A Cautionary Tale

It seems that my motorbike importation odyssey is finally over... and its a complete failure!

At the conclusion of my ride through Africa I had to export the motorbike from Israel... I could not sell it there and I could also not just leave it or "lose" it there (Israel often detains people with customs/immigration irregularities in their paperwork on exit as well as entry to the country)... So I had to export it and so I shipped it to Canada.
On arriving back home in Canada I set about figuring out what I needed to do to import it here... And that turned out to be an extremely difficult task... Its easy enough if the vehicle was originally made in North America or for the North American market (but the XRV750 was never sold here) and its easy enough if the vehicle is 15 years old or more (but the bike is only 14 years old), and its easy enough if you are a foreigner and only want to import your vehicle temporarily (on a tourist or working visa etc)... But my situation did not qualify under any of these options and so the "door" was firmly "closed" to me bringing the bike in.  And so I tried to find ways around the problems and time and again I thought I had it worked out but every time there would be a catch... I must have had at least a half dozen highs and following lows as I attempted to make things work, and frankly I had become quite tired of the struggle by the time the bike finally arrived here in Vancouver on about Dec21st (Nice Christmas timing to try to get anything through customs and government too!)
And so when I finally went down to the customs office to try one last time, I was not overly surprised nor actually overly disappointed when they said "NO"... You now must either export the bike immediately to somewhere out of Canada or have it destroyed here at your expense...And Id already looked into trying to send it back to South Africa or to find someone in Britain who wanted it... Id have given the bike away for free if they would pay for shipping... But alas, No takers were found.

And so just to rub salt into the wound I was left trying to find a local wrecking place that was licensed to destroy the bike at my expense (to try to minimize the cost of the procedure!), but it was looking like it was going to cost me another $1000 to destroy a perfectly good motorbike!

But during my phoning around I found a place that exports bikes from Canada to Europe for sale there cheaply... And the guy was willing to take the bike off my hands for free... So he will get to sell the bike for whatever he can get (probably at least a couple of thousand dollars I expect) and he will only have to pay shipping costs (he ships used bikes in bulk in containers so the shipping cost is likely only about $300-$500) and import costs at the other end (which I think are of the same order).
... So I think hes getting a pretty damn good deal there. But Im not going to feel bad about it at my end cos it saved me another $1000, and the bike does not get destroyed... It goes on to be enjoyed by someone else.
And so its done... The bike is gone and all up including shipping and Carne (all lost money), the whole Africa motorbike thing cost me about $10,000.

Story closed.... but let it be a warning to anyone else.... Look very carefully into import details BEFORE you ship something back to your home country... or be prepared to lose it outright :)