April 8, 2018

All those hours spent weaving our way through narrow streets in pueblos in Mexico, along barely wide enough “roads” that hung off of cliffs in Peru, through four lane city highways packed six cars wide….they have really paid off. After partly airing down the tires and rear suspension to meet the height limitations of the container, Derek, without even breaking a sweat, expertly backed Seymour into a glove tight shipping container, with nary a scratch nor a dent. All this without the use of side mirrors (they were folded in so that Seymour would fit), nor rearview mirror, as all you see when you look in it is our camper. There was a man in the container, behind the truck, shouting instructions to Derek, in Spanish…but Derek could neither see nor hear the man. But with the help of another worker outside of the container, Seymour officially got stuffed.

Here’s a little video of the process….

And then Derek needed to extract himself from the truck….

The man in the container, behind Seymour, then pulled himself along the undercarriage of the truck (we joked about how he would lose his job if he became too “gordo” (fat)), installed some blocks and strapped Seymour down. One final picture of us with the truck and the container was closed and locked up.

Seymour is off on a nice little adventure. He will visit several ports in Brazil, then change ships in Cartagena, Colombia, change ships again in Jamaica, and then visit New York, but the official numbered container seal is not supposed to come off the lock before arriving in Halifax…we bought insurance (in case the ship sinks or the container falls off the boat, which has been known to happen) but we expect to be reunited with Seymour about May 30th.

We felt a tremendous sense of relief. The process was remarkably simple thanks to Wave Logistics, our agent, who took care of everything for us…we basically just had to show up at their office the Friday before we shipped, provide them with a few copies of our documents, and sign a piece of paper. This compared to 2 full days of running around in Panama City followed by several hours visiting different offices in Colon, Panama, when we shipped over the Darien Gap to Cartagena, Colombia.

We said our goodbyes to Seymour and headed a few blocks away to our Montevideo Airbnb from where we would spend a week exploring the capital city of Uruguay.