Getting a Plane Ticket and
Visa for Travel to Brazil
A Visa is a stamp put in your passport showing you have permission to enter a country. Visas are required for holders of U.S. passports to enter Brazil, just as Brazilians need a Visa stamp in their passport to enter the United States. The cost of the Visa is $100 (plus a $10 processing fee) and it is valid for five years.
- For U.S. citizens, the first step is to have a valid U.S. passport with an expiration date at least six months later than the date you will be entering Brazil. If you don’t have a passport, call your local Post Office to obtain an application. Citizens of other countries may or may not need a visa for Brazil. Contact your nearest Brazilian consulate for details.
- Purchase a round trip airline ticket from your closest airport to Florianópolis (FLN). The following US cities have direct flights to Brazil: Los Angeles, New York (JFK and Newark), Chicago, Atlanta, and Miami. Airlines that fly to Brazil include American, Continental, Delta, United, and Tam (Brazilian airlines). Make a reservation for a flight leaving the day before your program begins, to arrive in Brazil on the morning of the first day of the program. You will leave Brazil on the evening of the last program day to arrive back in the US the next day. For discount tickets you might want to search on www.SkyAuction.com. If you are patient and bid at the last minute, these fares can be as much as 50% cheaper than published fares, and are the exact same flights. A good place to start to see how much published fares from your city of origin are, try www.kayak.com, a site that searches other web sites for fares.
- Complete a visa application from the
Brazilian consulate in Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, or Washington D.C. and follow the appropriate directions
for your state to receive your visa in person or by mail. You can
download the forms from the appropriate Brazilian consulate’s website
(just put “Brazilian Consulate” into your favorite search engine). You
will need to bring in or Fedex/express mail your passport, extra photos,
copies of plane tickets, and money order to the consulate, or you can use
a visa service (some consulates won’t take mail applications
- You need to enter Brazil within 90 days of getting your visa, so wait until three months before your program begins to apply. You can obtain your Visa in 24 hours if you live nearby, or within 7-10 days using the mail-in option. A Visa service will generally take about 4-5 days and charge you a fee (on top of the Visa fee) for someone to personally go to the consulate for you and overnight your passport back to you. The mail in option costs only the price of the postage plus Visa fee paid to the consulate. Use of Fedex, Express Mail, or some delivery method with tracking is suggested. Fewer consulate offices are allowing mail-in applications these days, so check carefully the instructions for your particular location.
- Once you have your Visa, you are all set!
There are no special shots or health precautions for visiting this part of
Brazil.
- We will send a taxi or van to pick you up at the Florianopolis airport if we have your flight information ahead of time. The cost for a taxi ride is 140 Brazilian Reais (about 70 U.S. dollars at the current (March 2007) exchange rate). This cost is shared by the number of riders, so we do our best to match you up wth other participants arriving at or near the same time. If there are more than 3 riders, we send a van and the cost is about $20 U.S. Dollars.
- Please be sure to call us if you have any questions about travel to Enchanted Mountain.