Clearing customs hints and tips

Once upon a time, before progress came, humans were relatively free to wander around their planet unencumbered by something diverse than pure costs. Then cheaper transport eased the flow towards where the money was concentrated and barriers had to be regretfully raised, and now sailors cruise around the world non-stop not for fame, as they’d like you to believe, but just to avoid the paperwork. Ports of entry, custom offices and immigration barriers are justly abundant and provide jobs for many families worldwide.

If you consider that customs and immigration are supposedly the welcome desk of every country of our planet, any alien invasion stands a pretty good chance of being rebuffed upon landing… No intelligent form of life could possibly hope to find anything precious around here after such a welcome.

General principles
It’s a well known fact that a military career is a social shortcut. Like all shortcuts, the uniform takes you to a more desirable position faster, but it avoids the wising up of the normal track. The result is that military officials tend to be pompous cocks. Immigration and custom officials can only be worse, because they chose to wear a uniform that tend to shun bullets, thus avoiding the only risk of military life – and its main teaching effect. Moreover, poor and underdeveloped countries tend to grow big armies, but historically use them only against their own fellow citizens. In short, C&I officials are mostly ignorant parvenus with the power of making your life utterly miserable. As with any other animal species, it’s highly recommended to understand the psychology of the opponent behind the desk before embarking in any kind of challenge.

Sweat confidence, but stink of sweat
This practice is highly recommended. Men with uniforms, like bears, smell fear, and there is no better victim then a trembling one. If one begins a career as a custom official, he’s certainly looking to substitutes of sex to express his desire of power, and weak victims are an easy target. So be confident and self-reliant. On the other side, you cannot overact, and a good dose of toil in your appearance can do the trick. After several days at sea or biking the land mined-no-men-lands along the borders in Africa, you won’t need an exacting effort to acquire a very balanced appearance. As a corollary comes the fact that you should be as much inconspicuous as possible. Do not expect to bring luxury BMW cars or unknown frozen products in places like Argentina without using a highly corrupted freight forwarder to oil the wheels.

Behave properly
If you have a Canadian officer sitting on 180 cans of beer, you really do not want him to look under the seat. An educated conversation without being flippant, a proper tea or coffee, tales of distant and possibly civilized countries, and clearing the papers might even be funny.

Reading the signals
When a custom official writes the letters T, I and P on a piece of paper, not to be overheard by his superior in the adjoining room, be prepared to an ample overlook when calculating the exchange rate between the US dollar and the Ecuadorian peso while paying for a light and beacon tax. Also, please fail to mention that there are no beacons or lighthouses to speak of in the Galapagos Islands. But do think about the possible effect of an expensive fumigation with toxic gases over your beloved berths, and you’ll probably be ready to oversee a one to one exchange rate with the Zimbabwean dollar anyway…

Timing is essential
Custom officers and clerks have their natural enemy in efficiency. The longer they take to do your papers, the more they justify their same existence. An imprudent sailor or traveler might be tempted into clearing on a Friday or a Thursday. That is courting disaster and papers will never be ready before Monday afternoon or Tuesday, meaning even five days. If one is inconspicuous enough, it will be possible to choose a proper timing. I suggest studying the culture of the country and making a good use of its traditions. Best moment to clear into Brazil is when the national soccer team is playing, or some major similar event is on: you’ll be whisked through in no time.

Bluff as much as you possibly can
Custom buildings of places like Santos in Brazil or Montevideo in Uruguay look like Harrods. The second one especially so. Same pompous architecture, same idiotic uniforms around, same amount of mottled rooms and very much the same display of useless items. Just imagine a random shuffle of the Harrods personnel, say a mattress expert being in charge of the dog food section, and there you have it. Such monumental barriers cannot be overcome with simple diligence or bribe, and more tricks have to come out the sleeve. Suppose that after being ricocheted between 3 or 4 offices you begin again from the main entrance saying you are a journalist doing a piece on the local bureaucracy, you’ll immediately find yourself sitting on a comfortable leather chair belonging to the notary of the supreme authority of the whole joint. A coffee might be expected. Papers will swiftly flow through and you’ll find yourself riding your motorbike somewhat freely in an hour or so. Only with an officer sitting in the back verifying you’re going to board the first ferry.

Fake papers: are they a bad thing?
I have met many a prudent sailor and traveler taking advantage of one or more documents of dubious authenticity, or at least used for a different purpose. This policy, even if of course condemned by the author, is at times understandable. The idea turns around a very simple statement: while C&I officers can pretend you to understand their language, very often uncivilized, they cannot pretend your papers are written in it. Amazingly common are fake insurance certificates, easy to craft thanks to Photoshop. Stamps are also very common and although they require artisans with flexible morals, most of the time the same artisans won’t understand a word on them. And it’s amazing what a stamp can do. Needless to say it’s highly recommendable to have a stamp of your boat with you. Another very useful document, easy to be forged, is the exit certificate from a certain country. You cannot imagine how important is being able to certify where are you coming from. Other facsimiles that can become useful are driving and sailing courses and certificate that can become licenses, weapon declarations that can be upgraded into permits to carry them, fake carnet de passage en douane, and miscellaneous tax records about paid VAT.

Do not underestimate your counterpart – not valid in Africa and Italy
The day may come when you are requested to leave your beloved and precious documents to a certain official of desk 13 of room 241 of the 4th floor of a building like, say, Harrods, a guy who looks like a good enough chap, and you can come back only after a week. Sleep quietly. When you’ll be back, you’ll take around 3 hours just to find the room, and you’ll find the desk empty with a small note ‘On holiday’. You can faint at this point. Another chap will wake you up asking you if, by any chance, you’re Mr. So and So. You happen to be So & So. Well then, the guy of this desk thought you might have come and left me this envelope for you. Looks like all your documents are here and the permits are all stamped. Fair winds.

Be formal
This is especially useful if you need to clear papers for others. In case a Latvian bunch of paperless, radioless, engineless and penniless sailors asks for your help to clear into the most formal port of America, the Chilean naval base of Puerto Williams, a proper use of the formal code is essential.

Stop the traffic
When stopping at a barred border crossing, leave your vehicle just behind the bar so you stop the traffic. It is highly likely that the blighters inside, who have just stolen your insurance, certificate to sell you a new one, have to open the thing to let some armed crook pass and will be forced to let you go. In case you are in a third world country, do not hesitate to sneak through, because even if they can alert some officials along the way, they’d certainly belong to another tribe or gang.

Never show more than a document at a time
Never make the mistake of giving the same person more documents at any given time. My legs tremble at the perspective of some greedy dark hands handling more than a single piece of paper. Permits are very likely to slip through, certificates lost, pictures ruined and money requested to replace them.