Days allowed in Sth American countries

[Lonerider]

Hi
As a UK passport holder I am allowed up to 90 days in most if not all the countries in South America without a visa.

Does that apply for your motorbike? After looking on the relevant pages I see mention of 30 days
If it is only 30 days, is that only for bikes on say a UK reg?

If I bought a motorbike in Peru for instance would that give me the full 90 days?

Thanks in advance

[Peter Bodtke]

Most times customs will give you 90 days for you and 90 for your bike. I have read of riders getting shorted and only receiving 30 days. Sometimes the official is just being a ***** and won't give the rider more than 30 days on their bike. The first step is immigration, so ask for 90 days on your visa. Customs won't give you more than the number of days immigrations gave you (that happened to me one time. I can't remember where and it didn't matter in the end.)

I believe you will usually get 90 on the bike if you ask and if you get any push back, then ask extra nice. You will probably get what you ask for. As with most request, if you follow up with a reason, it helps. Say how you are planing to visit blah and blah-blah...and then see blah-blah-blah... If you are entering Argentina from Brazil and get 90 days on your visa, and when you ask for 90 days for you bike and they say 30...tell them about all the places you want to visit from the tango shows in BA to the sea lions in Terra del Fuego... Share with the official how much you are looking forward to spending quality time in their country. Ask if they know good hotels in the touristic places. The inference being you plan to spend money. I don't know if all of this is really necessary, but it might work.

I was restricted in length by visa and importation in Suriname. They are pretty tight in general and length of importation was no exception. I didn't really care as I was moving through pretty quickly and didn't plan to spend more than a week there. Ended up there only three nights. Same for Cuba, but the boat arrived and left 28 days later, so we were given papers for 30 days.

[Lonerider]

Cheers for the information

[Tony LEE]

Customs won't give you more than the number of days immigrations gave you

Some do. Argentina routinely give you 8 months for the vehicle, but sometimes only 90 days. 90 for the rider.

Uruguay give 12 months at land crossings but maybe not at ferry crossings.

Bolivia is one where you might only get 30 days initially but which can be extended.

Another point to watch is that I believe 4 Central American countries only allow 90 days total spread between the 4 countries - bit like the Schengen zone in Europe which only allows 90 days combined over all treaty countries.

[Peter Bodtke]

Thanks Tony. I stand corrected by someone with much more experience. What I should have said was, for me, one time, when entering a country immigrations gave me 30 days, and customs wouldn't give me more time.

[Tony LEE]

Peter - seems to be a matter of whether the border official is in a good mood or not - so your experience is quite common. Paso Jama into Argentina is reputed to be very mean with TIP duration.
Some travellers get around it by just going to the next post and recrossing, but that might involve hundreds of kilometres detour and a couple of days driving so isn't practical in many situations.


One of those hope for the best but be prepared for the worst situations. I got 3 months crossing into Argentina way down south where it didn't matter, but got 8 months at the last crossing when it did matter as it saved me having to cross into Uruguay to store the vehicle