No plan ever survives contact!

 

And then disaster struck. Two lorries and trailers were sitting at the pier in Ushuaia awaiting the arrival of MV Argentinio 11 and our two containers containing our three cars. The team was arriving on the 26^th January to set off across Patagonia on one of the most challenging classic car journeys in the world and the containers weren’t on the ship! Where the hell were they? Had they even arrived in Buenos Aires? Had they been dropped off at a port coming south? Had they been lost at sea? The manifest said that they were on MV Argentinio 11 but no-one at Maersk UK or Maersk Argentina could tell us where they were.

 

We held the team in Buenos Aires until Maersk could confirm where the containers were and what we could do about it. Within a couple of days we had confirmation that the cars were still in Buenos Aires and that the next trans-shipment to Ushuaia would arrive on the 13^th February. 

 

Nigel wrote of his and Bumble's experience;

"How things can change in an hour.

 

Bumble & I flew from Heathrow to Madrid to catch the overnight flight to Buenos Aires on 24^th Jan 2023. We were feeling elated. After years of planning, we were on our way! The plane landed in Madrid, and I switched on my phone and picked up a message from Melvyn at CARS UK. The message said there was a ‘problem’ with the containers carrying our cars to Ushuaia but did not say what the problem was.

 

An hour later, now 10pm, we were relaxing with a glass of wine, when Iberia announced our flight was delayed 8 hours. Into a hotel at 2am, back on the plane at 8am and off we took to BA. Mid Atlantic CARS UK confirmed our containers had never been trans-shipped and were still in BA! Ahhhhhh….

 

The team now assembled in BA, instead of Ushuaia, and we decided to start our expedition from there instead. Only 22,000km instead of 24,000km.

 

Then the fun and games started! We thought it would be a straight forward process to extract our cars from the port and drive away. How wrong we were! We made endless calls to CARS UK who abrogated all responsibility and blamed everything on Maersk. CARS UK claimed they were doing everything that could possibly be done to extract our cars. A week went by and we were no further forward. Then we discovered CARS were communicating with Maersk by computer chatbox! We couldn’t believe it and decided to take matters into our own hands. So, using information off the internet, we started emailing every Maersk senior executive name we could find. Much to our surprise we firstly received a message back from Douglas Piagentini, head of Latin America, and secondly Vincent Clerc, Global CEO. Both took our plight in hand and started to pull strings within Maersk. Things started to happen. Even so, everything happens sooooo slowly in BA."

 

Everyone agreed that the fastest thing to do was to offload in Buenos Aires and start from there. When dropped at the wrong place on Utah beach on D Day 1945, General Roosevelt stuck his walking stick in the ground and said “the war starts from here’ and we  followed suit. Unfortunately our logistics partners failed to keep up with the limited demands we have made upon it and as we sit here today two weeks later the cars remain in the port at Buenos Aires and Maersk Argentina fail daily in their straightforward task of releasing our cars. Initially CARS UK had problems being able to discuss our situation with a Maersk chatbot! If this was the closest relationship that CARS have with their shipping partner then we knew we were in trouble! The power of the internet is such that it gives one the ability to identify and contact almost all senior corporate executives and in parallel with the local efforts by our agent in Argentina we set about raising the profile of this disaster within Maersk. Amazingly from the many emails sent we received direct responses from the recent new CEO of Maersk, Vincent Clerc and a senior South American executive, Douglas Piagentini promising their support and help in resolving the problems. After ten days waiting, on Monday morning we decided we would camp out in the Maersk Buenos Aires offices until we got some answers. The ground floor receptionist called a somewhat surprised young man who came down to better understand what we were doing there. After a lengthy, detailed explanation we discovered that he was the first floor receptionist but that he would go back upstairs to escalate the situation. Some minutes later he returned with a young lady who listen patiently as we once again explained our sad tale, only to tell us that she was the second floor receptionist and that no one else works in the office on a Monday! Our planned frontal assault on Maersk had failed, we hadn’t breached their defences because there weren’t any and we retreated for a large lunch and to lick our wounds. Maersk’s Buenos Aires understanding of escalation clearly involved going one floor up! The days pass on a roller coaster of glimpsed optimism followed by the depths of pessimism.

 

There are worse places to be marooned than Buenos Aires. What a fabulous city and welcoming people. We have tango’d, we have walked, we have visited museums and galleries, we have taken a day trip across to Uruguay  and we have sampled the fabulous and varied food of Argentina and tonight we have the positive news that perhaps, just perhaps Maersk have done what is necessary to approach Argentine Customs tomorrow. Do we dare to hope that we will be on the road by Friday?

 

We reached a sad milestone today with the departure of our first co-driver as Bumble returned to the UK without having sat in a car yet! At the moment we are planning on a Friday departure with new co-drivers down to San Carlos de Bariloche. This will put about 5 days on the schedule but will mean that we are completing the majority of the planned journey. We will deal with our shipping partners when we finally have our cars back.