All international travel requires a passport – no if’s, and’s, or buts! It’s imperative that your passport be up-to-date and not expire within the next 6 months. Please look at your passport and check the expiration date. If you need a new passport – or if you’ve never had one before, you can go to your local post office and get an application there (US citizens). Or you can apply online on the US Department of State’s passport page which is much easier. In general, we highly recommend obtaining an expedited passport just to make sure you get your passport in time for your trip. If the passport office is backed up – you may regret not taking our advice. Of course every country has it’s own rules and you must comply with them – for example, in England you must go to the Identity and Passport Service and in Australia it’s the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
We highly recommend that before you travel you obtain two extra legal passport photos and have a copy of your current passport with you. If by some chance your documents are stolen while traveling you’ll be able to get a temporary passport – and believe us – this happens! U.S. embassies and consulates will continue to issue passports that are needed for urgent travel – however, such passports will be limited in validity, and cannot be extended. Bearers will be required to exchange, at no additional cost, their limited-validity passports for a full-validity digitized passports upon completion of their urgent travel. In addition, if you make note of the locations of the Embassies, Consulates, and/or Diplomatic Missions of the countries you are flying through – that will be very helpful if you do have your passport stolen or lost along the way.
There are times when you’re going to have to apply for a visa to be able to enter certain countries. If you’re a US citizen you can go to the US Department of State’s visa page and clearly see what the visa requirements are. When we travel to certain countries we are often able to get visas for everyone – we will be sure to advise you if this is the case (it depends on your citizenship).
Before we plan any trip – we are very diligent and we do check with the Department of State to see the current warnings and travel alerts. Please know that there is a difference between a warning and an alert and we do take this into consideration in our trip planning. If you have any concerns please give us a ring.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
~ Mark Twain
