4x4 Brazil - Rent my Surf, use my house (wife not included)

[Ptarmigan]

Ladies and gentlemen,

The wife and I are shortly moving back to the UK and that leaves a house, Hilux and a freezer full of BBQ meat and beer looking for new owners. Instead of selling up, we have decided to do something different. We have decided to hold our ground here in Brazil and try to share some of the truly great parts of this country with fellow adventurers from around the world. What we can offer is a unique chance to mix a pretty nice holiday, with home-style hospitality and total freedom for your 4x4 dreams in Brazil, either following recommended routes or making your own destiny as you go along.
What we can offer is help booking flights, someone to pick you up from the airport in Rio and take you back to our house for BBQ and a warm family welcome (don`t worry, someone will speak at least some English although you will have plenty of chances to practice your Portuguese). After exploring the locale and being treated to several huge evening BBQs of half a cow, ice cold beer and local Cachaca (think moonshine), you will be ready to follow any itinerary of your choosing and we can prepare it for you and do all negotiations (local language etc) in advance.

Some suggested itinerary options include:

1. Lunch at Copacobana Beach followed by an ascent of the Sugar Loaf Mountain (walk, climb, cable car or a mixture)
2. 5 day trip to the south of Rio state, visiting beautiful beaches, driving dirt/mud tracks through the Atlantic forest looking for waterfalls and making a BBQ from the back of the truck, parked on the beach. Boat trips, Snorkelling and Scuba Diving are also on the menu.
3. Personal Martial Arts Tuition Courses (1 day to 2 weeks) run from a small island, covering Swords, Sticks and Nunchucks while your partner relaxes with acupuncture, massage, herbal tea and shopping.
4. Hiking or climbing in any one of several national parks.
5. 4x4 ascent of the Rio de Janeiro "Volcano"
6. Hanggliding and Paragliding
7. Self-guided tour of up to 6 months across Brasil, covering just about everything you can imagine: from deserts; mountains; gigantic waterfalls; carnivals; amazing cooking; samba and friendship; in a country almost the same size as all of Europe put together and where 70% roads are gravel, dirt or mud.

Why pay us a visit? Because Rio de Janeiro and Brazil are famous around the world for their beauty, but tour operators and language restraints keep most people within a 5 mile radius of their hotel. Perhaps because you need a break for more than just a few days and want to stretch your boundaries. Mostly because there is no other way (that we know of) to rent a 4x4 in Brazil and enjoy the true freedom to explore that it gives you. We also recognise that at, from £600 to £900 a go, not everybody can just up and buy a return ticket to Brazil so we don`t ask an arm and a leg in return. Because we are looking to build a business on referrals and good experiences, for HiluxSurf.co.uk members, we are offering a 50% discount during 2009 and 2010. That means we will be getting just enough money to to stop us from selling up and to cover our maintenance and local staff costs. We hope that your experiences will bring you and your friends back for more. As always, if you bring some parts with you in your suitcase, you can expect an especially warm welcome :-)

For now, if those looking for more information, please can you reply to this thread and that will be a great help to judge the level of interest there might be.

I couldn`t find a better place to put this thread so if it is in the wrong place I apologise and perhaps an admin can move it for me please.

Best regards,
Jon

[Smego2]

Is this for real?

how much per week then?

[Don Logan]

Prices...

[Ptarmigan]

4x4 Brazil - Pricing details and more...

OK ladies and gents, here is the short update.

The cheapest rate we found for renting a 4x4 (only pickups are available) here is £1150 per week.
Our standard rate is a little bit different at just £499 per week, plus a £2000 refundable deposit.

Even better, as a special offer only for members of www.hiluxsurf.co.uk, we are delighted to be able to offer a weeks rental for only £249. We are able to offer that rate because we know that once you`ve visited us and travelled through the beautiful country of Brazil, you will want to come back to visit us again. And we know that you will go back and tell your friends and they will want to come and make their own adventure here too.

How are we able to give a price so low?
We are able to offer a below cost price because we want to see as many people coming here as possible. We believe that delighted visitors are the best investment we can make and that is how we want to grow our business.

What do we ask in return?
What we ask is that each person visiting us, share their experiences openly and honestly with us through feedback and also with many others. That means we get more visitors and we use the feedback to keep making things better and better.
As this discount is exclusively for HiluxSurf.co.uk members, we do also ask that you consider the 50% saving you are making and please bring with you some parts from our "shopping list" in your suitcase. Many parts (especially aftermarket) are much more expensive here in Brazil, or are simply unavailable. For example if you rent for one week, at a cost of £249 (a saving of £900 over a rental from Avis/Localiza), a great contribution would be to bring with you a contirbution of a pair of Desert Fox shock absorbers from Roughtrax, in your suitcase, price £75. We think it`s a nice way to work and we hope you do too.

Best regards,
Jon
Rio de Janeiro

P.S. Please do vote on the poll if you haven`t already and consider adding a reply to this thread, whatever your point of view. :-)

[Smego2]

So if I take yo uup on this I assume you have full business liability insurance? Who is the policy with?

[tristanjay]

Sounds superb to me, just my kind of holiday. What does the £2000 deposit cover if you dont mind me asking ?

[Ptarmigan]

What does the Deposit cover...

Sounds superb to me, just my kind of holiday. What does the £2000 deposit cover if you dont mind me asking ?

Hi Tristanjay,

We are really pleased to hear your enthusiasm and thank you for your question. It`s not as straightforward as it might first seem but I hope the answer is common sense.

Summary:
The deposit is for any damage caused while you are with the truck. I`m assuming nothing much will happen to the house / you won`t get drunk and throw the TV off the balcony etc :-) but it would cover that too!

Light damage:
Paint scratches, dents in the bumper etc we would consider normal driving use so we wouldn`t expect anyone to have to pay for that.

General damage:
If you did get unlucky and put a stone through the windscreen or lose a wing mirror on a tree, that would need to be put right. However, the idea would be that if you can send us (or get someone else to bring us) a decent second hand part in a reasonable time frame, then that would be just fine and hopefully cheaper for you.

Damage to third party vehicle:
In the event you get involved in a shunt and it`s your fault, the norm here is that you pay off the other party with cash in hand. Currently, that would come out of your deposit.
If you manage to do some serious damage to the third party vehicle, it would be covered by us under third party insurance, but you would be liable for the excess, up to £2000.

Vehicle recovery after an accident:
Since vehicle recovery can be a challenge in Brasil due to the sheer size and nature of where you might be, the £2000 would also help to cover a recovery after any accident you might get involved in.

Vehicle recovery due to breakdown:
In the event that truck suffers a mechanical fault, not related to an accident or being driven off-road, and that makes it undriveable, we would recover it at our cost back to Rio in a tow truck.

Vehicle written off for any reason:
£2000 would also be your maximum liability in the event of a total write off.

Footnote:
To add some perspective, the truck cost us approximately £12,000 (yes that is the used price for a 1995 truck, bought 5 months ago).
It is about £10,000 per year for fully comp insurance for the vehicle, so currently uneconomical.
The truck will come with 3rd party insurance only.
So if you write off the truck, you pay £2,000 and we pay £10,000 from mine and the wife`s pocket.
In other words, have fun but please drive as carefully as you would your own car, so we can keep renting it out to as many people as would like to visit Brazil :-)

P.S. We absolutely welcome suggestions and new ideas, so please send them.

[Ptarmigan]

So if I take yo uup on this I assume you have full business liability insurance? Who is the policy with?

Hi Smego2,

Thanks for your question. It`s a very interesting topic, especially for a very small family operation such as ours. I`m not an insurance expert, but Business liability insurance is quite a broad umbrella term. I`m guessing that the piece that you probably were most thinking about would be Public liability insurance?
If so, it is not mandatory to hold such insurance. In fact it would only be recommended, if there was a risk that we would be sued by a member of the public, specifically "because of an injury or damage to their property caused by you[us] or your[our] business".

Please do keep in mind that we are not a tour guiding company so any activities or driving routes you choose to undertake (even if based on our self-drive options) are your choice and therefore covered under your own travel insurance.

The only significant risk I currently see is that the truck would have some mechanical fault that we knew about or reasonably should have know about, prior to handing over the keys. To try to eliminate that risk, the truck has to pass the Brazilian version of an MOT here and you will also see a copy of the latest service history, included with the vehicle documents. Before and after any rental, we also have an arrangement with a local garage to carry out an inspection / service as required since this also makes good economic sense. As the truck is our "daily drive", that may also give some level of comfort.

As with any kind of rental or mildly challenging activity, we have to ask all visitors to please sign a reasonable disclaimer/waiver. That basically says that visitors won`t gratuitously sue us for pouring hot coffee over themselves whilst driving over a pot hole etc but still leaves the person protected if we actually did do something negligent.

Simply put, the risk level does not warrant optional liability cover. If it did, we simply couldn`t proceed, since the costs become prohibitive. As and when that changes we will review but for now, as an alternative for anyone who wishes, what we can do is help to arrange a 4x4 pickup rental through Localiza for £1150.00 per week and still give pointers for a self-guided tour / provide local support for bookings, accommodation etc.

I`m hoping that went at least some way to answering the question and thanks for the interest in our project :-)

Best regards,
Jon

[Don Logan]

Just out of interest, why is the insurance 10K a year? And why did the truck cost so much?

[Bogus]

Im going to guess here, but I do know that import taxes in Brazil can range from 0% to 800% depending on what you are importing and why.

Bogus

[Ptarmigan]

Hi Don and Bogus,

Thanks for the questions.

The price is the current market price for the vehicle. Used prices are very high in Brazil for a number of reasons. The main problem for us is that it is 99% illegal to import a used vehicle, so we couldn`t bring a nice truck from the UK or Japan for example. Car sales are restricted between states also, so even though Rio state has higher prices for used vehicles (due to state taxes etc), importing one for just the next door state is full of paperwork and associated costs and risks.

Import charges on new products coming into the country can be very high, although I`ve never heard of anyone being taxed more than 100% (although you can get taxed on even the shipping and other fees )! Another reason why we ask for a donation of parts, since prices can be somewhat inflated.

The cost of insurance is very high here in general. Also there is not a lot of competition; Rio de Janeiro has a very high associated risk; 4x4s are also considered a high risk vehicle etc. Mostly, there is probably not a lot of call for people wanting to let a large number of people use a vehicle. Insurance is based on named drivers; opening it up to non-specific drivers seems to pretty much spike the premiums.

As with all things, we make a review periodically to see if things have changed.

Best regards,
Jon

[Smego2]

So if it is so expencive to import stuff, if one of us got caught bringing parts in we could face a very unhappy customs man who would want to extend our stay somewhat....?

[Ptarmigan]

Greeks bearing gifts...

So if it is so expencive to import stuff, if one of us got caught bringing parts in we could face a very unhappy customs man who would want to extend our stay somewhat....?

Another good question and thankfully with some good news :-)

Residents leaving Brazil, going outside the country and then coming back with things they bought, have a limit of USD$500 (which is nothing or already a reasonable amount, depending on your point of view).
Gringos (that means you and I) coming from the outside can bring an unlimited value of gifts, the rationale being that you are not evading Brazilian purchase taxes as you don`t live there anyway.
The only problem I ever had was bringing a toy plastic revolver - the customs guy took a shine to it and ordered that I leave it there or face the federal police on charges of importing weapons! Seeing how I was young and naive, I left it; nowadays I`d invite him to carry out some contorsions involving private body parts.

So thankfully you can bring anything you want. You will be delighted to know that 33" tyres are on the shopping list

Cheers,
Jon

[tristanjay]

Cheers for the reply Ptarmigan, makes a bit more sense now that its exlpained. I reckon I may very well take you up on the offer for next year if I can convince the Mrs, a trip including Carnivals should sort that.

We are selling up and moving down south so if all that goes well Ill get in touch with you early next year. Do you have a flash earth link or google link to the area where your house it ?

Out of curiosity as a way around the import laws-whats to stop a guest or relative buying a truck in a cheaper neighbouring state and driving to yours and just leaving it there ? Even as a donor truck.

[adpsimpson]

This looks like an amazing opportunity. Unfortunately we wouldn't be able to take you up on it any time soon, since we're currently planning an extended trip in Africa, but in a few years this is certainly the sort of holiday that would grab my fancy. All the best with it!