Yucatan

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A Long Journey

By tonight, I will be able to say that in the last 10 years I have, with the exception of a tiny section (couldn’t drive to Tuk when I was there), driven or been driven every inch of the overland route from the Beaufort Sea to the Caribbean Sea.

I’m off to pack! Then, go to my new Tuesday morning social thing. Then, to come home and wait for my sitter. Then, to head to the bus station. Then, to ride in comfort and luxury to Cancún, where I hope the passport thing goes off without a hitch!

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The True Cost of Replacing a Canadian Passport Abroad

I’m off tomorrow afternoon to Cancún so that I can go to the Canadian Consulate on Wednesday morning first thing to do what I need to do to get a replacement passport.

My original post was much longer and detailed how much of a racket it is to replace a Canadian passport abroad, but I’ve decided that nothing in Canada is capable of changing. So it’s time to stop railing about it and focus on the new life I’m building here.

As a recap, my passport was damaged through no fault of my own and only due to a known defect that all Canadian passports have: the “laminated” identification page is actually not even remotely water resistant and all it takes is getting a single drop of water on it to ruin the page. An official put a wet thumb right over my photo and that was that. 🙁

These are the fees anyone would have to pay to replace their Canadian passport abroad (all amounts in Canadian dollars):

-passport fee for issuance abroad: $260 for 10 years
-fee to replace a damaged passport: $45 (this one is buried so deeply in the fine print that the wonderful consular staff missed it!)
-fee to have the consulate act as your guarantor because they make you start from scratch for replacing a damaged passport: $50 — this is the most egregious one — who on vacation has someone to act as their guarantor?!

Total: $355

Note that if you pay the $260 and $45 fees by credit card instead of with cash in the local currency, there is a credit card processing fee of $1.50 per $50 increment. So there would be an additional fee of $4.50.

I also have to add in:

-photos: $20
-bus fare: $50
-hotel: $30
-prepaid envelope: $40
-dog sitter: $35
-time lost from work (three days, one to prep everything, two for travel as this can’t be done in a day trip): $600 (actual value of contracts I had to turn down this week — OUCH, but I had the dog sitter all lined up)

Grand Total: $1,130

They are also making me submit my birth certificate. If that gets lost, then I’m looking at a trip back to Quebec and months there to get that sorted out (six weeks there wasn’t enough last time and seven years of trying to do it by mail proved that that can’t be done).

More of the story, folks, don’t let anyone near your Canadian passport unless you give them a towel first and make them dry their hands.