Sunday, October 24, 2010

"Pirates of the Customs Bureau: At World's End"

 
Before I finish the second segment of my trip, I just thought I would take a few minutes to briefly explain an experience that I had with Argentine Customs.

Remember when I said I had lost a contact? Well, my parents were nice enough to send me another set that I planned on having arrive to my building here. Putting contacts into an envelope and sending them to a home address sounds simple enough right?
WRONG

Because they fall under the "medical/cosmetic" category, my package literally got detained with customs in the international airport. "Why?" do you ask--I still do not have an answer. So what I had to do to retreive them was:
1. Go to DHL in another part of town on a Monday
2. PAY DHL $72 American JUST to release paperwork containing the shipping documentation
3. Go to Ezeiza International on a Wednesday by taking a 2 hour bus to get there...and back.
4. Return home Wednesday because for whatever reason, I needed to have my visa forms to prove that I was legally allowed to be in Argentina.(dumb)
5. Return on a Friday to complete the process which took 4 hours of going through various offices and costed me an additional $100 in taxes and storage fees.

Customs is literally a huge facility of multiple hangars that contain packages (like at the end of Indiana Jones--I'm not joking) that are withheld by the pirates of customs. There were hundreds of people there from various parts of the PROVINCE just to collect small packages. The process was literally something you would see in a movie where they make fun of huge paper-pushing bureacracies. It makes going to the secretary of state look like an all inclusive Caribbean cruise--I'm dead serious, I wish I was joking. Also, I could ONLY pay in cash, apparently the National Bank of Argentina won't take Visa cards at that location. Oh yea, it also may have been difficult because everything was in a different language, maybe.

It was seriously one of the worst things I have ever had to do. I love this country dearly and I hate talking about negative aspects, but that whole facility should be carpet bombed. As a wrap-up, I met a German woman sitting in line next to me. She told me that she had done this before a few times and gave me a pamphlet detailing all of the things I had to do. Before she left, she looked at me and said in English: "Welcome to Hell".

But hey, it's all part of the experience right?...

1 comment:

  1. Lesson learned - Take many extra contact lenses! Glad you are having a good time.

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