So passports stolen, no access to funds and as a result effectively stranded on a very small desert island. It turns out that the British Foreign Office is not as helpful as one might imagine. After a few days of trying to send through the necessary forms to declare our passports stolen, we recieved an automatic email in reply telling us the person who had been “helping” us resolve the situation was now away until the 16th July. Like any normal person we thought that perhaps they might have passed our case on to someone else at the Embassy (as would normally happen in a work place) but after a few days of radio silence we realised this was possibly not the case. An email throwing our toys out of the pram resulted in the British Embassy in Venezuela getting in touch and finally the Embassy in Costa Rica got back in the game. Due to the amount of time things had already taken (about 3 weeks at this stage!) we decided the best form of action was to fly back to the UK and get new passports there, at the same time picking up new bank cards amongst other things. It hadn’t been part of our plans to return to England for at least a year to 18 months but it would give us a chance to see family and get a fresh set of clothes, 7 months on the road really puts a lot of wear on things and we could at the same time replace items that had been stolen and leave behind things we simply didn’t need.
The embassies started the process of issuing Emergency Travel Documents (ETDs), though this wasn’t so straight forward as one might hope. As we didn’t have return tickets to the UK, they couldn’t issue ETDs, equally we couldn’t buy tickets without some form of identification i.e. a passport! Catch 22. Added to which was that we needed exact dates of our return flight, which, as we were unsure of how long it might take to issue the ETDs wasn’t easy to set. We eventually managed to resolve the situation, by putting a flight on hold for 10 days later, out of San Jose, Costa Rica. We made our way back to Managua with a few hundred dollars in cash to get us to San Jose and back to England.
What we had failed to take into consideration and both the embassy in Costa Rica and Honorary Consul’s office in Nicaragua had failed to inform us was that we would need exit visas to leave Nicaragua… Luckily a provincial airport official on Big Corn mentioned these in passing and we then asked the Consul’s office when we went to pick up our ETDs. Oh yes, of course, we should probably go and do that, it should only cost about $10 each or something like that, hmmmm not really sure but just pop down to the Immigration office in Managua tomorrow. Thank goodness we had left ourselves an extra day in case we had problems with the documents.
Obtaining an exit visa, rather like everything else over the last 5 weeks wasn’t quite that straight forward… 8 hours later, despite the Honorary consul’s immigration lawyer coming down to argue our case, namely that we had been stranded due to their ineptitude and also had no means of getting more funds, we ended up shelling out $180 for the pleasure of leaving Nicaragua. This left us with about $80, $60 of which was needed for our bus tickets to San Jose, leaving us with $20 for a taxi to the bus station, food and accommodation over night , and then we still needed to get from the bus station in San Jose to the airport (a $25 journey by taxi).
The bugger who had disappeared on holiday (the Vice-Consul for Costa Rica) got back in touch with us at this point, no apologies for the fuck up and ineptitude, and when St.John asked him about exit tax for both Nicaragua and airport tax for Costa Rica he replied he didn’t know about the first (despite the Consulate in Costa Rica also being the one for Nicaragua) and that there was no airport tax. He was wrong on both of these accounts, there was a $4 per person exit tax for Nicaragua and a $29 per person airport tax for Costa Rica. Surely such basic information as this about the country in which they are based is essential for for Embassy staff?! The sheer incompetence and lack of working knowledge on the most basic things for the countries in which they were based was mind blowing, this surely wasn’t the first time someone had had their passports and bank cards stolen?
At this stage we were getting pretty desperate, we needed to somehow get more money if we were ever going to leave Nicaragua! Deep breath, could the Embassy do anything to help? Quick answer, no. We could get money via Western Union (something we hadn’t been able to do before due to absolutely no ID whatsoever!). Yes, but we didn’t get into San Jose till 10pm so Western Union would be shut, no? Well we might find one open… Thanks for the help guys.
We got back to the hotel, where upon I checked our bank accounts to make sure the payment for the hotel had gone out and nothing else had. I had been using the details of a card that was back in England, that hadn’t been stolen and therefore should be working as I hadn’t cancelled it. For some reason it hadn’t worked so I rang HSBC in England only to be informed that they had very helpfully cancelled ALL of our bank cards, therefore really leaving us with no access to funds at all, including any means of paying for things online. Understandably I got more than a little upset and angry with them but there was precious little that could be done at this stage. Thank goodness for mothers. Mine got a late night phone call asking her to wire money to pay the hotel and she offered to wire extra so they could give us “cash back”, thankfully they agreed to this arrangement and we were back in the money so to speak.
So after a rather extended stay on Little Corn and in Nicaragua we were on our way back to England for a flying visit before getting back on the road again. It had taken almost 5 weeks from the night our passports were stolen to touching back down on English soil. The lesson learnt, don’t rely on the British Foreign Office to help you out in a hurry, unless you have time to sit around twiddling your thumbs your best bet is to get Emergency Travel Documents and get yourself back to the UK for a new passport.
Incidentally it took an hour wait for a pre-made appointment at the Passport Office in London, about 10 minutes talking to the very helpful official (who found no details on our stolen passports apart from the fact they had been stolen, there should be details of where and when etc, so good to see everyone is still working hard in the British Embassy in Costa Rica) and they had our new passports issued and ready to be picked up 4 hours later, none of this at least 6 weeks bollocks…
Food, Fish and Freedom 