experience of how much time you should plan ?: port/customs/Montevideo
 

Hello motorcycle experts,

due Uruguay is the country in Southamerica with the longest license to stay, I am considering shipping my motorcycle by RoRo ship directly to Montevideo from Germany (Hamburg or Bremerhaven).

Does anyone have experience with how much time (hours? Days?) I have to plan on site (I would hire an agent) to get the motorcycle "ready to drive" from customs/out of the customs ?

I suggest to stay at best with "no tight scedule".

Roro and with a help of an agent, you should be able to drive away in 1-2 hour.

But it`s south america. Your Agent can be arrive one day later, the custom peoples can be sick and so on. A tight plan, will just be painful for you bier . Plan a full day - enjoy the hours who wasnt used.

Surfy

RoRo from Europe to Uruguay it’s only the Grimaldi ferries that provide the service. Unfortunately for motorcycles they only will do it with bikers as passengers, they only can take 12 passengers by trip, so you have to book it several months in advance.

Off course you will have to be sure you will want to spend in between 3 to 5 weeks on a big boat that isn’t exactly a vacation cruise. Time could vary regarding at how many ports they stop in Africa and Brazil, also regarding mechanical issues…

Friend of mine, also a member here on the HUBB, spend some additional weeks some kilometres in front of the Montevideo port waiting for the follow boat trip to arrive with a new propeller, and then other days for the divers to swap it. Total time on board, if I remember well, was in around of 7 weeks

Ones the boat gets to Uruguay port it´s very easy and you don’t need an agent, as Grimaldi use their people there. Times?, well I have the theory that at ports customs they manage other king of calendars and watches that works in different dimensions, as we normal people use every day!

Hope it helps!
Saludos

I can't speak to importing into Uruguay, as I have never done it, but I have imported my Canadian motorcycle (by air) into various European and (by sea) to various African countries, and the import process has only taken a few hours at most. Typically, about 30 minutes.

A sea-port importation might take a bit longer simply because the sea ports are physically much bigger than airports, so you might need to do more walking around from place to place. But all in all, I think one day should be sufficient.

Do some investigation ahead of time to find out what the particular requirements of your destination country are. The "informal" requirements often vary from what is written. For example, flying a bike into France or Switzerland from Canada, the border officials were only concerned about whether I had valid insurance to operate the bike in Europe - they could not have cared less about anything else.

Importing into Africa, the officials were very interested in seeing proof of my ownership of the motorcycle (to ensure it was not stolen), they didn't care about insurance.

Each country has its own peculiarities. If you don't speak the local language, hiring an agent might be a good idea.

Michael

In south America you must always be prepared for the worst. It can be strikes, it can be blockades and it can be road blocks.

When I sent my bike from Australia to south-America, Valparaiso - Chile by seafreight I paid a price on the Australian side that said all port and customs fees in south-America were included. But when I came to Valparaiso to pick up my bike the Customs staff were on strike and yhey had been for a while. So in order to get my bike out of the port and through Customs I needed to hire an agent and pay him to «lube» the local Custom boss so that I could get my bike out of the port anf through Customs….
An extra 4-5 days to arrange it and some extra 2-300 €….