the vehicles. I locked our generator to the car seats with a big chain so it wouldn’t disappear during transit. I hid my bucket of tools inside the two van tires riding in the back. I had to take the strobe light and antenna off the top of the van to decrease the measurements ($60/cubic meter….every inch counts). I also had to add some screws to and caulk one of the trailer panels that keeps coming loose while we drive. By the time this was done, Ryan was terribly bored, hunting frogs in the ditch along the parking lot of the office building. Time for action.
We headed out to see the town, trailer in tow. We ended up driving from the Import Express office in Doral to South Beach, driving through the city and avoiding highways as we went. I have to say, the yacht line-up as you drive into South Beach is awfully impressive. Nothing like seeing several hundred million dollars worth of boats tied to their respective private docks lined up end to end . And all the pretty people, where do they all come from? After driving through South Beach (all 53′ of us) we headed back to the Import Export office and spent the night in the parking lot.
The next morning I cleaned up the camper to get it ready for shipping. Not much to do, just final touch ups. I then met with Arturo so he could begin working on the paperwork. I gave him the notarized Power of Attorney form Michelle and I had prepared in Tampa before I left. This gave him the authority to act on our behalf to file all the paper work with U.S. Customs and the shipping line. He also got the original titles to the van and trailer. The last thing I had to give him was the dock receipt for the two vehicles.
The van and trailer had to be dropped off Port Everglades at the SCLine terminal for the dock reciepts to be generated. They would give me the receipts, then I had to get then back to Arturo, 30 miles away. Of course, once the van was dropped off, this part of the operation became more difficult.
After leaving Arturo’s office, I stopped at a NAPA to pick up a couple of spare brake lights, then I had to find a place to dump the black and grey water from the trailer. This turned into a real pain. Michelle was working the internet in Tampa, finding places that were supposed to have dump stations. The first couple didn’t work out. Finally, I found an RV park close to the port that let me dump for $5. YAY!. SCLine closed for lunch from noon to one, and by now it was 12:15pm. Ryan and I had yet to have coffee and were getting hungry, so we stopped at a Dunkin Donuts for coffee and then headed to a Taco Bell for lunch. It was after 1pm as we headed to Taco Bell, so we skipped it and went straight to the port. We were already about 2hrs behind schedule.
At the port, Ryan and I had to clear security. We got temporary day badges to be there and then drove to the SCLine terminal. Here we had to clear more security. This area was a more secure situation and they would not let Ryan in. I had to wait about 45 minutes until there was no open freight (whatever that means) to get into the yard. Ryan had to wait for me at the guardhouse. They weighed the van and trailer. Then I needed to provide a paper copy of the booking confirmation. I only had an email the SC Line Panama office had sent us. The freight receiving office didn’t have immediate access to the form, so this created another 45 minute delay. I told Michelle what was going on. She forwarded them the email copy we had received, they printed it out, and that solved the next piece of the puzzle. It could have taken a day for SC Panama to get the booking confirmation to the freight office. I should have thought of forwarding the form myself. DUH! Thanks Punkin!
So now then van amd trailer were parked and measured for shipping. I then got the dock receipts and Ryan and I headed out. It was 4pm. So much for heading back to Tampa today. We waited 45 minutes for a taxi that was supposed to take ten. We took that to train station, took the train to the light rail, then the light rail to a hotel Michelle found us near the Convention Center in Miami (Rodeway Inn, not too crappy, price was right, perfect!). We got there around 7:30pm
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