Migraciones

I spent yesterday morning at the Migraciones office on Avenida Espana in Brena. My visa was due to expire next Tuesday, so I went to extend it for a month because I don't plan on leaving the country this weekend. I had offered last weekend to accompany precious's mom so that she could obtain her passport. I was able to witness first hand what a pain in the ass it is for Peruvians to leave their country. First, the office in Av. Espana is the only office in Lima that processes new passports and it couldn't be in a sketchier part of town. Stepping out of the taxi a throng of people comes at you explaining how to get your passport--and like in many places in Peru you don't know who you can listen too. Step 1-make copies of your DNI (and they will charge you double the price of copies anywhere else in Peru). Then Steps 2 through 20 basically consist of waiting in a series of lines, the last of which the estimated waiting time is 2 hours. Then once Peruvians have a passport, they require a visa for a large number of countries so they have that whole bureaucratic cowpile waiting for them once they've obtained their passport.

I on the other hand only had to wait in half as many lines and the process took me a total of 30 minutes and $29, much cheaper than leaving the country.