the crate / la caja

Figure 1. Destination unknown, explains a lot…

Here it is, the final update about the crate: remember that thing I was so super enthusiastic about in packing up? Well, it turned out that the easy part was getting the crate filled and picked up. We had no idea what was coming. The crate people started sending us emails, first I got an email that we needed to pay another 200$, at the local desk of the company, and receive the ” BL” form. It was all very cryptic, and hard to understand, but we went there. It was some sort of post office with a lot of people talking to clerks at desks, and we had to get a number and wait for our turn. When we wanted to get our number, we were asked what we needed, and we told that we needed to pick up some form, BL, and pay for it, but they didn’t really seem to understand what we needed, but gave us a number.
 We seriously waited about 45 min while looking at businessman and motor couriers coming in and out of the waiting room, one specific dude of the business guys making conversation and jokes with all the clerks, while many people were called to specific counters to give or receive a piece of paper, stamp, or just a verbal command, without using their numbers. Once in awhile a new number was called, and we felt there was at least some progress. When we finally got a clerk to call our number, we went there enthusiastically with our request for the BL form, linked to the long number that we got in the email, and gave that to the clerk. The clerk, a young guy not older than 25, looked at us with a complete blank expression, saying we don’t have that… and just to stress here, he told us that immediately, 2 seconds after we told him, without checking anything on his screen or thinking about it. Oh, and this was all is Spanish, so I was completely unaware of what happened, but Fran’s expression made me realize there was something wrong. Fran insisted some, and told him about what we needed, even though we had no idea what it was. He went to the clerk at the next desk, a young woman not much older than him, who fortunately seemed much more knowledgeable of things going on around the place she worked. She needed the number, they talked a while, and we were told to sit down and wait until they would call us again, while the dude-clerk went to a backroom. Then, we had to go to another desk to pay the 200$ (or 100.000 peso), and give the receipt to the first clerk. Were told to wait some more, and finally we got our piece of paper, which we needed for something… I honestly still don’t know for what…

A few days later we got another email with even more cryptic stuff. Fran decided to call them and explain we had a BL form and we wondering what they needed us to do. The BL form is apparently the bill of lading, and was needed to receive the crate at customs in the harbor. First we needed to go to Immigration to get a stamped form to prove that Fran was out of the country for 5 years, so we didn’t need to pay any import tax on our stuff.

The immigration office was close to our work, we thought we could go there in our lunch break, tough luck, we came to a huge room with all walls filled up with counters. The room was literally filled with people waiting for their number to be called up. We had no idea where we were supposed to go, so we just followed the other people into a line, where we had to pay something and got a number. Then we could ask somewhere else to find out where we were supposed to go for our specific problem. We really had to wait for about 1.5h until out turn was up. I asked Fran if it wasn’t needed to bribe someone at this moment if we wanted to get helped the same day, but she thought that might get us arrested. Still, I saw quite some well dressed people step in the room, and right up a counter to receive their forms with priority. But they might also have been lawyers or something, taking care of paperwork they submitted long before. I think they were dirty politicians though, more fun that way, and made it more fun to observe them while waiting. Other things we saw, a Scandinavian girl with her probably Chilean probably boy friend who stayed longer than her vacation visum* allowed her, was interesting to hear them talk. She had the weirdest accent and a ridiculously loud voice to go along with it. Also large groups of woman with baby’s wrapped in blankets waiting for something. Every once in a while this androgynous looking guy -but not in a David Bowie kind of way, but more in a Odo from Star Trek Deep Space Nine kind of way- walked out and screamed the name of the next person whose forms where ready. The power that he thought that gave him made him believe to be a lady killer in some way, he was flirting like crazy with his female colleagues when stepping out for a smoke break. Finally it was our turn and the clerk had a little radio playing 80’s sing next to him. I complimented him with the music, Men at Work was playing, which is awesome, and he told that his boss doesn’t allow music but he did it anyway (Fran had to translate this for me later). Fran told him what we needed, provided him with her RUT, and all passports and visa stamps of the last years, and about 4 songs later we got our form, with some stamps and signatures.

Look, I am sure this whole process makes sense, and if you do it all the time because you are in import/export business, it is probably a walk in the park. But it is kind of hard to understand all the paperwork for 2 PhD’s in science…. It was like a quest, Kafkaesque, or Terry Gilliam’s Brazil… Now that you have the form BL, your next assignment will be to obtain your tax documents. We decided to just do the things by telephone after that, when we got another email, Fran would call and find out what was needed. With all these assignments still ongoing, it was already the 10th of July (and we would later find out, the crate was already there for about 2 weeks by then). Too bad they didn’t tell us these things earlier, so we would have had time to take care of them the weeks before we started working.

By directly talking to the people, all of a sudden it became clear that we had to go identify the crate, with someone from customs there, and while we got all the paperwork submitted at the customs office the same day, in the harbor where the crate arrived in Chile. Thank god that was not in Antofagasta (~1300 km north), but in San Antonio, which was about a 2h drive from Santiago. Still, frustrating that we had to go there in person, we were expecting them to deliver the crate at our doorstep. We had to go there with an appointment with someone from customs who would meet us there to see us point at our crate and say: “yup, that’s our crate”, which would be possible the 15th of July. We went there, with Luuk, and Fran’s dad who knew the town, and wanted to join so he could help.

 

Figures 2 and 3. So here has our stuff been stored for those two weeks

San Antonio, not that pretty, just a industrial harbor town, but it was great to see the pacific finally for the first time since we arrived to Chile. It reminded me a little bit of Valparaiso, streets sloping down to the ocean, but then all off a sudden there was this huge ugly blue building blocking the view of the ocean, kind of in a similar way the central station in Amsterdam blocks the view of ‘t IJ. Check it out. OK now you have to pay attention: We had to go to the aduana (customs) building, show our forms, wait about 10 minutes and get 4 forms (seriously) that all got about 3 stamps, and Fran needed to sign them all. Then we went to the harbor, to the company that had our crate, and gave them some forms, waited 5 minutes, got some stamps and signatures. I thought now we were done, but now we had to go back to the customs, to return some forms, get some more stamps and signatures and now we had to wait, I kid you not, about 30 minutes… This all with an 8 month old child by the way. We got the forms back finally, and now we had to arrange the following: Fran had to pay another 50 dollars, for who knows what, and did that at the bank with a money order. Then we would go to the company with our crate again, and we would meet the customs figure there to do the pointing, and then all the forms we still had could be given to whoever needed them. This was all getting a little stressful, because the company was going to close at 12:30, so this had to be done before that (Did I mention it took them 30 minutes at the customs the second time around!! Well it was like noon already when we got out of the customs building. Oh and then Luuk was hungry and needed a new diaper, the poor guy. OK Fran came back from the bank, we changed Luuk and Fran’s dad gave him the bottle in the back of the car while we drove back to our crate storage. We hadn’t seen our crate yet by the way. Fran went to the office while the rest of us stayed at the car. Fran was gone for about another 20 minutes and came back FURIOUS! I mean, Latin crazy style, eyes blazing.

She explained her rage:

• We had to pay another 400 dollar for the time that our stuff had been stored there (2 weeks)
• The customs person couldn’t make it anymore (we made an appointment for this a week in advance, and when we were at the customs building for about 45 min, in the 2 hours before, this was not worth mentioning somehow)
• Therefore we had to come back another day, first possible Wednesday because Tuesday happened to be a national holiday. Consequence: Take another day off, bring Luuk again? Find a babysitter this time, hope that they could meet us this time, pay another 2 days of storage for the crate.
• And this all sucks indeed, but manageable and shit yeah, more money but OK…
• The real kicker was that we would have to start all over again with the paper work we had been doing that day because all the stamps and signatures would only be valid for today!

She must have been screaming at these guys at the company quite a bit, because they didn’t close yet at noon thirty. Fran was then on the phone with a lady from the aduane and the company for a long time, talking very agitated, but calm. And we go this deal: They would keep the crate for no extra costs until Wednesday, someone from the company would point at it for us on Wednesday when the customs guy would show up. And they would ship it to Santiago, to the house of Fran’s parents…

Phew… that was a little bit of a relief, but off course it is still quite a bummer. We went to blow of some steam in El Tabo, and had lunch in a nice fish restaurant, with a view (Fig. 4).

 Figure 4. The view

Wednesday the 17th they would drop of the crate at Fran’s parents, and we went to work by car so we could come back early to check things out. Luuk would be at their place so we would pick him up, and stay there for diner, nice. The crate could sit on the driveway and we wouldn’t open it until the weekend, too much hassle, and too much rush to get things out in the evening, much better to take our time and move things over to our place in peace. Sounds good right, well guess what, the last thing also went wrong! They didn’t show up, and we called and called but they didn’t know where they were. At a certain point we found out that they would be in Santiago traffic around 6 pm, perfect timing if you like the traffic, because you are going to be in it for some time. We stayed at Fran’s parents until 7 pm, and then really had to go home to get Luuk ready for the night. The crate would be dropped off, and it should be OK for us to leave, they will just put it on the driveway and we would open it on the weekend. Well when we came home, we gave Luuk a bath and Fran was just about to feed him for the night when we got a call that they arrived at Fran’s parents house. The reason Fran’s mom called was that the car that showed up didn’t have a fork lift, so there was no way for the one guy that came with the crate, to get it off the car. It said in the paperwork that it was 450 kg, and that was their measurement, we had no idea how much it weighed… So the idea was to empty the crate from the truck on the sidewalk and store it somewhere in the house. That was exactly the opposite of what we wanted to do. The closed crate would be safe and sound on the driveway, and we wouldn’t need any place to store our stuff until the weekend. What also sucked that it was now Fran’s parents to empty the crate with the one guy. Fran’s brother and I went to help, but when we arrived Fran’s father had already cleared most of the crate (Fig. 5,6), I felt soo bad for his back. We could fortunately still help getting the stuff into and behind the house (Fig. 7) and covered with some plastic just in case.

   Figure 5,6 and 7.

So, as I am writing, this was a couple of weeks ago, and we are still unpacking some of the boxes, but it is almost done. The anger with the company has faded a bit, but that is mostly because I am unpacking stuff with a combination of nostalgia and joy. The other day I was unpacking a box with kitchen stuff, and I found my I ❤ NY mug, and it was wrapped in my I ❤ NY shirt, that made me laugh and think of when we were packing the kitchen stuff with good friends. One of them must have done that on purpose, although I am not entirely sure. We also got some of Luuk’s toys that he recognized and immediately wanted to play with, happy little guy! The books are still packed, but some of the more long term storage kind of stuff (mostly books, we don’t have the bookshelves yet), has been opened. One thing that went wrong was entirely my own fault. I brought my 5.1 Dolby surround computer speakers in the crate, and they survived the trip, until I plugged them  in the 220V outlet. I forgot to check that one. All my other computer stuff goes both ways, and I just didn’t think about getting a transformed for this, bummer, but a small one.

To the friends that are still interested in shipping their stuff from America to Chile, below** are the company’s details. And I know, I didn’t really make a good commercial for them, but they totally deserved it! I guess when you get into the whole deal expecting the above, it might be easier to deal with it in the end. I am still considering shipping some of my stuff from The Netherlands, but I am scared to do it, and more and more considering if it is really worth it. My vinyl albums? I got them on mp3. My books, I should be able to download them for my kindle, and the few books I still had from my studies can be bought in newer editions for the money I safe for not shipping them. Kitchen stuff? I don’t even remember what I left there, except perhaps this really nice expensive chefs knife. Well, maybe I can just slip that into my hand luggage…

😉

 

* yes, one visum, visum is Latin, and visa is its plural form, you’re doing it wrong America (UK too?)

 

 **

• In the USA we dealt with AMID Logistics, LLC: http://internationalshippingusa.com/Home.aspx
• The receiving company over here was Carotrans International, which was not selected but probably a partner of the USA company, and it was them that fucked most things up. They gave us a quest of collecting documents, which started after they already had the crate in their possession, and they didn’t tell us we were going to have to pay about 30 dollars a day for that. 
• We bought the crate here, and I still love that thing, awesome crate (not cheap though). We stil have it, any suggestions what we could do with it? Fran’s father thought a doghouse perhaps. The best suggestions will take part in a raffle of a nice gift: http://www.uline.com/BL_427/Wood-Crates