You see this picture? That’s a picture of a wet passport. You don’t want to get your passport like this. Moisture will not only make your pages crinkled and wavy, it might also smudge your visa stamps, or worse, make it easier to rip a page by accident. Then you are going to have problems with passport control while crossing international borders, because let me tell you something – those border control officers do not like a wet passport. So you really, really want to avoid getting it wet. Especially if you want to continue bragging about those cool country stamps to your travel buddies.
I, however, got my passport wet a couple of times. How? Any number of ways. Once it was a tropical downpour that drenched my backpack, and the other time it was simply dropped in a puddle accidentally. While sometimes there is no way you can predict an accident like this, you can certainly minimize the risk of getting your passport (and other valuable gear) wet by being prepared.
First of all, as we talked in one of the previous posts, your passport should be somewhere in your day pack. Now, most day packs do not come with an integrated rain cover, unlike a good large backpack. Fortunately, for a few bucks you can buy a rain cover such as this one that won’t take much space and protect all your valuables, including your passport, from getting soaked in a sudden rain. As you can see, it comes in various sizes and really does the job.
Finally, and more specifically for your passport, there’s no better way to keep it extra dry than keeping it in a ziplock bag (4×6 inches). And if you don’t have them already in your kitchen, you can easily order them for next to nothing.
So that’s your travel tip of the day. Stay dry, and keep your passport dry as well!