Leaving Cartagena with all your personal belongings of 10 years has its specific problems, we noticed…
Selling the boat means leaving the country with all your personal belongings
We knew before we sold the boat that we would have an overload of luggage to transport. Why not transport it the cheapest way possible, by sea in a crate?
Vivian called several transport-companies to inform.
- 8 out of the 10 companies told us that they would not deal with private persons and personal belongings.
- Two agreed to give a a quote.
- One gave us a quote that we didn’t quite understand the first time we saw it
As this was the only company left, it was the only choice for us to transport our belongings.
Why only one in 10 companies wanted to transport our luggage?
From the outside when looking at Colombia most people think two things. Coffee and Cocaine. Inside Colombia it seems that everybody is obsessed with drugs. The companies didn’t want to transport our belongings because they suspected we would transport drugs. I don’t understand their reasoning. A check of the goods would solve this problem, not?
Endless paperwork
The company started to send us forms to fill in via email. And some documents had to be verified by Notary.
Endless communication about the forms to fill in, the documents to be verified….from Internet-Cafe to Phone-calls at the street…
And more forms….
And more info needed…
All forms filled in, ready …
So we thought.
We were on our way in a taxi to deliver the paperwork. Our contact in the company called to say that they were not going to transport our cubic-meter of personal belongings.
Reason: The security-branch of the company found it too risky to transport our goods.
What a deception. Again it had something to do with the suspicion that we would smuggle drugs.
After running around for a few days we were confronted with the same problem, but much more urgent. What to take with us and what to leave behind. Decide within 24 hours…
Vivian managed to sell all the books for 2000 pesos Colombiano ($0.88 dollarcent) a piece at the bookshops close to the park.
On the other side of the street of our hotel was a metal-recycling shop. A lot of Colombians would come there with a garbage-bag full of aluminum cans. We noticed there was a possibility to weight our luggage. We wanted to go to the limit of what we could transport. We were allowed 30 KG a person of luggage and 10 KG of hand-luggage.
What a surprise! The weight was much less then I thought. So we put more stuff in our cases until we maxed out.
On the airport we got a nasty surprise. We had too much weight. I took of the computer pelican-case and that was just enough. One more item for the hand-luggage.
The “nice” scrap-metal collector had rigged his measuring-instrument to mark at least 10% less then the real weight of the objects…and indeed, he told us something like “the measuring here can differ from what they measure on the airport…” but I didn’t give it a thought when he told me. I’m not Columbian enough to understand those hints.
