(or any country’s, although a resistance to adverse conditions may vary wildly)
The curled corners hint at the wrinkled state of the vital and slightly illegible information inside. The three holes indicate the passport is now canceled.
1. Always decide on a ‘safe’ place to store your passport while overseas, such as safe deposit box, locked luggage, between mattresses, and perhaps even wrapped in a baggie while hanging in the toilet bowl tank (if there is one. This option not usually available in Argentina where the tanks themselves are embedded in the wall, making it extremely hard, if not altogether impossible to fix easily because they are generally unreachable, hence you can’t put your passport there either)
a. Altough there is conflicting opinion to this wisdom I subscribe to the belief you do NOT carry the original with you, but only a copy.
aa. my rational being: you can lose it, you’re pickpocked, robbed, mugged or in some fashion relieved of it involuntarily or your friends find out and want to see the photo.
b. The other opinon is you should always have your passport on your person. The arguement is if your hurt, mugged and therefore in need of the police and identification or buying large quantities of snow globes of tango dancers you’ll need the original.
Although I won’t argue with the last point because I’ve been denied groceries when trying to use my credit card at the local Coto market, I don’t think it does much if you’re hurt, because a copy suffices and if you’re mugged they probably have the passport.
2. Only Pull it out of said ‘safe’ place when necessary or you buying over priced Manfrotto lightstands. For example: $360 pesos/ea = @$112USD/ea compared to buying from B&H in NYC at $65USD/ea, for a grand total of $47USD import mark-up for Argentina. While out, be sure to carry it in a secure spot, preferably in the inside pocket of a generic backpack, which you use on your front, because it is a pickpockets dream if you’re wearing as intended and designed.
NOTE: it actually gets really annoying to bring your passport for such purchases to have the attending clerk never ask for it, nor check your signature on the back of your credit card. Do I really look like a Bob Smith?
3. Upon completion of purchase at the camera store on the other end of town in the barrio of Monserrat, get back on the bus for the 1-hour ride back to Palermo where you’ll decide to grab a beer with a friend before heading home.
4. Return home and promptly forget the passport is in the non-descript, (front)backpack and persist in this for about a week.
5. After a week, realize your passport is in your bag, as you head out to go rock climbing, late as always. Having just locked the hard case that is your ‘safe’ place and too lazy to unlock it, you take your passport and wallet and stuff it in a pillow case because somehow you think there is no way the robbers would ever think to look in the pillow case.
6. Go climbing!!!!
7. Return late hot, sweaty and smelly with only 1 1/2 hours until your friends leaving Argentina party at an Armenian restaurant in San Telmo. Priority shower.
8. As you head out the door recall your wallet is in the pillow case and retreive it, but late and lazy again, refuse to take a nano-second to unlock the hard case and put your passport back in the ‘safe’ place. The pillow case is good enough.
a. Have a great dinner that ends at 2 a.m.
b. Follow that with beers and conversation at a nearby bar on Calle Chile until everyone is barely awake at 6:30
a.m.
c. Arrive home at 7 a.m. and sleep until noon.
9. Awake refreshed* and begin packing for the 4th move in under a year (which will take a total of 2 months, 2 storage spots, and 2 weeks invading the spare room at a friends house).
a. Wonder how you managed to accumulate so much inconsequential junk in such a short amount of time.
aa. which includes a number of books you have yet to read, but keep promising yourself you’ll get to them if you could just stay awake longer than one page anytime you try to read at night.
10. Call it an early night and go to bed surrounded by boxes and suitcases, way too tired to read.
11. Awake refreshed** and find those little pockets of air in each box and suitcase that allows you to cram in more accumulated crap before taxi #1 arrives to take the first load which you’ll be storing to a supremely generous friends house. Return home. Call taxi #2 to take you, the overpriced lightstands and the rest of the “essentials” you’ll need for the next two weeks while invading other friends spare room.
12. Return to old apartment to clean your old room (because Mom is a good teacher and hammered in the idea one should always try to be helpful and respectful).
a. While trying to be helpful, pull sheets off of old bed – including pillow cases – and throw them in the wash, activating the dryer cycle.
NOTE: for those not familiar with the Argentine washer/dryer/spacesaver/genius/invention, there is a button with wavy lines indicating the drying cycle. Push the button in to dry your clothes at the end of the wash and wa-la, no need for second appliance, although a clothesline is good as the dryer never quite does the whole job.
13. Finish cleaning and sweeping room, chat with old roommate, get refund back and sadly turn over the keys.
14. After some time, presumibly doing something good for the planet and about 12:30 a.m. have a sudden, blinding realization that he last time you saw your passport was in a pillow case.
15. Swear or if you’re like me and trying not to, pound your head in frustration as you search for synonyms to dumb.
a. stupid, unintelligent, ignorant, dense, brainless, mindless, foolish, slow, dull, simple, vacuous, vapid, idiodic, half-baked…
16. Email old roommate incase he is still awake, but give up and go to bed 15 min later, with the fate of your passport unknown
a. Secretly you’re hoping it fell out when you took the pillow case off, but you realized if this happened you more than likely would have noticed, thus it is most probably it didn’t.
17. At 10am call old roommate’s cell phone. Explain in both Spanish and English if he’d please go to the washing machine and look inside for your passport.
a. The definition of the word ‘fine’, as in “it looks fine,” is highly subjective.
The bottom view. Note the frayed edges and the unstitched binding.
18. Spend one peso to take the subte from Pasteur to Malabia to retreive washed and dryed passport.
19. Return home, get online, look up US Embassy in Argentina: requirements for replacing damaged passport.
a. Previous US passport, if passport is not available, a certified copy of a US Birth Certificate or original US Naturalization Certificate.
Two (2) passport photos 5cm x 5cm.($12 pesos or @$4USD)
Completed passport application. (Form DS-82 or DS-11)*** (free, yet about $5 pesos to print downstairs)
Current government issued photo I.D. (thankfully didn’t think the DL needed to be ‘secure’ in the pillow case)
Social Security number (if issued) (lost that card ages ago)
Passport fee in US dollars or Peso equivalent (see info below)
b. Make appointment online for emergency services if you’re traveling within 15 business days, which is really cool. They are way more helpful than you expect for a government organization.
20. Keep appointment, explain that, yes, indeed you did wash your passport, no it wasn’t an industrial washer, the dryer button was pushed in too.
A better view of curling edges and washed passport pages.
21. Fork out $55 for the new passport, $25 processing fee, $20 handling fee = $100USD.
22. Wait. The passport will be coming from South Carolina and is due in about 7 calendar days.
* yeah, right.
** much, much better
***neither of these two forms applies to damaged passports
Now you have a great souvenir! Too bad your new one won’t have all the cool stamps.
Now what will be really funny (if you have a twisted sense of humor) is that the new passport will probably either not list your middle name or will only have the initial. In the latter case, you will have to go back to the US Embassy, wait forever in line, then spend around US $50 for a same-person letter!
I think you should have just kept the laundered passport. Who cares how ugly it looks?
Ugly wasn’t an issue. I think had it just been washed I would have been okay. The drying killed it and the laminate over the photo and information (which I did not picture) was peeling away, wrinkled and slightly illegible. Sadly, the passport would not have been usable.
Poor passport! What did it do to deserve such a scrubbing?
I’m just glad that you found this out two weeks before leaving and not the day before. Small miracles….