MOTORCYCLE BORDER CROSSINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA, EXPLAINED

Border crossings are the part of a South American motorcycle trip that worries riders the most before they arrive — and the part they talk about the least once they are home. Everything below comes straight from our own webinars, where our founder and Rider in Chief Mike Thomsen — over a million kilometers ridden, roughly half of them in South America, and 18 years as a certified professional guide — answered the border questions our riders actually ask.

DO YOU NEED A CARNET DE PASSAGE? NO.

The Carnet de Passage is a customs guarantee document issued by your local automobile association, certifying that your bike is registered and taxed in your home country, and it has to be stamped out of your home territory and then in and out of every single country you ride through. In Africa it is genuinely necessary. In South America it is not — and Mike learned that the expensive way, on his own eight-month, twelve-country trip in 2007, when the automobile club in Denmark advised him to get one:

"Not a single customs officer in the entire continent knew what this document was about... it was such a hassle to discuss with the customs officers who didn't know what this document was all about. So do not get a Carnet de Passage if you plan to travel on your own bike." Mike Thomsen · from our South America webinar

Because he had already signed the bike out of Denmark on the carnet, he was stuck getting it stamped in and out of every country by officials who had never seen one. Save yourself that conversation: South America runs on a different system entirely.

HOW THE TEMPORARY IMPORT PERMIT WORKS

What South America uses instead is the temporary import permit, or TIP. As Mike explains it:

"You go to the customs office on a border crossing and they register a temporary import permit. They all have their own system and they make their own unique temporary import permit, but in every single country you make a temporary import permit going into the country and then you cancel it as you go out in the other end of the country. That's the quickest way, and it's the way they run it." Mike Thomsen · from our South America webinar

The permit typically gives you between 30 and 90 days in each country with your motorcycle. In most countries 90 days is the ceiling; extending a vehicle permit beyond that is possible in some places but, in Mike's words, a really painful, annoying hassle of a process — so long-haul riders plan their trips around those windows.

Insurance is the other paper that changes at the border. Most countries require third-party liability insurance — in Colombia and Peru it is called the SOAT. Riding into Peru, for example, you buy it at small tables right at the border post, around $10–15 for 30 days, and you should buy it immediately: police checkpoints start right after the crossing and riding without it can get you into serious trouble. Brazil, by contrast, does not require third-party liability insurance at all. On our tours, the insurances for every country are bought for you all the way down the continent — they are included.

WHAT A CROSSING ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE

Every land border in South America is really two processes in sequence. First immigration: you as a person get stamped out of one country and into the next in your passport. Only then comes customs, where the motorcycle gets its temporary import permit. Do it in that order, every time, at every border. So how long does all of that take? Here is Mike's honest answer from the webinar for our Top 2 Bottom expedition:

"Most border crossings can be done between one to three hours. So it's just about sitting down, getting a lunch or a Coke or something, and waiting that the entire team has been able to get their vehicles and their personal passports stamped and got across the border." Mike Thomsen · from our South America webinar

That is the range with an experienced crew and every document in order — and it is worth keeping expectations flexible even then. Border posts are staffed by human beings, and as Mike tells our expedition groups, even with all the paperwork in order it can still turn into a several-hour process depending on who is working that day — so the strategy is patience: keep smiling and go through the process. Riding on your own, his advice is blunter still: set off a full day for a border crossing and be sure everything is in order before you show up. And firearms are simply impossible to take across borders in South America; don't attempt it.

What should be in your jacket pocket, in a zip bag so it stays dry:

• Passport — with a minimum of six months to its expiration date on entry, which is the requirement across the countries of South America. Carry the original on the bike; when authorities stop you, they want original documents.
• Driver's license — again the original, with you at all times.
• Visas, checked in advance — most of our riders need few or none, but it depends on your nationality, so verify with the proper authorities before you fly.
• Vaccination — have your yellow fever vaccination sorted; some countries also recommend hepatitis A and B, so talk it through with your own doctor at home.
• The bike's paperwork — the TIP from the country you are leaving, ready to be cancelled, plus the registration documents customs will want for the next permit.

On our expeditions the crew is part of this machine. Because the group rides company rental bikes, the customs process has to be done with each rider — so Mike and Jairo, our support driver and assistant guide, are there at all times to run the border processes and do the translation while the group sits down for that lunch or that Coke. One detail from behind the scenes that says a lot about how borders really work: our support truck cannot even carry many sets of spare tires across a border, because customs will ask for import taxes on tires we already bought — so we source consumables through our network of contacts down the continent instead.

THE DARIÉN GAP: THE BORDER YOU CANNOT RIDE

There is one place where none of the above applies, because there is no road at all. Between Panama and Colombia — between Central and South America — lies the Darién Gap, roughly 90 miles of thick jungle and swamp that Mike describes as one of the most hostile areas in the world: dangerous insects, animals and plants, indigenous groups that do not welcome outsiders, and smuggling routes. Google it and you will find books about expeditions that got stranded in there — there are still vehicles parked in that jungle that never came out. You cannot ride a motorcycle from Panama into Colombia. Full stop.

So how do bikes get across? Two ways, per Mike's webinar. The first is by sea: ride to the eastern Panamanian side, find a sailboat captain willing to carry the bike across to Turbo or Cartagena. There is no ferry and no coordinated service — it is individual negotiation in the port — and bringing a vehicle into Colombia that way sits in a legal grey zone that can take a week or two of paperwork to untangle, so it is not viable on any kind of schedule. The second way is the one most riders on a timeline use: the cargo terminal in Panama City, where the bike is strapped onto an airline pallet — no crate needed — and flown to Bogotá within a few hours. You clear customs, pass the anti-narcotics police check with the sniffer dogs, drain the fuel down to almost nothing, and at the last check it cost a little under $1,000. Totally legal, and a fairly easy process. Fly over, pick up your bike, and South America begins.

HOW WE HANDLE ALL OF THIS ON OUR EXPEDITIONS

Both of our long South American expeditions are built so that the border days feel like riding days. On the 62-day South America Top 2 Bottom expedition — Cartagena to Ushuaia through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, with two of the six countries crossed more than once as we zigzag the Andes — the rental package includes the authorisation to cross borders with the bike, the third-party liability insurance for every country, fuel, tolls, and the shipping of the bike to Cartagena and back from Punta Arenas. The 52-day Trans Amazonian Adventure Challenge does the same across an even wilder set of frontiers — Peru into Brazil at Assis Brasil, a ferry across the Amazon itself, French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana (with a day in Georgetown to arrange the visas ahead), Venezuela, and back into Colombia at Cúcuta.

On both, the immigration queue and the customs window are still yours to stand in — every rider gets stamped, every bike gets its permit — but the paperwork, the permits, the insurances and the translation are our crew's job, refined over 18 years of crossing these borders. Sit down, get a Coke, and within one to three hours the whole team rolls into a new country. Let the adventure begin.