Peru - Import and Export of Motorbikes - awful experience!
 

Hi all,

this post might be also suitable in the forum "Trip Transport".

I´ve just come back from a five weeks trip to Peru, Bolivia and the far-northern part of Chile.

We shipped the our four Motorbikes within a container to and from Callao (Lima) in Peru. All i can say is: DON`T DO THIS IF YOU CAN AVOID IT!!!

WHY?
It´s a simple answer: we had to spent two very long days to get the bikes out of the customs. During this period nothing really happened as it seemed to us. Only by waiting until the late evening hours on the second day in front of the customs house and by regular phone calls by our agent we got the last necessary documents on that day. Otherwise we might had to wait another half day (according to our agent).

BTW, an agent for the paperworks seems to be urgently necessary. To get the bikes from the customs there were two guys for us working in two different places simultaneously. A third gave us some "mental" help during the very boring waiting hours.

The next horrible experience was the task to get the bikes into the container again. Another two days we had to spent, again lots of hours with waiting where nothing seemed to happen. Finally we had to leave on friday afternoon to catch our flight before the final custom check was done. It was only possible by giving a power of attorney to our agent to do the customs final check instead of us personally.

Until now i have no feedback whether it worked or not ....

So if you want to go Peru (what i can recommend) ship your bike to somewhere else. I guess the best will be Valparaiso. From there you have two or three days ride instead of waiting for nothing! :-)