Travels on a Motorbike

I’m English, I can’t sing and I’m no beauty. However, I reckon I’ve got more chance of winning Latin American Idol than getting my motorbike and possessions on a ship and out of Brazil in their entirety and on time.

I’ve heard that although trying to import anything into Brazil requires large amounts of patience and money, shipping items out of the country is supposed to be slightly easier and cheaper. Unfortunately I haven’t met anyone yet that has done it. In fact, Dave (a biker I met in Ecuador) rode to Rio de janeiro, made some inquiries and then promptly turned round to ride back to Buenos Aires to ship his motorbike from Argentina instead. However, I promised some friends in Sao Paulo that I would spend their holidays with them at the end of this month so I’m shipping from Santos, 60 miles from Sao Paulo, regardless.

As you can imagine, shipping is a fairly common topic among motorbike tourers. How and where did you import? With whom and where are you exporting? etc. Many months ago a German biker in Panama gave me contact details of a hostal in Chile (Martina - villakunterbuntvalpo<AT>yahoo.de) that help bikers export their prise possessions from South America. After trying to engage freight companies in Brazil myself (with mixed results) the hostel owners in Chile set me up with a UK shipping agent with sister company in Sao Paulo. The Sao Paulo shipping agent will look after the Brazilian paperwork, help me crate the bike and put it on a ship out of Brazil. The UK shipping agent will then do all the UK paperwork for when my bike arrives at Tilbury docks in London, where I will hopefully unpack it and ride off into the sunset (or traffic jam on the M25). You still with me?

The people I’m dealing with in Sao Paulo are lovely, although I’m a slighly tense that I’m their first motorbike customer. So now to the process of exporting my bike. I’m complicating things slightly by shipping personal possessions in the crate with the bike (in my hard luggage and duffel bag). Apparently this requires a whole new set of checks and paperwork!

So…

1. I’ve had to itemise and price everything that’s going in the crate.
2. I’ve had to sign over power of attorney to 6 document processors/lawyers enabling them to crate a legal entity under my name that will be used to export my bike. Apparently it’s like creating a company for me that will dissolve in 6 months.
3. This legal document, my passport, the itemised list of possessions, the original temporary import documents and my signature then had to be photocopied and authenticated. This was done at a special office (common in Brazil) and cost me about 5o USD. And yes, each set of documents had to be done at a different counter in the office.
4. I then had to buy a plane ticket to prove I’m leaving the country as well. All this is then sent to the customs clearance officer in Santos. The customs clearance officer then decides whether everything is in order and the bike can be processed to leave. This can take between 2 and 14 days. The worrying bit here is that if s/he decides things are not correct s/he can hold up my bike, causing me to either have to change or miss my flight or leave the country before it does.
5. The bike is provisionally booked to sail on a ship on 25th March. Normally I would have to deliver the bike to the warehouse 10 days before then but because I’m sending personal items with it I have to deliver it 15 days before sailing, as they anticipate “hold-ups”! I’ve also been warned that an English motorbike may arouse interest in an otherwise boring day of a customs official so perhaps they’ll open it up anyway. My response to this was, “well why don’t they have a good look at it all before we crate it up.” Apparently that’s not how it works. Everything is crated. They then look at the bill of lading, decide what they want to look at and remove anything that they don’t like (or do like – depending on how you look at it).
6. Now to the crating. I was going to do this myself. I’ve since decided that if I let a professional do it we’re less likely to get picked up on some technicality. The crate though is the most expensive single component of the costs. Unfortunately my shipping agent doesn’t crate motorbikes themselves so they’ve found me a man that can. This adds another level of complexity, as they need to sort out whether the bike is crated at the crating company and then transported to the warehouse or the crate is transported to the warehouse and the man crates it there (although this second option may be against the warehouse company policy). On the face of it this all seems trivial but the negotiations and costs involved are not. All of this is exasperated by the fact that although my Spanish may have been adequate for this, my Portuguese is not. However, (my English speaking) Brazilian shipping agents have promised to look after me and they are even having someone meet me at the crating company in Santos to make sure I don’t get ripped off.

I am not oblivious to the fact that sending my bike home is probably going to cost more than its worth but I’ve grown quite attached to it over the past year to it’s coming with me. Also, if it’s this tricky exporting a motorbike I can’t imagine the paperwork involved in legally selling it here. The bike is linked to my passport so although temping, I’m not keen on trying to sell it illegally either.

Anyway, I’m off to Rio for a few days until I have to return to Sao Paulo to deliver the bike to Santos.

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