Jan. 27 – Costa Rica
Day 179 – An eventful a day as any, but at the same time it was uneventful. We crossed the Costa Rican border with no helpers and no troubles. It was the most peaceful, and the easiest of all borders we’ve crossed. I don’t have much to say, except follow the signs and the official’s instructions. We crossed within an hour at the most; record time for a border crossing! Unless you count the crossing from the USA into Baja, Mexico (taking only 1 second).
Lago de Nicaragua
Costa Rica. This road looks nice, but this country has the worst roads we’ve driven on so far…. talk about potholes!
We drove down to Caldera, a port on the Pacific Coast side, and spent all day there. Jason started making inquires about shipping our van to South America. We knew a couple that shipped their car from here, on a roll-on roll-off (RORO) ship and it was very cheap. Unfortunately, there were no RORO boats coming into port. A helpful gentleman gave Jason some shipping agents that we could contact to request information about the schedule for next few days. We found out that there is a ship leaving on the 31st for Chile, and arriving in San Antonio, Chile around the 9th, which was very good news. That is exactly what we were looking for, but it was more expensive than we wanted. It is going to end up costing $1150 USD, which includes taxes, customs, and everything – about the same price as most people have paid to ship to Ecuador. After numerous phone calls and in talking with the customs officials, we decided that this was the route we wanted to take. We want to meet up with some good friends of ours in Uruguay in the middle of February, and this boat will put us there right on time. It was perfect, how everything was working out at the port. We will have just enough time to get our paperwork done before loading the car on the ship, and we have the possibility of riding on the ship with our car. If we can do that, it would be the most ideal situation. We have to wait until Monday to get our shipping container number. Once we have that, our van is secured for shipping, and we just have to convince the captain to let us join them for the ride.
greenery!!
Tags: 13 - Costa Rica, costa rica, driving, shipping car
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Interesting stuff. I had always wondered about how it is that people ship their own vehicles.