LOSING ALL YOUR MONEY IN MEXICO

If you have lost your bankcard and you do not have a credit card then you will have to have money wired to you. This means you will need your passport, to collect it.

If you have lost your passport then you are in trouble. There are no embassies in the Yucatan Peninsula. There are however for some countries in Cancun.

There are for Canada, the U.S., Germany and many other countries in Mexico City. This is however no help to you if you are in somewhere in the Yucatan.

You can have somebody fax you copies of your passport; plane-ticket etc., if you have been diligent enough to have made copies. Financial institutions will NOT accept faxed documentation or photocopies as credible, nor will they accept anything but a valid passport.

Some hotels will not accept credit cards and some hotels that do accept credit cards will not accept it unless the cardholder has a passport.

SOLUTIONS: If you are stranded and have lost all your identification and money you can phone someone back home collect and ask them to immediately go to a travel agent [your travel agent if you have one] and ask them to book a room for you. You MUST book a room at a hotel that has a restaurant so you can put all your meals on a tab. Also you have to think about your airport transfer so you should also choose a hotel that offers this as well.

You can also contact your embassy/consulate.

What they can do for you?

Your embassy/consulate can replace your passport, but only if you can produce some form of identification. A driver's license alone is not good enough because it doesn't prove you are a citizen. You must have someone fax the embassy/consulate your travel documents including copies of your passport.

The embassy/consulate won't give you money or a place to stay, but they will allow you to receive money through a bank account the embassy can set up through the Overseas Citizens Service.

When you finally receive the money wired to you it will be given to you in the local currency only.

REPATRIATION

You can ask your to repatriate you. This means they buy an airline ticket, fly you home, confiscate your passport. You will then have to pay your loan back [the airfare] and you will not have your passport returned to you until you do. Not all embassies will do this, check with your government.

A HORROR STORY

We were in Cuba. From the moment we arrived we had not seen hide-nor-hair of our Tour Operator. Nobody met us at the airport and nobody ever showed up at our hotel. We were on our own. We attempted to make arrangments to leave for the airport on the day of our departure well before the actual day and were told that we would be picked up at 12:30 as our flight left Veradero at 3:00.

We were sitting at the pool the day we were to leave when at 11:00 a person walked up to us and asked if we were ready to go. It was the bus and they were an hour and a half early. We jumped up, ran to our room and threw everything into our bags then ran downstairs to the lobby. They were gone. We asked the front desk to call us a taxi, which was paramount to phoning Fidel himself. Then we phoned the airport only to be told that our flight had been rerouted and was departing from Havana, not Veradero. We were forced to take a taxi to Havana. The taxi ride cost us $100.00 USD. As we arrived to Havana airport we saw our plane take off.

The next flight out of Cuba was the next morning so we had to sit in the airport all night. It was deserted except for the regular machine gun carrying soldiers that came and inspected us every half-hour. We sat and drank beer and smoked cigars all night to stay awake. In the morning we explained the situation to the airport officials for the hundredth time what had happened until finely they took us into security. We explained the situation to them then we were taken into another room and we again explained the situation to the army.

Finely they agreed to give us new airplane tickets. We checked our luggage and cleared customs and went to wait for the plane. While we were sitting there a soldier approached us and told us that we could not leave the country until we paid a $500.00 bill because we stayed in the country an extra day. I freaked and jumped up ready to hit the guy but he had a submachine gun so I just screamed at him to go f*&% himself. He repeated that we could not leave until we paid. We were flat broke and we maxed out the credit card we had.

The soldier took Kate away and left me sitting there. They took her somewhere in the basement of the airport to a room where there were more soldiers. Kate started crying which made the soldiers feel bad. The commanding officer listened to her story and decided to just leave us alone. They let her go and we got on the plane without having to pay those thieves anything.

The plane took off and we relaxed. I put my head down, closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep. Just then I smelled smoke and put my head up only to find that there was this strange guy, drunk out of his mind smoking a cigarette. He was sitting next to this really big fat guy who must have been 6.6 and at least 300 lbs. They were arguing in a foreign language.

The stewardess came and told him to put out his cigarette, which he did. He then gave the fat guy an elbow smash then the big guy pushed him out of his seat. The stewardess made the guy sit in the seat behind the big guy which was now the seat right next to us.

The next thing we know the crazy guy starts spitting on the big guy and the big guy is so big he can't do anything because he is stuck in his seat. He can't turn around or anything. The crazy guy then grabs all the magazines and flight instruction booklets in the seat bag and starts hitting the big guy over the head with them. The plane is in the air, this guy is going crazy and the stewardesses are standing there paralyzed with fear not knowing what to do. So I jump up and scream that if this guy does not calm down I am going to severely beat him. Just then one of the pilots showed up.

The guy calmed down and they got him to move to the back of the plane, which was half-empty. A few minutes later we smelled smoke as he had lit up another cigarette. Then the plane all of a sudden started to land, we were now making an emergency landing in Cienfuego. As soon as the plane came to a stop we could see the soldiers surrounding it. The front door flew open and a group of heavily armed soldiers stormed on board [TV SWAT style] and dragged the guy off the plane. They then opened the luggage compartment and checked all the luggage with dogs. They also searched all over the inside of the plane. When they felt that they had the situation under control they let the plane take off, we arrived home safe but very tired!