Okay, so I'm not blogging from Brazil, I'm right at home in my office back at work and regular life. So here is our story so that others will not make the same mistakes that we did. We planned our trip in a week. We literally decided we were going to Rio on a Friday and night and bought plane tickets for the following Friday. This may have been our first mistake.
Then, we checked my passport to see if it was still valid. It is until June 22nd. So, we thought that was fine. We would be back in the US before my passport expired. This may have been our biggest mistake.
We bought a few books on Rio, reserved rooms at 2 hotels (we were going to stay at a beach resort town for a few days) and packed our bags. We showed up at the airport and tried to check ourselves in at the kiosk but it wouldn't let us so we went to the desk. The Delta associate told us that my passport was making the computer nervous, but gave us our boarding passes and we went on to security.
We were boarding the plane and the gentleman scanning our tickets asked us where our visas were. I had no idea what he was talking about. He sent us to the desk. The gentleman behind the desk told us that we have to have visas to travel to Brazil and that we needed to go to the consulate Monday morning and beg and plead for them to process our visas in one day. This is when I started crying.
So after a lot of talking to the Delta representatives, we left the airport with a plan. Our flight was rescheduled for tonight and we extended the dates on the back end so that our trip would be the same length. My husband had decided to skip the first day of summer school (so not like him) so that we could have the trip we had been planning. We would change our hotel reservations and go to the consulate Monday morning and beg and plead.
On Saturday, we started to do our research about obtaining a visa. We found out that you have to have 6 months of life still on your passport to get a visa. This is when we knew the trip wasn't going to happen.
So, I'm here, back at work, not in Brazil. The trip is on hold indefinitely. We are disappointed, yes, but it's not the end of the world. We went to see UP in 3D last night and it was awesome. So check it out and if you're flying internationally, make sure you have a passport with 6 months of life on it and check to see if you need a visa.
Oh MAN! What a bummer. Sorry to hear that the trip has been postponed. Oddly, the same thing happened to my friend, Katie, about a month ago. She had a ticket to go visit her brother in the UAE and had two months left on her passport. She shows up to the airport and they tell her that you actually have to have 3 months left on your passport to travel to the UAE. Apparently, many countries have their own regulations that don't show up on the FAA website - you have to go to that website for the US Embassy for that country.
ReplyDeleteThat became a rather lenghty comment. :)
man i'm so bummed for you. i hope you were able to get refunds for your various tickets and reservations. maybe you could take a fun little weekend trip and drive to charleston or savannah?
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear that! I had to get a completely new passport in order to travel to Rio in September. I never knew that there was a time limit on passports as long as it's valid that's all that matters! Ah, beauracy!
ReplyDeleteOH MY GOOOOOD! that is terrible! Im so sorry. When we booked out honeymoon thank GOD the lady told us we need to have 6 months of life on our passports to get back in the country or else we both would have been in the same boat. Its crazy and should be known by more people traveling because it was a shocker to both of us and everyone I have told about it.
ReplyDeleteAnd YES UPPP was just great ! But im really sorry about your trip :o(
oh... that is a bummer. i hope you can go on your trip soon. with any foreign/international travel (of which i've only done once), these days, it seems like the wisest thing before buying/reserving anything is to check up on requirements. and even then it's not fool-proof. trying to get visas for my family's upcoming trip to china was the most aggravating thing ever. my parents never once thought to have my sister or i check online to see what documents we would need to obtain a visa, or who would need to be present. my mother went the first time to get the applications and no one told her to get some other related forms which could've saved us an extra trip. in the end at least three trips within 1.5 weeks were made just to get the dang visa applications turned in!
ReplyDeletebut for your case, i almost feel like during the process of purchasing tickets some sort of window should pop up with information about the respective country. stuff about travel documents are always changing and quite frankly, as others have mentioned, no one really knows about them.
i do domestic travel about twice a year and i'm always a nervous wreck until i board the plane.
anywho... long comment short, i'm sad that you didn't get to go to brazil as planned and travel agencies/airlines/consulates/embassies/etc. should do a better job of informing folks about what's going on.