I never had a problem either, with cops boarders or otherwise. Well one extortion attempt which scared me sooo much I forgot every word of spanish I ever new. bier Interesting about the Title in Honduras. That was the longest crossing for me, copias copies :) asked to see the bike, etc etc, but never asked for the title. All I had was a copy so maybe I was lucky. He also cut me some slack when I gave one of the original docs to the bank and only had the 3 copies for him. Possibly it was the fact I had been there two hours and the sweat was dripping off my nose, he felt sorry. As an interesting note, my spanish sucks, and that seemed to help somewhat at the crossings. Seemed the more questions I was able to answer the more questions they asked me.

good idea. Unfortunately, she used a reference book that had pictures of titles from every state and it showed what to look for to determine if it was an original.

Haha, perhaps I was just trying to liquor you up so I could land another Hitler mustache once you had gone to bed?

How many copies of stuff do you need? I'm in Mexico right now, I've got one copy each of passport, title, and that's all I've got actually.

This is actually kind've scary. A lot of people don't bring titles, and a lot of localities don't even issue them. Plus there are all those who travel on forged documents (although you didn't hear it from me).

I still don't understand why some people never seem to need to present a title (me), or why others often do. I thought we'd more or less settled on a difference in terminology as the explanation, but I suppose not.

To the previous poster, whenever you need copies there'll be someone nearby with a copying machine ready to serve you. Whenever I try to get ahead of the curve I end up with a stack of crumpled, mangled, rain-spotted copies which no one will accept anyway. It's not worth worrying much about.

Mark

Funny about the copies, I have been there, done that. More times that I should have. I'm a slow learner sometimes.

Before my trip, everyone told me that I would not need a title. The first time I had to have it was at the El Amatillo crossing in Honduras. I never offer to show my title and would not show it just to see if I really needed it or not. I can say for sure at El Amatillo, I needed it. Maybe she was very disappointed that I had it because then she couldnt hit me up for a mordida? Who knows.

I needed it twice entering Argentina, once in Chile, and also at Foz do Iguaçu in Brasil.


Maybe I could have talked my out of needing it a couple of times, (except for in Honduras) but it became too easy just to bust out the title and be on my way.

I carry a few titles BTW, all of them from the state and legit, but only one is good for selling the vehicle as the others were, "lost."

UK title/registration doc/logbook & licence
 

Colour photocopies of a UK reg doc (title) were all I ever had to show from Argentina to Mexico. (I kept the original in a waterproof envelope thing).

Colour laminated copies of my UK driving licence were all I had to show everywhere except one Central American border (can't remember which), and once in Santa Barbara CA, where I was stopped for having a UK plate - the cop had never seen one before, but managed to spot that my licence was a copy. So I dug out the original from the waterproof hideaway.

(Your experience may include jail time etc etc...)

Hello again,

Well, I can now answer my own question. Since my last post I told my family our plans to cut short our trip and they said that they'd cover our transport home from the US. A call to my boss bought me two extra weeks leave and so now I write this post just south of Nogales, Mexico and about to enter the US tomorrow.

Central America was brilliant. Out of necessity we only saw a couple of 'highlights' in each country and we missed out El Salvador and Belize altogether, but we got a good taste for each country we visited. Likewise, we gunned it through Mexico, especially the northern half (quotas...), but we got a taste, which is better than nothing.

All in, we made it from Panama to the US in 22 days. We had only 3 non riding days, but still saw a fair bit - we just woke up early each day, rode a few hundred KMs to somewhere we liked, then either stayed there, or if there was time, just kept going until it got dark.

I'm very glad we did it and we were pleasantly surprised with the borders and the cops. We were stopped only once in CA for a routine paperwork check. A few more times in Mexico, but again just for papers - nothing underhand. The borders were a breeze; we spent no more than 2 hours at a single border and did not use helpers. This even with us crossing at every hour of the day - lunch time, mid afternoon and the end of the day. We don't know why other people have reported problems. We only guess that it is because of a complete lack of any Spanish or a complete inability to follow a very simple process.

Anyways, all's good. If anyone else faces a similar quandary and reads this - go for it!

Cheers
G

Good to hear you're having a good time. Other reasons might be because they have "heard" of alleged problems (5th hand a.k.a Chinese whispers) or like telling "horror stories" because they think it makes them sound important or have seen it on Fox News.

The HUBB is a good place for finding out real/accurate information.

Please keep on sharing with us.
Chris

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