Passport Panic

I had been ignoring a nagging feeling that I should look at my passport to make sure everything was in order. In November, Eric and I visited the Paraguayan embassy in New York to obtain visas and Eric had picked up the newly documented passports three days later.  I had no good reason to believe there were any issues; my passport was valid for another four years. 

Late on a Thursday night last week, I finally decided to look and discovered my new Paraguay visa took up 1 1/3 pages leaving just two and half blank pages. Many countries require at least one blank page to enter; some want two, and some airlines will prevent passengers without the requisite number of blank pages from boarding a flight. A quick tally of the number of stamps we might end up with started to get alarmingly large: enter Chile, exit Chile, enter Argentina, exit Argentina, enter Uruguay, exit Uruguay, enter Argentina, exit Argentina… you get the picture. I figured it would be around Paraguay that I would get stuck. And we still needed a visa for Bolivia, which could easily take another full page. With four weeks before our departure, I went into panic mode.

After a sleepless night in which I woke up at 4 AM stressing about my options, I discovered the State Department changed the rules in 2016 such that they no longer add pages to a passport. If you need more pages, you have to renew your passport. The expedited mail-in renewal process says it takes 2-3 weeks, and the new passport and old, invalidated passport will be returned in two separate packages. Newly in possession of a relatively expensive Paraguayan visa, I was worried about letting my passport out of my sight for too long. What if I got my new one but not the old one back before we left? What if the new one didn’t show up in time? With a possible government shutdown on the horizon and two federal holidays between now and our departure date, I decided the chances of an issue were high enough to warrant an in-person renewal application.

If your departure date is within two weeks or you need a visa and your departure date is within four weeks, you can appear in person at your local passport agency. In Boston, this process is surprisingly pleasant. With documentation of my departure date and my AirBNB reservation in Sucre, Bolivia, I was able to make an appointment online, three weeks before our trip. I showed up with all the required documentation – completed renewal form, recent passport photo, proof of departure and visa need, and $170 (including $60 for the expedite fee).

I checked in at the front desk where they verified I was in possession of the required documents. Then I stood in line for counter one where I spoke to a State Department employee who photocopied my application and reviewed my documentation. I was given a number: D145 and took a seat. When D145 was called, I went to counter six and handed over my paperwork, swiped my credit card, and was told I could return the next day at 4pm to retrieve my new and old passports. The whole process took less than 30 minutes and a package with both old and new passports was ready and waiting when I showed up the next day.

I am now in possession of a new passport with extra pages intentionally chosen to avoid this panic in the future. Eric and I are planning to renew our passports in May with our new names (which I will be able to do simply as a name change since my passport will be less than one year old), and if I somehow fill the 51 pages in mine by then, we will have had a true adventure.