By Pat Moraes
My husband and I really enjoy reading the Gringoes Newsletter and now would like to do our part and share a current experience. We are recently retired and this will be our second year of spending the North American winter in the tropical Brazilian sunshine. Last year we purchased an apartment in São Jose dos Campos, São Paulo and had it remodeled to our taste. We bought our major appliances, dining set, living room couches, beds, etc in São Jose dos Campos, but we have not had much luck finding comfortable recliners that we liked. My husband who was a skinny young Brazilian kid when he arrived thirty seven years ago is now built like the average middle aged American and I am a Gringa "gordinha" by nature. We felt that there were a few household items and bric-a-brac that we would like to have to make things feel more like home, and we wanted to ship two older bicycles and biking gear rather than trying to find them in Brazil.
Through Globo International TV we became aware of a moving company "Confianca Moving" that specializes in moving to Brazil. The interesting thing about this company is that you have the choice between shipping anything from one small box to a whole container. In order to have the items picked up at your residence and delivered to your destination in Brazil the minimum amount of shipping is three cubic meters. This is what we chose to do.
If you are a Brazilian returning to Brazil one of the requirements for doing this is to obtain an "Atestado de Residencia", which is a document from the Brazilian Consulate that states that you have been residing outside of Brazil for at least a year. We had to send the consulate my husband's Brazilian passport, copy of our ticket to Brazil, and copies of utility bills proving we have been in the US at least a year. The cost of the document was US$15.00. The consulates no longer provide any kind of document having to do with clearing customs. I believe that there is a similar procedure for foreigners moving to Brazil.
The cost was under US$1400 for three cubic meters of packed boxes, insurance and an agent in Brazil. If there are any customs duties we will have to pay them in Brazil so we hope that there are no unpleasant surprises in this respect. We don't expect to have any problems because our items are mostly used except for the recliners which were not expensive and we are not shipping any major appliances or anything electronic.
Obviously since we have to pay for three cubic meters in order to get delivery we wanted to make sure that we used up as much of the space as possible without going over the limit. We measured and measured and measured again, added a few boxes and kept on measuring. Finally we reached two and a half cubic meters. It seemed excessive to go out and buy things we probably won't need just to use up the space, so we purchased two simple wheel chairs in boxes to donate to charities in our area. We found these at a company called "Harbour Freight" and they were priced at US$179 each. We had seen them on sale earlier in the year for US$109, so we asked for and got the sale price. They are pretty decent chairs and a small price to pay to improve someone's life. The moving agents came yesterday and picked up our boxes. So far everyone we have dealt with has been informative, courteous and helpful. The expected time of arrival of our goods in Brazil is 90 days, as the end of the year is a busy time for the ports. We have been told that we will be able to track our shipment on line, but we don't have the information on that yet.
So far, this has been a satisfying experience for us. We will continue to report on the progress as time goes on. I guess now we have something to look forward to, provided that the ship gets there, there is no strike at the port of Santos, that the longshoremen are not too concerned about Carnival, the delivery truck doesn't get a blown out tire, and that they deliver on the day they promise.
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