Do you need a Brazilian Visa

if you have no intention of getting off the ship? Do you have the option, or not? I hate the idea of spending $100 + PP for only several hours in the port of Fortaleza.

Arlene

Brazil is (or was) very fussy about Visas.

In 3-98, on Royal Princess, Buenos Aires Argentina to Barcelona Spain, with two stops (Rio de Janiero & Recife) in Brazil, a party of 5 was denied boarding in Buenos Aires, as they had no Brazilian Visas. No amount of impassioned pleading would give them access to the ship, and there was almost a fist-fight on the dock between the 5 and representatives of the Purser's Office.

Speaking with a ship's officer later, he told me that even passengers in transit were required to have a Brazilian Visa, and that if Royal Princess had knowingly transported those passengers w/o Visas, the ship would be subject to fines, and possibly all passengers, even those with Visas, might be denied entry.

I for one wouldn't chance it. You might want to check with the US Dept of State, or a Brazilian Consulate for clarification.

Arlene,

If you do need to get a Brazilian visa, make sure you follow all of the instructions to the letter. We had to get visas for our Manaus-Rome cruise this year and saw quite a few people have their applications rejected. The biggest gotcha is having a copy of your itinerary with your application. There were several people at the consulate there for the second time simply because the didn't have an itinerary included on their first attempt. Since you're "in transit" and arriving in Fortaleza, your Princess booking summary should do the trick. Just obscure the payment information with a yellow stickie when you copy it. You must have a copy for each application you submit.

Also make sure the names match your passport exactly. They are very particular about this.

They only took postal money orders - no personal checks, no cash, no credit cards. For the San Francisco consulate it was a one week wait before you could pick up your passport with visa. The visa itself is stamped on a blank page of your passport. They request that you have 2 blank pages in your passport. Also, you must actually use the visa within a specified period of time (I think 3 months), otherwise you'll have to go through this again.

The consulate was just as strict for Brazilian nationals returning home. We saw a couple with a new-born baby trying to get the proper documents, and although we don't speak Portugese, it appeared they were having a difficult time satisfying the consulate staff.

Jim

Yes you DO need the Visa.. above post about people being denied boarding has been repeated over the years on different cruise lines and cruise boards... and the will cut you no slack...

You may regret spending the $100 pp today. But the visa is good for 5 years and multiple entries. When we got our visa's for a Rio to Santiago cruise we had no intention of going to Brazil again. But, two years later we took the Royal from Manaus, Brazil to Rome and did not have to do the visa dance again as our visas were still good.

Thanks all. Good to hear that it's good for 5 years. What a bargain! :)

Arlene

Arlene,

Yes, you must have a VISA and you also need a yellow fever vaccination certificate or waiver. Princess will send you information on what's required and how to obtain the VISA. Like Jim said, you can go to a Consulate or use a service for which Princess will send information. I wound up using the service since I figured that by the time I went into Boston and paid for parking twice, plus take a half day each time, it was worth my while to use the service.

For the VISA to be good for 5 years, you MUST have it stamped on entry to Brazil. If the VISA is not stamped, it'll be good for only one entry. We were on the same cruise as Jim and I know of at least two couples whose VISAs were rejected because even though they said they were good for 5 years, they hadn't been stamped when they entered the country previously. Thus, the VISAs weren't any good. These people had to be rushed to the Brazilian Consulate the morning we flew on the charter flights to the ship. I heard they were successful but I couldn't imagine the stress!

Depending on where you live, you may not have to go to the Brazilian consulate in person. In LA you can do it all by mail. I did this twice, and had my passport and visa back within a week each time.

I also didn't have to go in person to get my Brazilian visa... the process was easy and much less complex than some other countries like Russia, for example.

I read not to long ago that Brazil would be doing away with visa reciprocity for US citizens... I googled to find a news article but found nothing...

When's your trip? If it's more than 4 months or so off you might want to hold off a few days until you can talk to someone who would know about any upcoming changes in visa regulations.

LOL. I've got all the time in the world. Brazil is not until 2007. Right now I'm waiting for our passports to come back with our double entry China Visa for July and India for August.

Arlene

I you look at the Brazil Embassy or Consolute sites you will find that some do not want visa applications any more than 30 days before you sail. This to me seems to be cutting it short. The best thing is to go on the Embassy site and check one of their offices that is closest to you and covers your state. They do not all handle them the same. Some only do walk-ins and some only do mail-ins. Really need to check out the one you will be using. If you use a visa service they charge about $45-50 to handle the visa application. Then the Brazil Embassy/Consulates charge a $10 fee when you do not handle the visa application personally. Each person making application has to be there, when the Embassy/Consulate will not allow mail application. Some Embassy/Consulate's limit how many visa applications they take during the day. I think Boston had a limit of 200 per day. Be the 201 person and you have to come back the next day, plus they shut the line off 2 hrs before the office closes.

LOL. I've got all the time in the world. Brazil is not until 2007. Right now I'm waiting for our passports to come back with our double entry China Visa for July and India for August.

You might want to keep in mind that you will have to have at least six months left on your passport when you enter Brazil. I was there in December and even though my passport didn't expire until April, I needed to renew it before I could get a Visa.

You might want to keep in mind that you will have to have at least six months left on your passport when you enter Brazil. I was there in December and even though my passport didn't expire until April, I needed to renew it before I could get a Visa.

I've posted this elsewhere, but these FAQs from the Brazilian Consulate in San Francisco are helpful.