Entry (visa) formalities while cruising

[Guest]

How do world cruisers arrange their entry formalities entering new countries for countries where normally a visa is requiered before hand? Normally when travellin around the world, you just go to an embassy of the country you plan to visit and ask for a visa , before you go to that country. However, when you cruise around between (many) different countries this is inpracticable, sometimes not feasable (say there might be not an embassy around of a specific country). Therefore, I was wondering how world-cruisers arrange this? e.g. maybe when world-cruisers entering a country, do they get permition to enter the country even without a visa arranged beforehand, and maybe they get something like a 'limited' visa on entry the country, whatever nationality you have? How does it work exactly? Any ideas somebody? Thanks....

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by stijn on Thu Oct 4 08:54:00 2001 (server time).</FONT></P>

 

[AndrewB]

I don't know much about this, and suggest you repost on one of the 'blue water cruising' forums.

I've always arranged visas before leaving. That only works with visas that are openly dated. I thought the normal practice for long-term cruisers is to pick up a visa at the embassy in the next-previous country, assuming it has diplomatic relations. That can obviously mean quite a bit of hassle to track down the embassy etc. In Bill & Laurel Cooper's book 'Backdoor to Bysantium', about a barge trip down the Danube, they seem to spend half their time with this sort of formality.

I've never seen anyone turned away through lack of visa - but then, you don't, do you. Once when I entered the US there were some people with us without a visa: they were held up for over a day and charged about 4 times what it had cost me to get mine in the UK.