PowerCycle

I’m back at the Casa de Ciclistas in Tumbaco. The ride from Latacunga was along the busy PanAm highway but there was a nice shoulder which made it bearable. Stopped halfway in the city of Machachi. Stayed at a nice hotel called the Hotel Estancia Real. After Machachi it was a short 33 mile ride to get here inurrupted only by one very big hill.

Veronica from Ecuadorian customs wrote back to let me know that my frame cleared customs and was due to be delivered in a couple days. That was great news although, as I soon found out, there would of course be a problem.

FedEx showed up yesterday, the day after I arrived, to deliver the frame but the delivery guy wanted $220 for an import tax. I didn’t have the cash on me and it was kind of a shock to owe that much. After explaining everything to him he said they’d contact Koga and see about resolving the tax. Another delivery attempt would be made in a couple days. And so I waved goodbye to my frame.

Karin and I called Veronica this morning and she is going to talk to her manager about the tax. It sounds like the customs agent just wrote down a value on the frame based on whatever information he had available. Apparently it doesn’t matter that Koga put the value as $0 on the invoice and said it was for a warranty replacement (which it is). $450 was the number he came up with and the tax ($220) was calculated based on that. Not sure why the tax came out to 50% of the value though. Normally an import tax is 20-25% max. She said she’d email me and let me know what’s going on. Nothing is ever easy.