Visa Rigmarole

Well, the time has come. I am here on a 90-day visa and yesterday (a state holiday) was my 90th day in Guatemala. That means its time for me to renew my visa here in Guatemala. This is done in one of two ways.

1. Go to the Guatemalan immigration office, present a photocopy of a credit card, passport and fee, and wait for what I've heard can be up to a week. Return when notified to pick up new visa.

2. Go to Mexico for three days. Get a new entry stamp upon returning to the country.

Thinking in terms of economy I first opted for option number one. Bad idea. Mike did that too. It turns out after at least seven prior volunteers, Enlace still has no clue how this process is handled. It ended up costing Mike bus and taxi fare in both directions to learn that he hadn't completed all the required steps in order to renew his visa and could he please come back when he was prepared.

Deciding to cross all my T's and dot all my I's prior to going, I called INGUAT, Guatemala's tourism department, to get the scoop in advance. After being referred and transferred between at least three different offices and talking to several different people, I got the same response: For information, come to the immigration office between 8:00 and 4:30 Monday through Friday. Interesting... Isn't that what Mike did?

No dice, people. I'm not going to roll over.

Mexico, here I come.