To answer that question we first shortly have to explain who is Rosi?
Rosi is our Camper van. It is a 2019 Citroen Jumper built by Clever into a Camper van and modified by us. We are still planning to create an extra page to introduce her more in detail. Our plan for this Panamericana trip is to travel with Rosi. It is planned to be a road trip where we sleep mainly in the van. But to do that we have to ship her over the Atlantic to south America and this is where the challenges start..
Why do we want Rosi and do not just buy another van here in South America? There are multiple reasons for that: First of all we LÖVE Rosi. We travelled with her for three years to many locations in Europe and when I bought her in 2020 the idea to travel with her the Panamericana already existed (That is also the reason why I wanted a 4X4 van).
Also we heard that boarder crossing with a van where the license plate is not matching the passports of the people travelling with the van, can be really hard or even impossible.
So, from the beginning of this project it was clear that we want to ship Rosi to South America. It begann how every good complex project begins…. on Google! I was searching for a company that helped people ship their adventure vehicles across the Atlantic. Surely, there must be other crazy people that plan something like this.. and luckily there are. Not too many and there are also not too many options to do it, but it is possible. We found SeaBridge a German based company that helps organising the shipment. Firstly, we (especially me) wanted to travel with the van on the cargo ship, but after multiple emails back and forth we found out that this shipping company is not offering on board travel anymore :-(. That resulted in the first of many change in plans: Rosi will have to travel alone on the ship and Linda and me will fly to meet up with her again in South America. The port of choice became Montevideo, because we planned to travel the Panamericana from South to North. (I was too afraid to spent all money in North America and have nothing left for the south and rather have it the other way around. :-D)
When the shipping schedule was released we started to plan more in detail. We wanted to fly to Buenos Aires, explore the city and travel by bus and ship to Montevideo to pick up Rosi there. SeaBridge was very helpful. They have detailed documents to explain the shipping (up to 50 pages just explanations, It was like reading a thesis) and answered every question on the phone or via mail immediately. I can highly recommend them .. so far (we have not yet picked up Rosi). They also said from the beginning that shipping schedules change continuously & drastically. Me – as a proper german – read that advice and planned in „a few days buffer“ for the change in schedule…. BOY WAS I WRONG. Here is the history:
– We booked (in April 2024) the ship that leaves Hamburg on July 11th and arrives Montevideo on August 2nd
– End of May we got informed that the schedule was changed and we could either choose a ship that arrived on July 27th (Too early for us) or a ship that leaves Hamburg on July 19th and arrives in Montevideo on August 8th. That was the perfect timing for us and we booked a flight to arrive on August 1st and still have a few days for Buenos Aires and could than pick up Rosi. And even if Rosi came A FEW days later we could still chill in Buenos Aires or Montevideo
– From this point on I checked the dates regularly and started to realize what SeaBridge meant when they said that schedules change constantly and drastically. The ship that we booked Rosi for, is the Grande Francai from the Italian shipping company Grimaldi and with every harbour it got delayed by at least one more day, and it stops in many harbours. So I checked if we could reschedule again on the earlier ship, which was also delayed, but in the end it left on July 10th form Hamburg and we could have not made it in time. So we were stuck with our ship and the over-thinker in me thought: „What if the ship leaves AFTER we fly…“ , which luckily did not happen.
– In the end I brought Rosi to the Hamburg harbour on July 23rd and the ship departed hamburg on July 30st with a delay of 19 days compared to our initial plan and we don’t know yet when it will finally arrive. At the moment the schedule predicts the 23rd of August as the arrival date in Montevideo, but I am sure it will collect a few more days delay on the way. Also, we have to account that nobody works in customs on the weekend, so an arrival on Friday, Saturday or Sunday will delay the pick up of Rosi even further. 😀
Long story short: this is the reason why we are right now here in Montevideo and have way way way more time than expected before our van arrives and I learned right in the beginning that I will have to be way more flexible and less „german“ on this trip. I guess this is just the first time of many where we will have to go with the flow…
Maybe a few more words about the shipping, because I vastly underestimated that project. As I said before, SeaBridge helped a lot with very detailed explanations on how to prepare the vehicle. Here are just a few example, so you get a feeling:
– Data about height, width, length and weight of your vehicle (obvious)
– No food, electronics, medicine & liquids at all in the vehicle (understandable, but some effort)
– No gas AT ALL, only a brand new empty gas bottle. (pretty strict, but I get it) <- Gas might still become an interesting topic here
– Max 1/4 in the Diesel tank of the vehicle (why?)
– Detailed list of EVERY item in the vehicle (every item?….why?, I used this list for the insurance and that made sense for me)
– Every drawer needs to be accessible (ok for customs, I get it)
– The vehicle needed to be clean (I guess they want to avoid that you transport soil on the body of the vehicle, which I get)
..& a million other points to follow
Additionally, it was an interesting procedure alone to drop off Rosi at the Harbour (made more difficult by pouring rain, thx Hamburg). SeaBridge also describes this drop off detailed in a 10 pages document. To simplify:
1. I arrived in the harbour and had to wait for 30 min between huge trucks full of cars from all over Europe
2. At a counter I handed in all the needed documents and got one red paper and a pager.
3. After four hours & a deep fried Bratwurst at „Zum lütten Fossteiner“ (It doesn’t get more Hamburg harbour than that place) the pager called me on the harbour area to drop off Rosi in the heaviest rainfall of that day. The young, red haired & slightly overweight guy who drove me back to the main building, while we were listening to old school hamburg hip hop tunes, ensured me to double check if the van was locked. I was completely wet, stressed and anxious if I have done everything right after such long preparations.
Now, thee weeks later, Linda an me both look at the ocean here in Montevideo from our roof top terrace and just want Rosi to arrive!
höme 
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