Our Honduras Story - Shopping and Shipping to Furnish the Villa

The villa is done! Every light switch turns on what it should, every detail has been completed and the final inspection has been given the gold star. It is the middle of March 2009 and the construction process is truly done!

We had been deciding over the months leading up to this moment whether to try to furnish the villa while still in the states or to wait until we move to Honduras to live full time. It's a big expense and a big job to try to furnish from here as it is requires buying here or online and shipping everything to Honduras. The advantage of this is that once we furnish the villa we could advertise and place it in the vacation rental market hopefully generating some income.

My husbands Mother and two other relatives were planning a trip to Honduras to stay in the villa in about 5 - 6 weeks. His Mom said they could, "camp out" during there stay and not need beds, cookware etc. for there stay. We knew that at least another bed was to be purchased. We had purchased a bed for our room when we had been there and camped out on our last visit. Obviously we were not going to ask a grown woman to sleep on the hard tile floor. So we decided to go ahead with the entire home furnishings for there stay and the opportunity for rental income to reimburse the expense helped to make the decision easier.

Shipping Overview

It takes about 10 - 14 days for a shipment to arrive in port in Honduras from the time it leaves port in Miami. This does not account for the time it takes to order the furnishings, have them shipped and arrive to the shipping company. The containers leave for shipment once a week so you have a window of time for items to arrive and be included in a shipment. As you can see I didn't have anytime to spare in shopping, ordering and having items shipped to Honduras. The other layer to this is that the shipments had to be delivered to our property manager in La Ceiba and then still transported to the villa. The shipping company that I worked with delivers by truck your shipment to the address you provide in Honduras. They had an address for my manger and contact information fro her. She had to receive the shipments, which meant making sure the order was delivered complete and in good condition before signing and accepting the shipment. If she signed for a shipment and then found missing times or damaged items the insurance we paid on the shipment would be void. This is a lot to organize and oversee from Colorado, but not impossible. With some careful planning and follow through it can be done.

Setup a Shipping Account

But this is not where you start; you start by finding and setting up an account with a shipping company. I setup an account with, "DIP Shipping" in their Miami office. This entailed several phone calls and emails to create a comfortable process and communication between me and the Dip shipping agent to assure a secure understanding of the system that would be in place with the shipped items. Much of what I would send to I would never actually see or touch, I would shop online for shipment directly to Dip Shipping.

Shopping, Shipping and Delivery to the Shipping Company

I decided to try a preliminary shipment from my home to the Miami location. I had several items that I had purchased for the villa over the past year, towels, sheets, coverlets and many other basic linens, etc. that I packaged and had picked up for delivery to Dip Shipping. I wanted to see how this went before starting to order things for delivery online to Dip Shipping which adds a whole other level of tracking and processing. To ship form my home I placed a call or email to my representative and asked for them to order a pickup from my home. They have a contact with UPS and special pricing so that if you have them order the pickup you get a better rate than if you order it yourself. Although I believe if you were to use the postal service flat rate you might do just as well or better. I realized after having the first items picked up at my home that the shipment was going to their Louisiana location and not Miami. When I spoke with them via email or phone I was never informed of this so I was a little worried. I didn't know if it was a mistake that they were being shipped to Louisiana or if it was a process that was known to them and just not to me.

Of course part of the setting up of an account with the shipping company is setting up how the items will be shipped, will they hold all and ship together or ship weekly, etc. and how the shipment will be paid. My shipments were to accumulate over the week and be shipped on that week's container and to be paid and insured at the Miami office so that there would be no charges as the other end. I called Miami to find out what was going on with my shipment and at first had a lot of trouble getting any answers. I finally called and emailed one of the owners of the company about the fact I had a shipment on the way and I needed to know if anyone was aware of my account in Louisiana. She promptly contacted me and became my representative for all the rest of my shipping. She was a godsend in that she gave me a feeling of security through this unfamiliar process by being there with fast and friendly communication. There were a few bobbles along the way in the shipping process, but all were easily resolved with good communication.

I started shopping online with a timeline, a budget and a vision of what I wanted the villa to be. I had a style and color scheme and a quality that I wanted to maintain for the furnishings and décor. While it may sound like a lot of fun to go online and shop and furnish our little villa all of this made it a lot of hard work. It was fun in that I got to see my vision come to life and I had the satisfaction of completing the process on time with hard word and determination.

Many sites will offer free shipping or discounted shipping if you order a certain dollar order. I tried to take advantage of this whenever possible. I also tried to order as much as possible from one site to make it easier to track. I was furnishing an entire household from kitchen gadgets to bed frames and headboards. This made for a wide and diverse shopping trip and being on a budget and timeline meant finding things of quality for the right price and ready for shipment in the necessary amount of time. Once the orders were made the items had to be tracked as they were delivered to the shipping company. Items ordered in one order will not necessarily ship together. You will need to track how many packages were delivered during the week for shipment on that week's container and the value of the items delivered for insurance coverage. This list I made and sent to the shipping company to be confirmed. I had an agreement with the shipping company that all invoices to be shipped weekly for my account were be verified with me before being charged to my credit card. Copies of the invoices were emailed to me and then confirmed or corrected as needed. This way I could confirm that all items received at the warehouse had been invoiced and set for shipment.

Shipping and Receiving Overseas

If you are going to ship many shipments as I did then having a person on the other end that is truly working with you is invaluable. For many of you moving to another country you will be moving one large shipment in a shipping container with all your household items being shipped at one time. It is still very important that you have a good relationship with a shipping representative so that you understand the process and know what to expect. If you ship a car you will have duty tax to pay on the car at the point of delivery on top of the shipping cost. You will need the right documentation and paperwork for the car to be released to you. Small household shipments to Honduras are not charged duty taxes. If you ship a large container or half container of items you will be charged duty taxes on the total over a certain dollar figure. These are all things you need to know and be aware of before deciding to ship.

I setup my shipping address on each order with the first line being, my name - DIP Shipping. I also added a note in special instructions that it was important that my name be on the same line as Dip Shipping. The account you setup with the shipping company has all the address and contact information for where your packages are to be shipped. When they received a package at the warehouse with my name on it they knew it was to be shipped that week to Honduras and the delivery address in La Ceiba.

It will be very important if you make your permanent home overseas to setup an account with a company even if you decide not to ship your household or a vehicle. There will more than likely be things that you will want to order from time to time from the states and have delivered to your new home. If you setup an account you can order things online and have them delivered to you in a foreign country much as you would here in the states. Some of the shipping companies have a special shipping system and rates for small packages or envelopes under a certain weight so that it is more cost effective. You pay a one time fee to setup this type of account and then you can receive small online orders or small shipments from friends and family for a less expensive rate.

In my case another list had to be made for my manager in Honduras so she knew when to expect a shipment, exactly what should be in that shipment and then detailed instructions about where each item will be placed in the villa. I had many orders that were delivered to Dip Shipping and several shipments that went out for shipment over this next 6 weeks. Whew! That's a lot, but as I said before with careful planning and follow through this can all happen smoothly.

Shopping and Shipping Results

All of things that I ordered, had shipped and delivered were received safely with the exception of 3 broken cup handles that were not discovered until unpacked at the villa. The dishes were ordered online and must not have been packed sufficiently to protect the delicate handles. I didn't get any insurance reimbursement for the dishes, but considering the multitude of items shipped this is a very small amount of loss. I personally sent many glass and breakable items in the boxes that I packed and shipped from my home with no breakage at all. Yeah!

Our guests were scheduled to arrive on the 19th of April. I don't know exactly how the villa looked when our guests arrived as unfortunately I didn't get any photos before their arrival. However I had photos shortly afterwards and with my request for a few changes the villa looked very much like I imagined as I was ordering and decorating in my mind.

My husband and I visited Honduras in the end of May 2009 and arrived to a beautiful villa with all the comforts of home. I was thrilled with the results of my shopping and shipping. It was an involved process, but well worth the final result. We now have a beautiful rental property ready to be your host for your next vacation.

We hope you will come and visit Honduras and our Villa del Mar Caribe. We have gone through this whole process because we believe Honduras is one of the best kept secrets of the Caribbean. It is more affordable in comparison too pretty much all the rest of the coastal Caribbean properties. It is beautiful and unspoiled in away that are hard to find. It is being developed in small residential style developments not just huge resorts. It has a feeling of living in a community not a resort area. Yet it offers all the natural beauty, activities and many amenities that you would expect to find in any resort area.

We feel very blessed to own land and a villa in Honduras and to be part of this developing country. Tourism is already a large industry in Honduras and will continue to grow in years to come. Our villa on the coast of the mainland is perfectly positioned for eco tourism in the rain forest and rivers of the Pico Bonito and being so close to offshore islands and the second largest coral reef in the world for some of the best snorkeling and diving in the world. It is perfect for island hopping among the Cayos Cachinos and the Bay Islands enjoying activities from boating, swimming, sightseeing to shopping and dining on the islands of Roatan and Utila.

If you are interested in visiting our property or reading more about Villa Del Mar Caribe, I invite you to visit our web site at http://www.villadelmarcaribe.com/

Thank you for reading this article and all my articles on Our Honduras story. I hope you have enjoyed the journey so far. I will write more as our story progresses, watch for the next article in the series.