From Panama City, Panama to Guayaquil, Ecuador - December, 2000

Freight from Panama City:

We ended up paying the horrendous price of 800USD for the bike only, flown to Guayaquil with Lacsa Airlines, which is the only company that doubles the basic per kilo price on vehicles.

Our advice is to not try this during Christmas. The flights are few and loaded, and the bosses are on holiday so there's nobody present who are authorized to negotiate the prices.

We visited lots of agents and one of them called Girag and put the phone on speaker. The agent in the other end basically bad mouthed the motorcyclists for causing to much trouble and hassle. He seemed very unwilling to take us.

Grant: See the note from Erwin Thoma who shipped with Girag from Panama to Bogota in August 2000.

Finally we ended up with Panalpina, among other because they had an office in Guayaquil as well. They didn't give us all the prices though, even though I had asked for it again and again. The handling fee in Guayaquil was another 40 USD. Also, some companies charge up to 80 USD to pack the bike (Intertrade is one example and they wouldn't let us do the job our selves). Panalpina would probably have charged us except they believed they didn't have to pack the bike and had already given us a price.

The Panalpina ofice in Guayaquil sent a guy with us to the custom office a little over one hour before they closed for the holiday (this was on Dec. 28th) and he led us straight through the lines of people, the small hole in the wall desks and into the back office where the big boss resided. He took the passport, the registration and my driver licence, where gone for a short while, then made me sign a few papers, led me to another window where after a long shoveling of papers, I got to pay 28USD in customs fees, then led me into the warehouse, gave the papers to the warehouse boss, who went through them again, and then finally, after only 1,5 hours in customs, at 1210 - ten minutes after they had closed for New Year, we left with the bike. We couldn't believe our luck, and even less so later. The boss had told us we only got five days transit permit for the bike, which was a dissapointment. Later we discovered that the permit didn't have an last exit date, and when asking the custom office in Quito about this, they said we shouldn't worry, it was the fault of the customs, and we could stay a few more weeks without getting into trouble.

We also checked into ship freight, but this ended up so complicated with so much time delay and paper work that we dropped the thought. There is one option though tfor people who have plenty of time. Panalpina has a consolidated container that they pack and lock up, send to Guayaquil and unlock and unpack it in the Panalpina office there. Hence no other person than the Panalpina employees will see the bike between Panama and Guayaquil. This container goes once per week we were told, but plan on at least two to three days of preparations (paperwork and packing) and at least two difficult custom days in Guayaquil (ref Chris Bright a few months ago).