South America Drive

Shipping our car to Uruguay

November 5, 2012 

“We just paid for our car to be shipped to Montevideo, Uruguay. Chris made the reservation just 4 days ago. It feels like we are cutting it close since our flight leaves in 11 days. The cost seemed reasonable to me. I like that we can leave stuff in the car – less to carry on the flight. The dogs will be enough.“

We shipped out Toyota 4Runner to Uruguay

We shipped out Toyota 4Runner to Uruguay

Chris chose DAS Global to ship our car from Miami to Montevideo, Uruguay. We paid them $2800. We were told the car would arrive to Montevideo in 4 weeks: Dec 10th. Before the car arrived we would need to find an agent in Montevideo to get our car through customs. The additional cost for the agent should be about $300. This brought the total cost of shipping our car to $3100… or, so we thought.

Montevideo, Uruguay seemed like the best choice for shipping our car. Other options on the Atlantic coast would be Sao Paulo (Brazil), Cartagena (Colombia), and Buenos Aires (Argentina). They had the non-stop flights we needed for the dogs. Sadly, they did not have as good of a reputation for safety, both for personal and for the car and its contents. Also, Brazil requires a massive amount of additional paperwork.

Other options were ports on the Pacific coast. We would then have flown & shipped out of San Diego. We could have chosen Peru or Ecuador. Unfortunately, both those places have a bad reputation for having things stolen out of your car as it sits in port waiting to get through customs. Chile’s port in Valparaiso is a long way from the airport in Santiago. We thought this would be a problem. It turns out this would not have mattered. Chile has a safe port and we could get a direct flight for the dogs. But overall, we are happy with our choice of Uruguay. It proved to be a good starting point for the route we planned.

For fun you can track your car on its voyage. Visit marinetraffic.com. You can follow the cargo boat carrying your stuff. We watched our car take an originally unplanned boat change in Brazil.

Many times road tripping meant driving to unknown places where the road suddenly ends.

Many times road tripping meant driving to unknown places where the road suddenly ends.

Down the road from the above picture, we came to the end of the road!

Truly ..the end of the road. Welcome to Villa Alpina. 18 could have been the kilometers to go or the population.

I know others have shipped a car. I would love to know what you experienced.

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