A passport issued in 2018 accumulated many stamps and had only one blank page remaining. South Africa requires two blank passport pages for entry. The traveler had a flight booked for September 12 and realized the page requirement on August 3, leaving just shy of six weeks to renew. Routine U.S. passport processing currently takes four to six weeks, with possible additional mailing time of up to two weeks to the agency and two weeks after printing, totaling as much as ten weeks door-to-door. Paying extra to expedite the application can shorten processing time and was faster than expected in practice.
Even before I started as a digital nomad, I traveled at absolutely every opportunity I could find. So, my passport (issued back in 2018) had quite a few stamps in it. Imagine my surprise when I learned that South Africa - where I'm headed in October - requires two blank passport pages to enter the country (always check entry requirements!). Imagine my even greater surprise when I opened my passport to discover I only had one blank page left.
As a digital nomad, I typically only go back to the U.S. once per year. That leaves me with limited time to renew a passport, and I have a flight booked out of the country on September 12. After scouring the internet to see how long fellow passport renewals have taken this summer, I decided to submit my application and hope that it arrives as quickly as possible. Spoiler alert - it was much faster than I expected.
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