Hourless Life
Well-known member
Today is surreal for us, and I wanted to share a little bit about the process for the community.
TL;DR we're driving around the world, just finished 3 years 4 months driving through Latin America, and our Jeep is being shipped without us present from Montevideo, Uruguay to Cape Town, South Africa. Happy to answer any questions for folks considering overlanding internationally or shipping a vehicle in a container.
We've been vehicle based traveling full-time since Feb 21, 2014. So we're currently on our 12th year of full-time travel owning no home or property.
We keep a Jeep Wrangler "GUARDIAN" in the USA (our home country) and our other vehicle, pictured above "DAUNTLESS", our Jeep Gladiator, we are driving around the world.
After 3 years and 4 months which took us all the way to the bottom of the world in Ushuaia, Argentina, we drove back up the continent to Montevideo, Uruguay and left our Jeep in a long term storage facility.
Uruguay is known for the storage of vehicles as the Temporary Import Permit (TIP) is a 365 day permit to have a foreign plated vehicle left with permission by their government in their country. The longest permission that we've ever received.
This permission allowed us to leave DAUNTLESS on March 5th of this year awaiting us to be ready to ship to Africa.
Today was the loading day into the container in Uruguay.
My family and I are currently in the Denver, CO area for the Christmas season with family. I share that because we were not present for the loading of the vehicle into the container.
All that to say that it is possible to load and transport a vehicle across the world's oceans without being physically present. It's not easy. It takes some logistics, some prayers, a good team, and a whole lot of patience.
Our team consisted of:
Overland Embassy in Panama City, Panama. They are essentially a concierge that facilitates connecting the right people to make something like this happen. We used them to ship across the Darien Gap when we went into South America and used them again for this shipping.
A Logistics Team in Montevideo, Uruguay. They were brought in by Overland Embassy and were the main point of contact for all logistics and paperwork in Uruguay. They handled the documents, and the setting up of the flatbed tow from the storage facility in Uruguay to the warehouse at the port.
The storage facility. We used UY storage, a company in Soca, Uruguay about an hour outside of Montevideo.
The POA. We had to have a power of attorney that had the authority to act on my behalf from a legal standpoint.
And of course us. My wife did 99% of the logistical work on our end. I hopped on a few video calls, signed documents, and answered questions.
So all of these pieces of the puzzle had to work together to make this a reality.
This morning I was on live video calls with the logistics team and our POA at the port in Montevideo as they loaded our home into the container.
The container will be loaded onto the ship sometime between now and January 21st, and then the ship sets sail for Cape Town, South Africa.
We'll meet DAUNTLESS in the port, do the paperwork, reconnect the systems, pick him up, and get him to a local mechanic to get some work done to prepare him for our 1-year journey around the southern part of the continent.
There were a few moments of brief panic this morning with a few logistics, but ultimately DAUNTLESS was loaded into the container, and the container was sealed.
If anyone has any questions, I'm here for it.
Eric
Hourless Life
