Loading the car in Cartagena

Remembering the long wait we had in Cartagena when we arrived in Colombia in 2025, we were now waiting there again - this time to load the car back on a ship to get it sent to Panama.

However, we were now more experienced, and knew where to stay to be conveniently close to the port. There are lots of other parts of Cartagena, but to be safe from floodings with heavy rain, tourist traffic and whatever other event that could stop us, we stayed again in Manga. We were 8 minutes from where to deal with the car.

The day started well enough, we were in place early and ready to process. After that everything that could go wrong did, and about 9 hours later we had finally left the port and the agent's office with every step of the process completed. Colombia is nothing but a model for complicated bureaucracy. We were a group of three vehicles, the other two to share a container and us, who had our own. Each of us ended up having contributed to a delay, and in the end none of us could have possibly done anything about it. In our case we were told that somebody had entered Karin in the system without authorisation, and unless this could be sorted out we would need to back-track the complete process and re-book another ship sometime in the future. This was a stressful wait, it was +35 degrees C, in an open, empty yard with nowhere to sit and no water. Long story short, they managed to figure out that they needed to use a capital letter somewhere on the entry, and after changing that it was accepted. So they said. We were clear to go, and the car was now in its container, scheduled to leave Cartagena 12 April.

We returned to the hotel, had a few beers and a much needed shower. All well that ends well. We'll see if it arrives in Panama on schedule.