How to get a tourist visa for Colombia and ways around bureaucracy

Alright all,

I am travelling on an Irish Passport and therefore need a visa to travel to Colombia. I have found it a bit of a chore to apply and have had to find ways around the bureaucracy involved in getting a visa. It has took me a bit of time, so here are my instructions that will hopefully help you out!

I am in South america at the moment and the here is a list of the things that you need for to apply for a tourist visa:

1. Photocopy of your passport with a copy of your picture AND photocopies all the stamps that you have got from other countries you have visited (straightforward).

2. Application form (straightforward). Just make sure that you have a hotel to stay at, as it asks for your hotels telephone number and address.

3. 3 passport photographs (straightforward). Make sure you are looking at the camera and have a white background!

4. Onward ticket. Not so straightforward, unless of course you have an onward ticket! But what you can do is get an e-ticket off the internet, when the reservation appears on the screen, print it and when it comes to pay (the next screen), just dont! It is sufficient for your online ticket. There are loads of airlines that deal with e-tickets.

5. Reservation at hotel. Relatively straightforward, but do a search on the internet or guidebook and email a hotel/hostel with the dates that you are planning to stay there and get a confirmation email from them and this will suffice for your reservation.

6. A copy of your bank statement or evidence of sufficient funds for the duration that you will be staying in colombia. This could prove quite difficult to obtain if you are out of your home country when you apply. But what you can do if you have internet banking is print off a statement online. Again this is sufficient for the visa.

ok, one more thing that you need to do, is write a handwritten letter to the consul (this is the case if applying in south america, definitely in quito and lima, not sure about other countries). There is no standard letter, you write your own. The letter can be written in English and goes something like this (believe it or not!).

"
Senor Consul,

I plan to arrive in Colombia on dd/mm/yy

I plan to stay for x days

I will be leaving Colombia on dd/mm/yy

I will be staying at x hotel which is at x address

I promise that I will pay my way while I am in Colombia

I state that I have sufficient funds for my stay in Colombia

I promise that I will leave the country at the end of my visa or when the consul decides i have to.

Regards,

Your name, signature and date
"

The letter was the one that got me, i thought the idea was really funny!

Finally (!) you need to make a copy of EVERY DOCUMENT mentioned above except for the application form itself and your passport photographs. Hand this in with the original photocopies and you have made your application!

Good luck and hope that this saves you more time than i spent with this farce!

inthemixer!

By inthemixer on Aug 24, 2005, 09:27 in Visa & paperwork.

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inthemixer says on Sep 17, 2005, 13:14: Applying in South America Alright Ronald, yeah i have heard that it is not so much of a problem applying in the UK but i was explaining the problems that you have when applying in South America, i can only go off my experience and the experience i have heard from others who have had the same problem as i did! Also i met an irish friend who had the colombian authorities telephone the hostel 5 times to make sure that he was was actually staying there! it is not as straightforward as you think! cheers for the info anyway, inthemixer! 0 funny, 0 helpful.

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