Monday, April 22, 2013

Santiago de Cuba - Arrival










  1. Hello Peter,
    Is it possible to tell me, if you had to let the authorities know before importing your motorcycle into Cuba, and what type of paper work and fees you had to pay, before arriving to Cuba? What type of insurance Cubans required to temporary import a motorcycle into Cuba?
    Many thanks!

  2. Robert,

    No advanced arrangement were needed. There were formalities on arrival to entering the country and many more to import the motorcycle. The sail boat was searched thoroughly, we were given tourist cards in lieu of a visa stamped in our passports, then the first importation step was taken at the dock side customs office. The next morning we completed the importation paperwork the customs office in town. I think we paid 40 CUC (~$40.00 USD) for importation. We then rode a few miles to the Transito office. The motorcycles VIN numbers were inspected and a rather home made drivers license/healthcare/insurance document was prepared, the following day. To complete that process a 5 CUC stamp (~$5.00 USD) was purchased in the center of town. The whole process took 2.5 days. The officials at the Transito office had a lot of problems using the computer to complete the importation forms. This is not a service they do very often and we suspect their forms asked for data that did not exist in the same format on our documents. The Cubans, as do many other Latin countries, love to generate create piles of documents, which means you have to fill out lots of forms and produce lots of documents... Bring your original documents that prove that you owner the motorcycle and anything else you can think of. Keep you paperwork organized in a waterproof and safe place. If you make it to Cuba, you will be stopped on a regular basis and asked to produce the "drivers license."

  3. Thank You Peter!