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Visa for Jewels of the Nile
My wife and I are booked on the Jewels of the Nile tour in March. I know that Tauck includes the visas for Egypt in the tour, but does anyone know when exactly they provide them? Usually, we don't see a Tauck representative until after clearing customs in other countries. When would we first encounter a Tauck representative in Egypt and when must the visa be presented? Thanks for any guidance.
Tim
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If you look in the Egypt Jewels of the Nile forum you will find your answer. It is one of the last posts. It was posted by a traveler that took the took last March, prior to everything being cancelled. You can read it, but short answer is you don’t have to buy in advance.
When tours resume it would be very helpful if some of the first travelers post how this works. It might not be the same as it was in March 2020.
Unfortunately, you won’t have to worry about this for a long long time. Tours are unlikely to resume any time soon
Sadly, true.
TMG- a Tauck rep met people before immigration. It is also possible, due to Egypt's desire to start tourism again and get an influx of sorely needed money, visas could even be waived. Tauck will provide all the necessary details, in plenty of time before your trip.
Alan - Visas are a good income stream for poor countries. I'll never forget Bolivia, US$120, crisp bills, no folds or pin holes, etc...
Contrary to British’s continuous negative point of view, I think travel will awaken in May. March is probably pushing it a bit. At least the small ship cruise lines that I watch are ‘planning’ on going back into business in May. By the summer time I expect to see an ‘explosion’ of travel. Travel restrictions to Hawaii have already become less onerous.
Are you willing to travel without having had the vaccine SeaLord?
Here is what it says on the Windstar website:
Due to rising COVID-19 outbreaks around the world, we have made the difficult decision to cancel our cruise departures further out. We are eager to return to sailing when we believe that the environment will support it. We previously canceled all remaining cruises in 2020 and are now canceling cruises for January and February 2021 for all of our yachts, and into March and April 2021 depending on the itinerary. Our first yacht to set sail will be the Wind Spirit on March 25, 2021 in Tahiti. We are doing our best to make these decisions in a timely manner out of respect for people’s calendars and travel plans."
Star Legend is their first ship to restart Med cruises on – April 7, 2021. Wind Star is supposed to resume sailing a week later on April 13, 2021. We are booked on the 20 May Treasure of the Aegean departure which is scheduled for Wind Star's 22 May sailing. That is only slightly more than a month after they are scheduled to resume sailing, so it is not hard to imagine that the suspension could be easily extended if things don't improve enough. Hopefully, we will have had our vaccination by then. Who knows, however, what Tauck will do. They are typically conservative when it comes to traveler safety- they were one of the first tour companies to cancel the original Epypt and Jordan (in 2011) due the Arab Spring, and from what I heard, were one of the last ones to resume this year (until COVID), long after A&K, Nat Geo, etc, had returned there. Only time will tell.
https://www.windstarcruises.com/travel-health-advisory/
We have friends who were going to visit us from England in mid May and were booked to return on the Queen Mary 2, that has already been canceled. They have now booked it for the third time. May 2022
Reports seem to indicate that only just around 10% of the people expected to have been vaccinated by this time have been. There is a website that shows numbers for each state that we were looking at.....I don’t know what it is, my husband was looking at it.
I think we have to be realistic about things, that’s not the same as being pessimistic. I really think that I have been realistic about this all along and not a pessimist as all forum folk seem to think. I look at the facts, have a bit of insider and educated knowledge and draw realistic conclusions. I want to get back to travel so much and now it’s winter, I’m finding the whole situation very hard even in my comfortable home, with plenty of food to eat and no money worries. I worry for my family.
I can’t imagine how terrible life is right now for those who have lost loved ones, lost jobs, have to stand in line to get food to eat. We have donated to a local food charity, hospitals, right down to things like public television this year. We spent Christmas Day on our own, unlike several friends, some who even had relatives from New York City stay with them.....this pandemic is not going to end any time soon, it’s almost a year already. They said the Second World War would be over in six months but it was six years.
Hi BKMD
"Visas are a good income stream for poor countries." well... not so much so... I would say "visas "are an easy source of income for the corrupt rulers( government officials) who profit from the influx of new tourism . The actual citizens "the people" do not get any benefit and it is not just the poor countries... just my opinion....
Mil - you might be right about that. At the time, I thought the $120 visa for Bolivia was probably equivalent to the annual income of much of its population.
I heard that if the USrequires a visa from another country, then that country has a reciprocal arrangement to do the same. Last year, Brazil dropped the requirement for a visa from US citizens. Prior to that, it could take weeks to obtain one. It meant that for us, we would now be willing to visit there, we don’t like to be without our US passports and certainly for not that amount of time.
A lot of visa fees are based on reciprocity- if the US charges people from country X so much for a visa, then typically that country will charge an equivalent amount for residents of the US. The bottom line for the Egypt, Jewels and the Jordan & Egypt trips- Tauck is doing the leg work and paying for visas in both countries.
Should we start a pool to see when the next Update will be posted and how far out it covers?
(posted no later than 8 January? covers thru 31 March?)
Alan, thanks for noticing this new posting on their website. It still says a message from November 4th, that’s bad, just not good enough. I think they should be sending all customers emails about it. Personally, since they updated the website a couple of years ago, I rarely look at it unless I’m thinking of booking a tour because it is so tedious to use and slow compared to the old website. Before that, it was so easy to look up tours and compare.
Getting vaccines....this is swearing, but they really couldn’t organize a piss up in a brewery!