Writings By Date| Buenos Aires: First Impressions | 1 | 2 | 3 |
We were sent through customs without a check again (they didn't even ask for the form I'd filled out on the airplane), and we found our way to the DHL office. We'd been planning on having a suitcase full of our winter clothes and supplies for Antarctica shipped ahead to us here in Argentina, but it wasn't until last week that we discovered...you can't. Argentina strictly forbids the import of clothing into the country, unless you have an "import license" — even if it's your own. And if it's used, forget it: they flat-out refuse to allow it. But Erin's mom did some fancy footwork and found that there is one company, and only one, that can make this work: DHL. With what's called a "clean pickup", you can have the package sent to their facility at the Buenos Aires airport, without going through customs. Then, when we arrive, we pick up the package and take it through customs ourselves with the rest of our stuff, so it's exactly as though we brought it into the country with us (which is obviously okay, or else everyone coming out of the airport would be naked).
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| Peace of Mind |
So we expected to have our suitcase waiting for us here, and were all set to have this little mini-nightmare of the past week be over for us. But bad news: we don't know how it went wrong, but it did, and our suitcase somehow managed to go through customs after all. The folks at the DHL office informed us that it's still stuck in Customs, with $21 of duty tax due. This figure was reached by a very complex set of rules and formulas that made up this very lengthy process: 1) they look at the contents listed on the declaration form, 2) they decide that "21 dollars" sounds good. Never mind that the declared value of the contents was $50, and that's not subject to any duties at all.
However, the bank situation is completely messed up here — all banks are closed now, because too many people were storming them to change their pesos for dollars before the devaluation kicks in. As a result, DHL can't pay the fees, and we can't get our suitcase. And because we didn't plan on it going through customs, we had it locked and everything, so now I'm worried that the guys in Customs cut the lock, stole my undeclared replacement Palm Vx, threw away our clothes, sniffed Erin's underwear, and who knows what else.
DHL said we should leave $21 at the front desk of our hotel, and they would drop it off for us while we're gone for the next two days. I'll definitely have to blast them about the $21 later, though — seems to me that's entirely their fault, so they should be paying it, not me.
