And we're off... but with one little glitch!

We are starting a three day travel marathon this afternoon. First we have the two hour bus ride into Mexico City, then a half hour metro (subway, underground) ride to MEX airport.

Our flight doesn't leave for Madrid until 11:55pm, so we have lots of time and don't have to rush.

It's a ten hour flight from Mexico City to Madrid. We will be in Madrid for one night, then Tuesday afternoon we fly from Madrid to Istanbul, and connect to Almaty, Kazakhstan. Then we have a four hour bus ride to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Our flight route over the next three days.

But yesterday, I learned of a little glitch. 

It was late December when I started researching this Kyrgyzstan campervan trip. At the time, I read that Canadians were allowed a 60 day stay in Kyrgyzstan visa free. I booked the month long rental the first week of January and I booked the flights one day either side of the rental dates. So a total of 32 days.

But yesterday, I was reading a forum about Kyrgyzstan and someone mentioned that visa free entry for Canadians is 30 days. Of course I though "wait a minute, that's not right", so I did some checking. It turns out that they changed the rules on December 31st! I never thought to check again. So now, it's 30 days out of any 60 day rolling period. 

It's not a disaster, but it does present some options. They have an e-visa program for a 60 day stay but it takes 5 days for approval and it costs $92 USD. So we're actually too late for that anyhow. Or, we could apply for an extension once we're in the country and apparently the cost is even less, but may not be approved. Or, we could exit Kyrgyzstan into Uzbekistan and leave the van somewhere while we take a two night vacation in Uzbekistan. Or, we could simply ignore the problem until we depart and hope they don't notice, and if they do notice we might get a $100 USD fine each, which is not much more than the e-visa would have cost to begin with.

At this point, we're thinking we'll probably do the two night vacation in Uzbekistan when we happen to be close to the border anyhow. We'll see.

So, some last minute tidying up here at the house, and we'll head into Mexico City after lunch.

Not sure when the blog will get updated over the next few days, but I'm sure we'll be able to catch you up from an airport lounge somewhere along the way!

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