The Trouble with Passports

December 2, 2008

Sometimes I wonder how I get myself into such scrapes. How can I know all of the things that I need to know to prevent making bad decisions? I do not really have answers to my questions yet. On Monday morning I headed to the US Embassy in San Pedro Sula to ask about renewing my passport. I thought that maybe I could get the necessary paperwork here to expedite the process while in the States. The Embassy was closed. It does not open until 1:00PM, something that I did not know. I returned in the afternoon and was delighted to find that there was no line and I could go straight to the desk.

As I told the man about my travel plans and my passport which expires in March, he told me that Honduras will not let me back in the country in January unless I have a new passport. They close off entry to those whose passport will expire within the next 3 months. The US does the same to Hondurans only our requirement for them is six months. Well, I discovered that the renewal process through the San Pedro office takes three weeks – time that I do not have since I leave in two and a half weeks. If I were to go to the capital, Tegucigalpa, the passport should be ready within two weeks. The capital is about four hours away and I do not really trust that two weeks actually means two weeks. During the renewal process, the government takes the old passport which means no traveling whatsoever outside of the country. Hence I decided the Tegucigalpa route would not really work.

The other option is to get the renewal done in the US – a process that takes several weeks or more. After some searching on-line I found out that there are passport centers throughout the country where one can get an appointment and passport renewal, but only within two weeks of one’s flight out of the country. Amazingly one of these centers is in Philadelphia. The problem is that you cannot make an appointment until two weeks before the date and I will be in Florida for one week which puts me going to the center, one week before my intended departure. I never knew traveling or passports could be so complicated. All I wanted was to be in the States for Christmas but it looks as if I have created a fiasco. I suppose it will all work out but I think that I will be seeing a lot more of Philly than I had wanted to.