hello there,

i want to ship my bike to cartagena columbia, not bogota, does anyone know of any companies that will do this, air or water, from panama city or colon

muchas gracious for any info

mareestu

See the "Shipments by Travellers" section - link on left - lots of info.

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Grant Johnson

Seek, and ye shall find.
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One world, Two wheels.
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

__________________
Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
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Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

shipments all going to Bogota, but got some names in Shipping co´s will try those

thanks
mareestu

After riding from Chile all the way up to Oregon and across to Miami, I'm now back in Cali, Colombia with my bike and Colombian my soon to become wife Diana and we're expecting a baby in December.

1st of August 2008 we started a super nice hostel in the good and secure part of Cali.

If you head this way its cheap, quiet and safe and we´ll help you in any way we can.

We have airport pick-up and since I have flown my bike in and out of Cali, I can help with all the legal matters of arriving or leaving Colombia.

Casa Blanca Hostel, Avenida 6 bis, Calle 26n, #57, Santa Monica Residencial, Cali, Colombia. Tel. (+57) (092) 396 38 46 Fax. (+57) (092) 668 99 86 or mail me at mikkel@mfthomsen.dk
GPS koordinates: N 03.46925 W 076.52967

Check my travel video diary at YouTube - kaiserkyhl's Channel

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Keep On Ridin' In The Free World

- Mike

If you take the Colon route, be careful. The town is seriously dangerous. I shipped south from Colon to Cartagena on a small inter-island banana boat in 2006. They were smugglers and dumped two of us and our bikes into an open boat in the middle of the night (see Blog at home). As the great sage (and great friend) Ang-Wei Ming remarked. We said we wanted an adventure.
Ming got robbed by four kids with knives to his throat half a block from his down-town Colon hotel. I stayed out at the Harbor Inn next door to the Melia in what was the Canal zone. Reasonable price and safe.
Riding north last year, I shipped the bike from Cartagena on a yacht into Portobello. The crew was an alcoholic, turned off the motor in the middle of the night and lost the key!

Yep I heard of many others (backpacking mates) who experienced similar ridiculous (ie life threatening) sailing stories on smaller yachts. Sails failing, motors breaking down, running out of food and water, disputes, overcrowding, using fishing canoes to be shuttled to mainland mid-journey etc etc. I went with a German sailing association (ie not-for-profit) boat called the Stahlratte (www.stahlratte.org: Logbuch) which is a comparitably large 38.5m ex-fishing sail boat, with motor obviously when there´s no wind. Awesome experience. Friendly crew that speaks English and understand your bike is important. Good food, lots of space, good beds, water purifier equipment etc and they have a guy at each end that does all the immigration and customs stuff. The last section of the ride to the San Blas Islands from Panama city was a good challenge (half was wet clay) and the dugout canoe shuttle to the Stahlratte ´interesting´ enough me thinks. At the other end they used their dingy to Cartegena. No worries! The price ended up being slightly more than flying all across but then you miss the San Blas experience which was great.

Ok, so the only trick is they are soon leaving the Panama-Colombia area and heading down to Australia. They apparently are not liked in the region by their competitors as they have kept the same prices for some time and keep strictly to their max numbers for example, so they are everyone´s first choice. So post Stahlratte, I believe your options will soon only be container shipping, modern-day pirates on said small yachts or to fly...

Goodluck!

Just checked contact info with Copa Airlines, who flew my bike from Cali, Col to Panama City.

In Panama City you can go straight to the Airport Cargo terminal (Tocumen, a bit further down the road from the passenger terminal) and talk to Manlio Lara at tel. 507 238 4510.

Flying from Colombia is possible from Bogota, Medellin and here in Cali. Less frequent flights from Baranquilla on the coast and non from Cartagena.

From Colombia you always need to go through a cargo agent to get a Airway bill!

__________________
Keep On Ridin' In The Free World

- Mike

It is definitely not worth doing the Colon route. There are way too many shady people there willing to stick a knife in your back. A rider I know and his gf were robbed in broad daylight. He chased them down and had a gun pointed at him. The captains there are shady and do not care a damn about your bike. (ask me how I know)

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http://www.journeyrider.net Latin America blog (07-8)

Does the Stahlratte go from Colombia to Panama as well or only the other way around?