To organise our return to Iran, we needed to arrange our water crossing. Only one company to be found, which turned out to have moved and nobody knew exactly where to. Also the name had changed. Some dodgy dealings going on?
We finally, after asking, calling, searching a whole morning, found the Al Hili Marine Services office and checked upon pricing. Turned out the shipping would not be just the $250 for the car as Valfajr had mentioned. Our crossing over cost us $500 for the car, plus $120 for the Carnet de Passage and admin cost, plus some smaller amounts in port for certain signatures (not to mention the two passenger tickets each for about $35). There were charges for the Bill of Lading, for port handling, for customs check to be added, still coming to quite an amount. We could organise one item ourselves, but that would take us to be in the queue with all the agents who imported and exported goods, and making sure we would get everything done on time. In the end we decided it would not be worth the extra $50 we needed to pay for us to spend a whole day in port running around so we let Al Hili organise everything. It was a long weekend of holiday and so we would attract overtime charges and storage cost if we wished to leave tomorrow. We decided to leave on Sunday, with a few more days to stay in the UAE.
Sander, Rianne and Coco were our wonderful hosts for a few days and we so much appreciated their welcoming and warm hospitality. It was a mini-holiday for us to be taken for lunch, a stroll, a nasi goring dinner, and a day away with the boat for a swim just out of the marina. We were energised and ready to make the return crossing into Iran, or so we thought.
That Sunday, we drove from Abu Dhabi through Dubai, a quick cup of coffee with Jaska on the way, to Sharjah to deliver the car by 13h in port. Having settled everything, we were free to go out and about. We had lunch at the restaurant at the roundabout, where all crew from the dhows were having their lunch: good, simple food. We had a stroll along the quai with the dhows and Saeed got talking to one of the crew. It could have been arranged for us and the car to go with one of them, if one has some time on their hands, as the dhows only leave when full with goods, which could take a week or two. We saw goods being delivered and piled up on the ship, we saw ones in good shape and ship which could use a lick of paint.
We returned to the passenger hall to check in and get to drive the car onboard. But something wasn’t right.
The Al Hili representative had been trying to reassure us, however we felt something was out. “Drive the car onboard and I’ll leave your papers with the crew of the ship.” “No, please deliver them in our hands.” This he did.
When Saeed checked the Carnet de Passage (CdP), it turned out it had been stamped on the wrong page and an extra page from our CdP had been used for no reason other than a mistake. Saeed called the Al Hili representative back, who took a short cut to leave the ship. Saeed after him. His man had left had left the ship, quickly gone to his office to make his departure imminent. Saeed gave him a piece of his mind after first having tried to reason and to get him to rectify the mistake. They called the director of Al Hili who hung up the phone on them. We wanted to drive the car off the ship and stay in port overnight to rectify the mistake in the morning. As the captain had signed for reception of the car and was supposed to deliver it to Bandar Abbas, he didn’t approve of the car being driven off. In the mean time, the Al Hili representative had fled and there we were. Arrgghhhhh!!!
As we couldn’t do anything anymore, the sea would be rough if the ship wouldn’t leave now, we were given no choice than to stay on board, make the journey and check upon arrival with RAC re the CdP being wrongly stamped. We just had to make sure that in Iran, they would stamp the right page for entry.
And so we had a worry to deal with but as for the moment we were on a ship crossing the Persian Gulf and we couldn’t do anything, I went to sleep.
Two lovely Bandar Abbassi young ladies, one with her son, had taken pity on us and motioned for us to take the benches behind them. In the morning we had a warm-hearted goodbye hug with their invitation to stay with them anytime.
First priority: to get the car from the ship and out of customs, it took again a whole day of running around, signatures and paperwork. An agent helped us, so things were done rather rapidly and in correct sequence.
A skype call to RAC explained that as long as we didn’t need that extra page in the CdP and the entry and exit from Iran would be done correctly, there would not be any problem upon return to receive our deposit back. Pfew, what a relief!