7 Travel Questions: 2) How Easy Is It To Handle Changing Visas Or Acquire Them in the First Place While Abroad?

A friend of mine from high school asked me a few questions about how we afford to travel and do what we do.  I realized that these are questions Carrie and I get asked pretty frequently.  So I’m posting the answers to her seven questions in a series of posts on our site here.

Every person has to find their own path to getting whatever they want from life.  At the same time, it’s helpful in that path to have the knowledge and experience of others.  Some of this is worded pretty strongly, but as always, take what works for you and leave the rest for someone else.

Central America doesn’t require a lot of visas… in fact, for us they didn’t require anything significant.  But the borders are nonetheless a bit intimidating.  When crossing borders, we always travel with proof of exiting a country.  This is a requirement for many countries in the world, and they can make you buy a ticket out of the country (via bus or plane) if you don’t have proof that you are traveling on, and not staying in, a particular country.  It’s a fundraiser in many places.

We haven’t gone to tricky visa countries yet, so maybe I’ll have more information on that when we do, but we do always travel across borders with a proof that we are exiting the country within 3 months of the time we land (3 months seems to be the standard tourist visa).

Side note:  Getting extra pages in our passports in Ecuador was quite simple.  We went to the U.S. embassy, told them we wanted more pages, waited 40 minutes, and got our passports back with more pages in them.  It was free.

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