Chilled Out Bearded Man

The next step after buying tickets is getting a tourist Visa. Brazil requires all US citizens to have a tourist visa.
Simply put a tourist visa is a stamp in your passport allowing you to frolic freely (within limitations) throughout a country. In other words, you need a passport before you can get a visa.

To get a Brazilian visa, you must have at least 6 months left on your passport starting from the date you arrive in Brazil. This is the same day that your visa becomes activated. The Brazilian tourist visa lasts for 5 years, so its really ideal if you have 5 years left on your passport in case you decide to visit again.
Of course, I went through the whole process of filling out the Brazilian tourist visa form, only to discover that I barely had 6 months left on my passport and it was still 2 months till I was leaving for Brazil.

Now, the process of getting my passport renewed began. Its actually pretty simple if you just follow the instructions. The main thing you need to know is that it takes 4-6 weeks to apply for a passport renewal for $75, but you must add $60 if you wish to expedite the process to 2-3 weeks.

I actually received my passport in about a week and a half for $135 dollars.

You can get more information about renewing your passport at your local post office and by visiting the US Department of State website.

Once I had the passport in hand, I was finally able to visit the Brazilian consulate. There are a few of them throughout the country. I went to the one in NYC. The instructions on the website are very exact and if you follow them you should have no problems.

A few tips:
1) The hours are very specific for when you can drop off your application. Make sure to get there at the beginning of the time period as its first come first serve each day. They are pretty efficient, but apparently, Americans love visiting Brazil. I got there about 10 minutes into the time and I waited 45 minutes in the waiting area. As I was walking out there was an incredibly long line to get into the waiting area, which had not been there when I entered.

2) Keep a folder with a checklist while you are preparing the application. This will make it easy to just hand them all the parts. They will be grateful and you will be stress-free.

3) Don’t lose the receipt. When you give them the application, they will hand you a receipt which you need to bring back the next day to pick up the visa. I have no idea what they would do if you did lose it, but its probably better to not find out.
4) They will keep your passport for the day, so as a precaution, you may want to make a photocopy of it in case anything goes wrong.

5) They only accept Money Orders, which are quite easy to purchase at your local US post office. There is currently a charge of $130 for the standard US citizen adult tourist visa. The money order costs something like a couple of dollars.
You can find all of the information regarding the Brazilian tourist visa for US citizens at the Brazilian Consulate website.

You can find more information about traveling to Brazil with an American passport by visiting the US Department of State country specific page for Brazil. That page also has information about health and safety when traveling in Brazil.

Next time, I will write about planning the trip itinerary.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 7:36 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.