I thought that it would be useful for me to write a post about extending the CA-4 visa, necessary if staying in Central America for over 3 months.
As a recap, once you enter one of the CA-4 Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador or Nicaragua, you will receive a stamp on your passport, and a visa that is valid for a total of 3 months. While we have been moving around these 4 countries, we noticed that only Guatemala and Honduras actually stamp your passport (Honduras immigration officials claimed that their country was no longer part of the CA-4 group), so it is quite confusing to really know what the actual situation is. It is therefore useful to note down entry/exit dates, especially if there is no stamp in your passport.
Stamp for our arrival in Guatemala, and our first point of entry into the CA-4 group of Central American countries. The initial 3 months ran from this date.
Stamp upon leaving Guatemala.
Stamps in and out of Honduras.
Before the expiration of the 3 months, you can apply for an extension (if i am not mistaken this can only be done once), or you need to cross out of the group of countries to either Mexico, Belize or Costa Rica and reenter. In our case, we had only 3 days left on our CA-4 visa once we had crossed over to Nicaragua, and as a Malaysian passport holder, i needed a visa before arrival to enter Costa Rica – the closest border to do a visa run (this was also unclear as i also hold a residency card for Spain, so we were unsure if i actually did need the visa). We eventually decided that the best option for us was to get the visa extension done in Leon, as we did not like the prospect of entering into Managua.
The process was simple. We filled in the necessary forms at the immigration office and paid a total of 1050 Cordobas (over USD $40) for 2 months extension (the maximum extension is for 3 months). Our passports were then sent to Managua for processing and we were told we had to wait a total of 8 days then return to pick them up. In our case, we arrived at the immigration office in Leon at the appointed date, only to find that our passports were still in Managua. In the end, we decided to make our way to the main immigration office in Managua and pick up our passports ourselves since we were traveling southwards anyway.
Our 2-month visa extension obtained in Managua, Nicaragua.
The immigration officials in Nicaragua were fairly efficient and although our visas were not in Leon at the time they should have been, they did not lose any of our paperwork, and could tell us exactly where our passports were at any given time. We met an American girl in Matagalpa who had gone directly to Managua to get her visa extension and she told us that she managed to get it done within an hour! So our advice would be to do just what she did, and save yourself the hassle, time and worry.
Anita's Wanderings 