Panama City to Panama City

We headed out to the airport today and went to every shipper we could locate. However the problem is its Carnival here in Panama and most places are either closed or have the juinor staff on. So getting any anwsers from some places was tough. 

We were told/read on the interrnet Copa Carga were “the” guys. We checked with them first and the dude was like 19. He made some calls, we think to his bosses (who were probably at the Carnaval … hammered) and then flatly said no. We had trouble comunicating with him about why. But we basically got that they have canceled cargo flights. We tried to ask when we could expect the filghts to start again, but all we got was stuff like “indeterminate”.

We then went to DHL and were informed that they do not deal with the public, only brokers. We went to FedEx they gave us a quote of $840 to Bogota thru Miami. Not possilbe to go to Quito or Cali – only Bogota. But we would have to have the bikes crated and someone would have to hadle the customs paperwork – again, we would need a broker.

Our “logistics” guy back home, Carlos, had done some of this legwork for us and he had gotten quotes from another broker called: Girag Cargo. Girag had quoted us about $1900 per bike to go to Quito via Bogota. We rolled into Girag to see what the story was. They were helpful and seem to know the story pretty well. Same numbers that Carlos got from them – $1900 per bike to Quito and $900 to Bogota.. Ouch! Not possible to go to Cali. They said they could do the bikes to Bogota any day. They also seemed to indicate that getting the bikes to Quito would be a challenge… they had to talk to some airlines and so forth. We’ve also read online that the Quito customs are a pain in the butt – on top of that we’ve seen people saying that it could take up to a week to get the bikes into Quito because they have to sit on the ground in Bogota for a while.

We headed back to the hotel to do a little more research on the internet. Dan had been having a dialog with Mike at Motolumbia (Extreme Bike Adventures) in Cali Columbia. Mike made a couple calls to Copa Carga in Cali and they thought that the Carnaval was the big problem and things would resume on Wednesday morning. They said because of Carnival nothing is moving from Panama till its over.

OK if you’re now confused thats OK because so are we. We decided to wait till Wensday when people go back to work. Then try to get Copa and Mike in Columbia to help us get the rigs to Cali. Mike seems super willing to help. He will help us get the bikes out of customs and has a biker hostel we can stay at till we’re ready to head out of Columbia. Hopefully it’ll all work out….Tomorrow we’re going to go for a ride and check out the Panama Canal.

Cheers