Costa Rica —*Difficulty getting bike after multi-year storage
 

Hey folks —*long time lurker, first time poster.

I've read through all threads and Google'd extensively but found no info on this.

I left my bike in a bonded storage warehouse (Alamacen Fiscal) three years ago in Costa Rica. When asked how long I'd store it, I said a year or more. Nobody at the Alamacen or customs (or online guides, unfortunately) said anything about a limit to the amount of time you can store it.

I went through all the procedures today to re-instate my TVIP (temporary vehicle permit) and it went without a hitch until we hit Aduana, which referred me to no less than three people including the office boss at Aduana Santamaria (at the airport) who told me it's been surrendered to the state at 1 year of storage.

Apparently, vehicles stored for over a year can't get a TVIP again; they have to be nationalized or surrendered entirely.

We're waiting to hear from a guy at Costa Rica Cargo that works with the Alamacen Fiscal (which is Terminales Unidos) regularly to see what the nationalization fee would be, but given that it's a 2006 BMW HP2 it might be steep.

Anyone ever run into this? Is there a workaround? I am guessing I'm out of luck.

If not, I figured it'd be a great anecdote and bit of into to share on here.
:funmeterno: