22 June Visa extension

Now we are back in Grenada and it is time to apply for an extension to our visitor visas before our original three month visas expire in a couple of days.

There are three things to do; ensure our cruising permit is up to date, present ourselves at the Immigration department in the Botanical Gardens in St Georges and pay the fees. The bus drops us at the gate half an hour before midday and we climb the steep hill to the collection of Government offices. Inside the office the air conditioning is working hard. On a shelf near next to the counter are the required forms to be completed. We fill these in and hand them to the assistant who checks and gives me an invoice for ECD 600. The cost of a visa extension is ECD 150 (£40) per month per person. We requested 4 months extra to take us through to late October.

Arriving late in the morning there are no queues. Although we'd been told we could pay with a credit card the debit machine in the accounts office has broken and I have to walk over the road to the ATM in the main building for cash. Back in Accounts I pay and am handed a receipt which I pass to the Immigration clerk.

Forty minutes later the security guard comes out with our passports. Passports are valuable documents so a security detail for delivery within a room is attention to detail. However, not quite all was so vigorously checked. We checked our new visas before leaving and found that we had only been given three months when we had requested, and had been charged for, four. The error was rectified and we are on our way – legal visitors for another four months.