A letter to the OAS: Suggestions for easier travelling through Latin America

Sent to the secretary general, with copies to embassies of the countries
concerned, plus some other:


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OAS secr gen José Miguel Insulza PERSONALLY: Facilitated automotive tourism
throughout Latin America - some suggestions based on personal experience


(Copy recipient JAPANESE EMBASSY: This is NOT an error, please READ and feel
the shame)




Dear Secretary


As a european (german), I made an individual travel in a car bought in the
USA through most latin american countries, back in 1997/98. It was a real
adventure, because things weren't organised for people like me, and I had to
overcome lots of problems. I am sure there are not so few people who would
like to do the same thing I have done. If countries in your hemisphere
co-operated to some degree and prepared a number of arrangements, they would
become more accomodating for western individual tourists travelling in their
own cars, which means more of them would come, which again means these
countries would earn more money. Let me try and summarise here what made
things difficult.


- Prologue

First for those who don't know, it is absolutely realistic to make such a
trip in a sedan, as most of a 'ring road' of the continent is asphalted or
at least a maintaind gravel road, which can safely be driven during the dry
season. So forget the mud roads ploughed by jeeps only that you have seen on
Discovery Channel - they do exist, but why should you use them if there are
ordinary country roads at your disposal. Also, the necessary facilities are
there - fuel stations, hotels, restaurants, food stores etc. The real
problems lie in a variety of fields.


- General experience made, in short

For me as a tourist, it was not difficult to buy a car in the USA and get it
registered. The first problem was to find out about insurances 'south of the
border'. It proved practically impossible, so I decided to drive without
one. Then, there was the customs problem for the car: In the northern-most
countries, all the way down to Colombia, they all seemed to assume I was
trying to import the car, in order to sell it illegally. I didn't have a
carnet de passage, so had to negotiate my way through the borders, but
succeeded - the further south I came, the easier it got.

Then, there was the 'tramitador' problem (spanish 'trámites' = formalities;
tramitador is a person taking care of formalities for you) at the borders of
Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, plus also Colombia: You only
get over the borders if you accept the unsolicited services of one of these
private individuals who co-operate with border officials: You have to pay
them a certain amount, upon which they do the paperwork with the officials
for you. It is useless to address these officials directly as they will
ignore you. Of course, like at the other borders you could basically do that
procedure yourself, so the tramitador feature is nothing but a form of cheat
and innecessary expenditure.

In general, there are too many police etc checkpoints along the way, and
some of them abusive on top. As a multi-language speaker, I could negotiate
my way out of these situations. Other people will have to pay bribes if they
want their documents back. In this context, I have especially bad memories
of officers in Peru (highly impudent) and Argentina (obscurely threatening
behaviour).


- Suggestions

Road-wise, I would suggest the following measures. People will usually want
to use a regular sedan. Publish a map that shows which roads are asphalted -
or maintained gravel roads that can be used during the dry season - and
which are not. The AAA's (american automobile club) map is a good starting
point, however not quite reliable. Make sure to remove the potholes starting
somewhere in the middle of Mexico and continuing all the way down to Costa
Rica, plus also in Ecuador. Oh, and Ecuador: There are hardly any signposts
at the roads indicating directions - I have never seen anything like that
before and after. Close the Darien gap - the missing 100-kilometre road link
between Panama and Colombia. Post sufficient military forces along the
colombian section of the Carretera Panamericana, as long as there continues
to be unrest in that country.

Is there a kind of car ferry or freight vessel between the brasilian cities
of Belem and Macapa, across the Amazonas estuary? The road link over the
border between Brasil and French Guyana is under construction, to my
knowledge. Is there a car ferry connection from the western end of French
Guyana into Surinam? Same question for the border between Surinam and
Guyana. Of course, these two countries ought to convert to right-hand
traffic. It is an anchronism to continue driving on the left, with the rest
of continental America driving on the right. Again to my knowledge, a modern
border crossing is under construction in the south of Guyana over to Brasil.
Then the road from the Guyana coastal road leading to that southern border
crossing would have to be asphalted - or at least gravelled and maintained
so it can be driven by sedan during the dry season.


- More detailed desciption of my trip

Back then, I myself took a freight plane from Panama to Bogota/Colombia for
my car - there are also freight vessels between Colon/Panama and the
caribbean coast of Colombia - and a passenger plane for myself, in order to
bridge the Darien gap. Then I travelled down along the west coast, made an
inland trip to La Paz/Bolivia, back to Chile and down to Osorno, then
crossed over to Argentina in the Bariloche area. I reached the east coast at
Comodoro Rivadavia, then headed north again. I crossed the River Plate from
Buenos Aires to Colonia/Uruguay using a buquebus (fast ferry), and after
crossing Uruguay returned to (northern) Argentina, continuing north towards
Asuncion/Paraguay. In Paraguay, I headed east and crossed into Brasil at Foz
de Iguazu. Shortly thereafter, my car-borne voyage ended, for reasons I will
mention starting the next chapter. I got further by lorry and bus, via Sao
Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to Cabo Frio, but that was the end. The rest of the
projected round trip I was forced to cancel there.


- The 'climax' of my trip: Why I had to renounce from doing the remaining
1/3 of the tour

The reason why I had to cut short the rest of my journey is worth mentioning
because it highlights some of shortcomings already mentioned in general
terms - 'unreliable maps' and 'corrupt corporate and government practices'.

For my inland trip to Bolivia, I should have used the asphalted road from
Arica/Chile to La Paz. However, the AAA map listed it as existing only
between Arica and the Chile/Bolivia border. Only later, I was informed about
its full existence. The same map, however, showed an asphalted map over the
Andes from Arequipa/Peru to Lake Titicaca. This was wrong - in fact terribly
wrong, as the asphalt not only ended at the eastern end of Arequipa town,
but also by the fact that the road appeared to continue in decent shape, but
actually deteriorated the longer it went, until it reached the qualities of
a 'camino de la muerte' (death road). I was lucky to survive, with 'only' my
car - a Honda Civic - damaged from below through hitting the road's surface
at a VERY uneven spot, which affected the automatic transmission, plus the
fuel pipe between the tank and the engine, in a way that from that moment
on, only about 4/5th of the fuel tank's capacity would reach the engine.

Back then, there was no Honda service available in neither Peru - at least
not that part - nor Bolivia, so I had to continue my way towards Chile. I
reached Antofagasta, where there was the first Honda-authorised dealership
and technical service. They proved almost totally useless, however, as they
couldn't advise me what to do. So I as a non-expert in automotive matters
had to figure it out myself. And basing myself on the assumption that Honda
was a correct company and that its warranty promises were reliable took the
wrong decision. By the way, my options were a new transmission from the US
(extremely expensive), a used transmission but refurbished by a
California-based private expert enterprise (Honda doesn't offer this
feature - which is common among fx german car makers - and whose use leads
to the loss of Honda's warranty), or disassembling the damaged transmission,
determine which parts are damaged and import them from the US for repair.

Seen in today's hindsight, the best decision would probably have been to
continue driving with the occasionally scratching but functioning
transmission all the way down to Santiago where the chilean Honda is,
remembering to fill up fuel more often because of the buckle in the pipe,
then order a refurbished transmission from that californian company, finally
have the local Honda affiliate exchange the defective transmission against
the refurbished one.

Because of the warranty promise and the Honda-authorised workshop's
assurance to be able to repair a damaged automatic transmission, I let
myself talk by that Antofagasta dealer into the third option - i e
disassemble the transmission and repair it.

Well, originally after the repair carried out, it seemed to work. But on my
continued voyage south of Antofagasta, I experienced after about 100 km for
the first time the effect that would accompany me for the rest of the
journey, with an ever-growing frequency: a short interrruption of traction.
In the south of Brasil, it had become so bad that I could no longer risk to
continue driving, because of fear that a driver behind me would hit me,
surprised by my sudden 'braking manoeuvre without brake lights shining' (due
to another sudden loss of traction). So I broke off my journey in Cascavel,
about 100 km east of Foz de Iguazu.

There, the final Honda ordeal started: The Antofagasta workshop was not
interested in its error committed. The brasilian Honda at Sao Paulo kept me
in suspense. So I decided to charter a private lorry, in order to drive me
and my car over the 900 km from Cascavel to Sao Paulo. Once arrived there,
the real disappointment began: Also the brasilian Honda headquarters were
not prepared to assume a responsible attitude. This situation didn't change
even after contacting their US and japanese headquarters. In other words,
their so-called 'warranty' was not even worth the paper written upon. I was
very surprised to find that Honda was - and probably continues to be - such
a shabby company, which led to my decision to never again buy a Honda, nor
any other japanese car, and moreover avoid all japanese products whereever
possible. I have now been driving Audi ever since, and problem-free. I think
they would even have had the correct solution for me, had I ended in a south
american situation like I did with that Honda.

That was the corporate corruption part. To add insult to injury, here comes
the ensuing government corruption part involving Brasil, or more
specifically the state of Sao Paulo. Like all the other countries, I had
entered Brasil as a tourist and declared my car as 'tourist baggage'. It was
therefore under customs surveillance. After I had abandoned my defective car
on the premises of a Honda dealership in the Sao Paulo area and left the
country, I informed by fax the finance ministry in Brasilia about the
situation.

The correct procedure would have been to seize the car, auction it off -
possibly after repairing it first, to obtain more money -, cash in the
customs debt and then notify me with all the necessary documentation and
transmit the remaining money. Nothing further from the truth - I didn't hear
from them, despite of reminders, year after year. A year or two ago, I
started another intense initiative using today's web-based communication
possibilities, in order to find out what had happened. The only thing I
discovered was that they were decided to keep on messing around with me. So
it is probably safe to assume that a corrupt brasilian customs official
seized the car, had it fixed somewhere technically, got the necessary
registration paperwork some way and let the customs documents disappear, now
proudly driving my car through Sao Paulo.


- Epilogue

I hope you could learn something from my experience and will start doing
what would be in the medium- to long-term interest of all participants.

By the way, this is an open letter, which will be published through the
usenet of the internet. It is true, I am attempting to build up some
pressure - consider it a constructive measure, in order to kickstart things
that national and international bodies may find hard to tackle 'all on their
own'.


Sincerely


M Laudahn




PS: Honda and the government of Brasil should feel invited to approach me,
with the sincere intent to recognise the errors committed by them and the
desire to settle the case in a decent manner. Their ongoing attempts to
sweep them under the carpet will only make me continue to re-publish the
case whenever there is a new chance to do so. In other terms,
'carpet-sweeping' is the safe method to make sure that I shall never forgive
nor forget.