Planning Mania

We spent the morning travelling to Sydney for a US Visa interview. We had already applied for and received an eSTA approval but recently there have been reports of travellers who had previously been to Cuba having the approval revoked and/or being denied entry or boarding at the last minute. It was unclear if this was for people who had visited Cuba before 2021 (when its designation changed again for the US) or what the cutoff date was. So to avoid this possibility we applied for a visa the old-fashioned (and expensive) way. With an application, an interview and handing over passports for a VISA to be added and passports collected again.

No photos or details are available of the visit to the US consulate as we have been sworn to secrecy and they have our passports.

Other Visas still to be applied for are for Sri Lanka and India. Both of these are now e-visas which is good as we don't have to visit a consulate and can do it all online. However, for both of these, we need the travel details of the excursion including flights and hotels. all of this is being organised as part of an excursion arranged by the Cruise Line. I have made enquiries but have not yet had a response as to when this information will be available.

Which only leaves Easter Island as the other possible visa to be obtained. Easter Island is administered by Peru and there has been a recent change by Peru to require e-Visas for Australian citizens. It is unclear if this is also required for cruise ship visitors but the biggest obstacle is the requirement that the visa is obtained no more than 90 days before entry to Peru. We actually leave Sydney more than 90 days before arriving at Easter Island and this is further complicated by various reports that the new system is having teething troubles and visas are taking many weeks to process. Speculation on the timing to apply for the visa is a hot topic on the Facebook page for this cruise.

There are a number of other places where visas are obtained on arrival, sometimes with the assistance of the cruise line and a delayed implementation date for the EU eVisa so that is not an issue for us.

So back to constant monitoring of consular websites for the next 4 months.

Next time an update on excursion planning. With almost daily notification of changed or cancelled excursions from both private and ships excursions and my attempts to navigate Québécois tourism websites only in French.