South America and South Atlantic Islands

• Travel Summary
• Safety and security
• Local laws and customs
• Entry requirements

• Health
• Natural disasters
• General
 

General

Insurance

We recommend that you obtain comprehensive travel and medical insurance before travelling.  You should check any exclusions, and that your policy covers you for all the activities you want to undertake. For more general information see travel insurance. Some activities, such as mountain biking, are classified as hazardous and may be excluded in personal insurance policies.

If things do go wrong when you are overseas then this is how we can help.

Registration

Register with our LOCATE service to tell us when and where you are travelling abroad or where you live abroad so our consular and crisis staff can provide better assistance to you in an emergency.

Identification

You are required to carry some form of identification at all times, in case it is requested by the police. You can carry photocopies of the relevant pages from your passport, ensuring that you keep the original in a safe place. Should you lose your passport or other documents, the Consular Section of the British Embassy will do their best to help you with replacements. For this reason, you are advised to keep separately a photocopy of your passport and also register with the British Embassy on arrival.

Passports

The British Embassy in Bolivia does not have the facility to issue full passports. You are advised to check the validity of your passport and, if necessary, to renew it before travelling. You should ensure that you enter next of kin details in the back page of your passport. The Embassy currently accepts applications for new passports, which are forwarded to the British Consulate General in Rio de Janeiro for processing. From 28 September 2009, applicants will need to submit their applications direct to the UK Passport Service for the Americas and Caribbean at the British Embassy in Washington. You should allow 4 to 6 weeks for receipt of the new passport. If you lose a passport while in Bolivia, you must report this immediately to the police and obtain a police report. The British Embassy currently has the facility to issue you with a Temporary Passport, valid for up to one year, to facilitate onward travel in an emergency. Please note that from 05 October 2008, for a short period of time, the British Embassy will have limited ability to issue Temporary Passports. The travel advice will be updated again once we are able to do so. You should also be aware that Temporary Passports will be replaced by Emergency Travel Documents in the near future.

Money

Banking facilities are good in all of the main Bolivian cities. You can access your money via ATMs, which cater for Visa, Cirrus, and Mastercard.