Shipping Montevideo to Antwerp: Part 1 – Montevideo

A few weeks before we wanted to head home we had contacted a shipping agent in Montevideo. We knew that we wanted to send the Beast back to Europe via Grimaldi Shipping Lines and their agent in Montevideo is MHSA Ltda. We tried to contact Grimaldi directly but didn’t have any luck with this. It took a little while to get through to MHSA (problems with their spam filter deleting our emails) but once we were in communication they were very responsive and helpful.

Alejandra Barreto
M.H.S.A.  LTDA.
1498 Colon ST., Suites 501, 502 & 503
11001 Montevideo
URUGUAY

PH ++ 598 2 917 0056 ext 101
FX  ++ 598 2 917 0038
www.mhsa-uy.com

Alejandra was very helpful and after giving us a choice of dates and ports we chose one and were booked in. Her English was excellent. We were not able to ship back to the UK and the ports we had available were in Belgium (Antwerp) and Germany (Hamburg). We decided on Antwerp due to is proximity to Calais and cheap channel ferries.

We were given a quote for costs:

POL: Montevideo

POD: Hamburg/Antwerp

7.5m long, 2.4m wide and 3.5m h

5 tons

SEAFREIGHT:

US$ 6426

LOCAL CHARGES :

US$ 860  (IT INCLUDES : DOCS, IN PORT ,DEPOT ,  TAXES, DRIVING TO VESSEL)

Terms: LT

Validity: 30/06/2013
Subject to space availability.

Rates are valid for self propelled units only.

We decided to ignore the weight that they had assumed (and this proved fine in the end). The quote was definitely more expensive than we would have liked but there isn’t much choice in the cross Atlantic market.  There were to be no charges at the European end.

We had to provide Alejandra with some documents a couple of weeks before departure:

• Copy of Owners Passport
• Registration Document for Truck (V5)
• Customs Form from Uruguay Border 

She was very happy to receive scans of these documents.  We had scans of the V5 and my passport which we sent straight away but we had to wait until crossing into Uruguay before sending the customs form (obviously). This was quickly and easily scanned using a digital camera. We emailed the file on our first night in Uruguay.

As a result of providing all the documentation up front we wouldn’t need to visit MHSA’s office until the day that we would take the truck to the port.

One concern that we had was payment and we learnt that the local payment was required in cash and in USD on the day that we were shipping however the bulk of the payment could be made by international transfer once we were back home.

The good thing about Uruguay, unlike its large southern neighbour, is that US Dollars are readily available and in fact dispensed by most cashpoints. Our experience in Uruguay was that only the more modern cash machines accepted our foreign cards and the more basic and older machines just wouldn’t give us any money. These modern machines also gave out US Dollars – most of the time. In Montevideo all the machines are new but in the the more rural parts of the country the older machines are more common.

Alejandra had asked us to come into their offices in central Montevideo on any of three days before our shipping date. We decided to leave it as late as possible and deliver our truck the day before the ship was due to leave (a Uruguayan bank holiday did push us down this route somewhat though).

We spent the night before parked at the beach a few miles short of Montevideo and then drove in to the city the next morning to get to the offices fairly early.

MHSA Offices

MHSA’s offices are in the old town of Montevideo with fairly narrow streets and no easy parking. For smaller vehicles there would be no problem parking on the street or even in a couple of parking garages nearby. We decided to park on the “Rambla” which is the big road running around the sea front and port. There was technically no parking but we didn’t have any problems.

On visiting the office we paid over the local fee in US Dollars and then were told to come back in the afternoon in order to take the truck to the port.

Given that we had a few hours to kill we drove up to Punta Carretas, a small headland park surrounded by water. We parked up by the water and proceeded to wash the truck.  We’d been trying for almost a week to find somewhere to get the truck washed for us and completely failed so we thought we might as well do it ourselves. (For those smaller than us there is actually an indoor car park about 50m from the MHSA office which will wash your vehicle – we debated whether we would fit and in the end decided we were just too big).

Washing the Beast in Montevideo

We were back on the Rambla ready to go at the appropriate time. After popping back into the office we were back in the truck following our fixer in a car towards the port.

Security at Montevideo Port

Once at the port we had to have our photos taken and get a security pass for the port.

Truck Scales

After having the Beast weighed we had a customs inspection. This involved our fixer talking to the customs official for a couple of minutes and persuading him that he didn’t actually need to take a look to which he eventually agreed.

We then drove through the port to a muddy lot which was the holding area for all the vehicles going on RORO. Here we had to leave our lovely home and wave goodbye, crossing our fingers that in 4 weeks time we would be picking the Beast up undamaged thousands of km’s away in Europe.

Our Last view of The Beast in South America

The fixer dropped us back at the MHSA office where it was easy enough to get a taxi to the hotel we had booked for the night.

Alejandra gave us some contact details for Grimaldi in Antwerp who we needed to talk to before our ship arrived in order to arrange payment and pickup.