Carnet de Passage

A Carnet de Passage is an internation customs document or car passport valid for one year. If we had started the trip from the UK with a UK registered vehicle, we would have had to get a RAC Carnet.

AA SA requires a bank guarantee of 200% of the value of the vehicle if you go through Egypt and a 100% if you don't. We couldn't get a bank guarantee from our banks, so we had to use cash.

RAC UK requires one of the following options:

1. a bank guarantee of 800% (!) of the value of the vehicle if you go through Egypt and 200% if you don't. Since we would be going through Egypt this would be extremely expensive.
2. An insurance indemnity payment of 10% of the above - half is returned at the end.

We chose a cheapish car because we couldn't find insurance and there is no guarantee of getting the carnet deposit back if the vehicle is crashed or stolen, depending on where it happens. Egypt's guarantee is higher than anywhere else, because they are the most difficult country to prove that the vehicle wasn't sold - we were told to ship back the wreckage if we had an accident.

Our deposit was based on the book value (quote from Toyota) rather than the market value, so about 35% of the value of the vehicle. We got our deposit back quickly and easily when we dropped off the Carnet at the AA in Kyalami. We didn't need to go to the police to verify that it was the same vehicle because we had the exit stamp from the last country (even though we had several gaps/mistakes). The ladies at Kyalami are really great and enjoyed seeing the vehicle in person.