And now, how to get here??
CRISTINA'S VISA HAS BEEN GRANTED!!
And so now we're immediately on to the next problem, getting from there to here. As an American I've always been able to book any flights around the world without worrying about such things as transit visas. When they've come up at all, like when I was transiting through New Zealand recently, it's a "oh you need to fill out this card before landing." But it's a different story for a Venezuelan like Cristina. So far the flights I've been able to find even involve a domestic flight in Chile for which she'd require a full visitor visa to Chile, or a two hour transfer in the US (SFO) for which seems like such a small simple thing right? No as far as I can tell you need a transit visa for even that, and that requires a visit to a US embassy, and the nearest US embassy is in Colombia. Next on my list is looking up booking flights through very specifically countries that won't require her a transit visa, which is looking like Madrid to Doha to Australia (that specific one is 60 hours with a 20 hour layover in Doha!). And I'm going to undertake applying for both the US transit visa and chile visa in hopes either one turns out to be relatively easy (haven't even looked into the chile visa yet, and for the US one I think they _could_ waive the visit to the embassy so I might apply in hopes they do that or worse case scenario she can always fly to Bogota for that).
Anyway, if anyone here happens to have useful wisdom about overcoming this next set of obstacles please share!!
And so now we're immediately on to the next problem, getting from there to here. As an American I've always been able to book any flights around the world without worrying about such things as transit visas. When they've come up at all, like when I was transiting through New Zealand recently, it's a "oh you need to fill out this card before landing." But it's a different story for a Venezuelan like Cristina. So far the flights I've been able to find even involve a domestic flight in Chile for which she'd require a full visitor visa to Chile, or a two hour transfer in the US (SFO) for which seems like such a small simple thing right? No as far as I can tell you need a transit visa for even that, and that requires a visit to a US embassy, and the nearest US embassy is in Colombia. Next on my list is looking up booking flights through very specifically countries that won't require her a transit visa, which is looking like Madrid to Doha to Australia (that specific one is 60 hours with a 20 hour layover in Doha!). And I'm going to undertake applying for both the US transit visa and chile visa in hopes either one turns out to be relatively easy (haven't even looked into the chile visa yet, and for the US one I think they _could_ waive the visit to the embassy so I might apply in hopes they do that or worse case scenario she can always fly to Bogota for that).
Anyway, if anyone here happens to have useful wisdom about overcoming this next set of obstacles please share!!