We Finally Get the Car – 4/25/2103
Apr 27th, 2013 by rallyadmin
We’re up and at breakfast by 8 and moving again by 8:30. There’s really no rush. We’re less than 100 miles from San Antonio and we’ll be there easily by 11. But we’re not on the cutoff that we planned to be on and we have to wind our way through some smallish back roads until we get on the road to San Antonio.
We’d been given the address of the customs broker’s office and we think it’s near the UltraMar office that we’d been at last week. Boy, does that seem like a long time ago. It’s on El Molo, #15, and the office is just across the main boulevard from UltraMar.
We park and walk to the office. Up the stairs. Wrong office on the first try but the woman there points us to the right office. We knock. No answer. We knock again. Still no answer. We’re just starting to walk away (we weren’t expected until noon) when the door opens. The correct office this time.
Olas and smiles. They’re working on the paperwork right now. They have the carnet and title that we left at the Valparaiso office. It turns out that the paperwork that they’re working on is the bill (now $500, up from the quoted $192 – these things happen, the transport truck for the car was an additional $150(?) and they may also be charging for the smiles by the smile) and the security paperwork so we and the rental car can enter the terminal.
Just before noon they fit us out in orange safety vests and hardhats (so we won’t standout, I’m sure) and we drive to the terminal. The first step is to enter the front gate of the terminal. Our escort, Freddy, gets out of the car, goes into an office, comes back a few minutes later. He and I walk through the pedestrian turn-style and the car gate lifts and John drives the rental car through. Step #1, check. (Remember the 3 step rule.)
We get back in the car and drive a few hundred meters and park again. Freddy gets out again and goes into another office. We wait and watch these huge forklift type machines moving 40 foot containers around like so many kid’s blocks. Take one off the top of that 6 high stack and move it over there and put on the 3 high stack. Repeat.
Maybe 10 minutes later, Freddy comes back and gets in the car and motions to drive off. We head deeper into the port through literally canyons of shipping containers. Step #2, check.
Down the main road through the terminal, take a right, farther down the main road and suddenly there are the ships. There are 2 standard container ships on one pier in various stages of being unloaded by the huge gantry cranes that hover over the stacks of containers on the ship. They drop down a lifting assembly, connect to a container, lift, traverse back over the pier and deposit the container onto a waiting truck, over and over again. They make it look so easy that you soon forget how big and heavy everything is, to say nothing of just how quickly they are moving these containers.
Across the harbor is another pier where the Hoegh Bangkok that carried our car here is berthed. It’s an ugly beast. It sits high in the water and his the very high straight sides. It loaded with cars coming from the Korean and Japanese car companies. The cars they carry are driven on one at a time and driven off one at a time. This is not the efficiency of the container process. One car, one driver, repeat.
We clear a wall of containers and there’s the Cherokee, looking alive and well. We pull in behind it and Freddy goes into another office. Step #3 almost done and we’re outta here.
Ha, ha. Not so fast silly boy. Step #3 involved a fair amount of Spanish and didn’t result in us getting the key to the car and driving off. Back in the car and off to the office we just came from. We park again. And wait again. So near yet so far. At least we’ve seen the car. Step #4, check.
Probably another 15 minutes, and Eddy is out and back in the car. Back in to the pier area but this time we drive right past the car and head over to the pier that the Bangkok is berthed at. We park and Eddy leaves and walks over and into the ship. We get out, orange-vested and hard-hatted, to look around.
There is a group of drivers that are unloading Chevrolet Sparks, a tiny econo-box that is made in Korea. They come off the ship in a convoy, drive down the pier area a short ways, make u-turn and come racing back and finally park in an open area on the broad pier. The drivers get out of the Sparks and climb into a couple of other cars and those cars race into the ship for another group of cars to unload. No wonder new cars don’t have zero miles on the odo when they get to the dealer.
Maybe 30 minutes later, Freddy comes back off the ship and walks to the car. He motions to drive and we head back to the office that we had left in Step #4 and Step #2. Step #5, check (I think.)
This time, Freddy runs in and comes back a couple of minutes later with the key to the car. The ship had a key so that they could move the car. Apparently, finding or getting the key was the latest issue. Step #6, check.
Back to the Cherokee. Some paperwork is shuffled. Freddy motions to get in and drive and John starts the Cherokee and drives off. We have the car! Step #7, check. Yay!!!
Well almost. Next stop customs. We head for the gate but stop within rock-throwing distance. They car has to have it’s carnet stamped. The carnet is the document that bonds the car so that if we leave it Chile, the bonding company pays the import taxes and we lose the bond we paid to get the carnet. If that happens, we probably get sent to a distant galaxy for punishment, too.
The customs agent compares the title and the carnet and then checks the VIN number against the carnet. All seems o be well but he doesn’t know what to do next. The 4 of us (the inspector, Freddy, John and myself) finally work out what part of the carnet form he gets to keep and where he puts the import stamp. We have to have both an import stamp and an export stamp for each page of the carnet that we use in order to get our bond back.
Freddy, as usual, disappears with the inspector into another office. He’s back in a few minutes with the documents. Step #8, check.
Now, we head for the exit. Nope, there’s still the matter of an actual customs inspection. Freddy and john drive next door to a garage area and a an actual “open this up” type inspector starts searching the car for whatever. She’s not particularly thorough, at least, she’s not opening every single packet and she’s done in 5 to 10 minutes. She waves us on. Step #9, check!
Now we drive to the exit. Freddy walks over, gives some paperwork to the exit guard, the gate goes up and we drive the cars out. Step #10, check, check and check-mate!! The car is in Chile!!
We drive back to the broker’s office. Freddy gives John the paperwork and gets out. We thank him and he wishes us a good trip and we’re finally off. It’s really a 10 step process.
The first thing we need is to find a brake shop. John has brought 2 complete rebuild kits for the rear brakes. We need a shop to do the work. We try a Goodyear shop. They don’t have anyone to do it. (But we can do some new tires. No, thinks. Brakes. Focus.) They direct us to a private shop but they have too many people in front of us to do the job today.
We head down the boulevard and see a Michelin shop that adverts that they do brakes. They lie. But the send us to another shop that is on the road out of town to Santiago. As we drive up the road, I see the shop but John misses it and heads up the road toward the main highway. I finally, flag him down and we turn around, go back into town and stop at the shop.
They can do it but they’re busy. We beg a bit and they agree to do the job. They have a bit of trouble on the first wheel (they don’t do a lot of old Cherokees apparently) but they get it done. The second wheel takes them one third the time. They finish up. We pay ($35 for 2½ hours of labor, try that at your local Midas shop) and we’re finally out of San Antonio and on our way back to Santiago for the night.
By the time we get to Santiago airport to drop the rental car, it’s dark and the traffic is miserable. We wander around following the crazy route that the GPS has come up with (s Santiago street problem, not a GPS problem) but we get to the airport, find the rental car return on the second try (a new record for us), drop off the car, clear the paper and start looking for a hotel.
On the second try, we splurge and check into a Hilton Garden Inn. It’s nearly brand new and a bit on the pricey side but we’re ready to celebrate. Up to the room, drop the bags, back down to the restaurant in the Hilton (whoopie, we don’t have to drive anywhere – good thing, there’s nothing else here), have dinner and, mercifully, go back to the room.
What a day! The trip has finally started.
Obi-wan
One Response to “We Finally Get the Car – 4/25/2103”
Midas! Are you kidding! Those guys don’t know wrenches come in different sizes. Should have vistied Holleyitos in town. John remember our mo on the ride, only stay at places that have food and a bar in it!