The CA-4 90 Days, and What It Took Us to Extend in Guatemala

We spent two and a half months on Roatán and left on a deadline. Our ninety days in Central America ran out on August 26, and we did not understand how those ninety days worked until well into using them up.

If you are somewhere in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador or Nicaragua and you are starting to do the arithmetic on your own entry stamp, here is how the clock actually runs, what your options are when it runs out, and what the extension took us.

How the CA-4 clock actually works

Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua are joined by an agreement called the CA-4. For a traveler, the practical effect is that the four countries function as one zone. You can move between them by land without applying for anything new, which sounds like pure upside and mostly is.

The ninety days you get on arrival is ninety days for the whole zone, not ninety days per country. Your clock starts when you enter the CA-4 from outside it, and crossing from one member country into another does not restart it. A week in Honduras and then a month in Guatemala is five weeks off the same ninety, not two separate allowances.

It is an easy thing to get wrong, because that is how it works almost everywhere else. The usual advice is to hop over a border and come back, and if that border happens to be one of the three inside the zone, the hop buys you nothing at all.

The countries that do reset it are the ones outside the zone: Mexico to the north, Costa Rica to the south, and Belize. Belize borders Guatemala, which makes it easy to assume it belongs to the same agreement. It does not.

How long you have to stay out, we cannot tell you with any confidence. We were told two or three days. We have heard people say a few hours is enough. One place we read said twenty-four hours. We have never done a reset run, so we are not going to pretend we know. If you are planning around it, ask at the border you intend to use, and give yourself more margin than you think you need.

What your options are when the ninety days runs out

There are two, and they are not close on price.

You can leave the zone and come back. This is the reset described above. We priced it honestly when we were deciding, counting the border fees out and back in, a couple of nights of hotel, food on the road, and the fuel. For the five of us it came out somewhere around three to four hundred dollars, plus two or three days we would rather have spent somewhere else.

Or you can extend where you already are. All four CA-4 countries issue extensions. What they grant and what they charge is not uniform, and this is worth knowing before you decide which country to be standing in when your clock runs down.

Guatemala gives ninety days for twenty-five dollars a person. El Salvador also gives ninety, and the fee we have seen quoted is the same twenty-five, though El Salvador does not publish it officially. Honduras, from what we were told, is thirty days for around twenty dollars, and we could not confirm that one. Nicaragua works in thirty-day blocks at twenty-five dollars a month, up to a maximum of ninety additional days, which means the same three months that costs twenty-five dollars in Guatemala costs seventy-five in Nicaragua.

For our family of five, extending in Guatemala came to a hundred and twenty-five dollars against three or four hundred for a border run. That was not a hard decision, and having now done it, the hassle was not the tiebreaker we thought it would be either.

There is one more thing worth saying about extensions, and we are less certain about it than anything else here. An extension issued by one CA-4 country is supposed to be honored by the other three, since the whole point of the agreement is that the zone operates as one. In practice, enforcement is not consistent. We have read a first-hand account of travelers refused entry to El Salvador while holding a Nicaraguan extension that immigration officials had assured them was valid region-wide. We were told similar things about other combinations before we went, none of it firsthand and none of it settled enough for us to hand you a rule.

What we took from it is simpler than a rule. If you are going to extend, extending in the country you are actually sitting in removes a question you would otherwise be carrying to the next border. That is part of why we did ours in Guatemala.

What extending in Guatemala actually took

We did this on August 14, 2026, so treat every figure and requirement here as what was true that day rather than what is true now. Fees change and procedures change.

We timed it into a drive we were already making. We left Roatán on a Tuesday, drove four days, spent a night in Guatemala City, went to the office the next morning, and carried on to Lake Atitlán that same afternoon. That worked well. It cost us nothing extra, and it meant the paperwork was finished before we unpacked anything.

The office. Tourist extensions are handled by the Instituto Guatemalteco de Migración, at 6a Avenida 3-11 in Zona 4, Guatemala City.

The appointment. You book online, and you do need to book. When we asked immigration directly, they told us the correct procedure is one appointment per person, so a family of five books five appointments, but that the different time slots do not actually matter, because if you bring everyone's passports the whole family can be handled at the first one. That is exactly how it went. We booked five and used one.

The calendar looked busier than we expected. We found a slot a few days out, and even looking a couple of weeks ahead, some days were clearly fuller than others. Book earlier than feels necessary.

Two things on the booking form gave us trouble. The first asks which country your current visa is in, and Guatemala is not among the options, which stops you cold. That turned out to be a wrong turn earlier in the portal rather than a real problem, and immigration pointed us to the correct path when we asked. The second is that the form wants a Guatemalan phone number, and if you have just arrived you almost certainly do not have one. We used a local number connected to where we were staying. If you hit the same wall, put in the contact number for your hotel or rental. It never came up again.

What we brought. Passports, which were what actually mattered. The application form, filled out and printed beforehand. Copies of the first page of both of our passports, one set for each child, so each of our passports got copied three separate times. And proof of funds, which in our case was a credit card.

That last one caught us out. The card has to be in the name of the person it belongs to. One of ours did not count for the other, so we each had to produce our own, and the staff copied them for us rather than sending us away, which was kind of them. They told us to bring copies next time, one for each of us. We understand bank statements work as well, though we did not use them.

The birth certificates. Before we left the United States, both Google and the AI tools we asked told us Guatemala would require apostilled birth certificates for all three children. So we set it in motion. Preston's mother ordered certified copies from Utah vital records and put them through the apostille step, which is a separate transaction from ordering them.

Then we asked Guatemalan immigration directly, a few weeks before our appointment, whether copies would be acceptable instead of originals. They said yes, plain copies were fine, and recommended we bring those. Rather than rush the originals down to us, we had her photograph them and send pictures.

At the desk, nobody asked for any of it. Brittney tried to hand the copies over and was told they were not needed. The requirement, as it was explained to us when we asked, applies when a parent is there without the other one. With both of us present and all three children there holding their own passports, the certificates were not part of it.

We are still glad we have them. Carrying certified copies of your children's documents is a reasonable thing to do anyway, and we would probably do the apostille again for other reasons. But it was not necessary for this, and if you are looking at that requirement and wondering whether you have time to get it done, you may not need to.

The two weeks we did not need. We had also been told to arrive two weeks before our expiry, because passports would have to be dropped off and collected later. That was not true either. Everything was done in person while we waited, and we walked out with it finished. We would still build in a buffer, but days, not weeks.

How the morning went. We arrived fifteen minutes early. The office was busy, but once the staff understood we were only extending, they sent us to desk five with no line at all. One officer handled everything for all five of us.

Then he gave us paperwork and sent us downstairs to pay, and the cashier does not take cards. We did not have enough cash on us, so we walked two blocks to an ATM and came back. That detour is the reason the whole thing took an hour and fifteen minutes instead of under an hour. Bring the cash with you.

If you have read that you pay at a bank in advance and bring the receipt to your appointment, that is not how it went for us. The paperwork came from the officer at the desk, we took it down to the cashier, and the receipt went back upstairs to be matched to our file. So at least on the day we went, paying in advance would not have been possible.

What it cost. Twenty-five dollars a person, a hundred and twenty-five for the five of us. Guatemala publishes its immigration fees in US dollars and collects them in quetzales at the rate of the day, which is why the number on your receipt will not be a round figure and why we are not quoting one.

How long it actually gave us. We would have liked to know this beforehand. The ninety days is added to the end of your original ninety, not counted from the day you file. We confirmed that both in practice and with the staff. So an extension gives you a hundred and eighty days from the day you first entered the zone, no matter when in that window you get it done. In theory you could cross into the region, go straight to the office, and walk out with six months. That is roughly what we intend to do next time, since it opens up the inland countries in a way ninety days does not.

If you drove in, you have a second clock. Your vehicle's temporary import permit runs its own ninety days, and extending your visa does nothing to it. They are separate offices, immigration and SAT, including at the border. You extend the permit at a border or at a SAT office, and we have seen SAT offices in mid-sized towns, not just the capital. Coming into Guatemala the last time we told the officer at the border that we intended to extend and asked whether the permit could be written for the full ninety. He did it without any fuss. We do not know if that always works, but it cost nothing to ask, and it saved us an errand.

Doing it with kids. Two of our boys have support needs, and we had braced for a long morning in a government office with three children. It took about an hour. We brought all three up to the desk so the officer could see their faces and explained our situation, and then Brittney took the boys out to the front steps with an iPad while the rest was finished.

What we would tell you if you are doing this now

Book the appointment as soon as you know you need it, and give yourself a few days of margin rather than a few weeks. Bring your passports, bring your kids if they are on the application, bring the form filled out, bring a card in each adult's own name, and bring cash.

Fold it into a drive you are already making if you can. Doing the errand on the way somewhere is far easier than making a special trip out of a place you have already settled into.

And do the arithmetic on your entry stamp early rather than the week it matters. The fine for overstaying in Guatemala is fifteen quetzales a day, which is a couple of dollars and not frightening on its own, but we have been told that a bad enough overstay can cause problems getting back in later. We have no interest in finding out where that line is, so we have stayed well inside it.

May there be a road.

Questions we get asked

Does crossing from Guatemala into Honduras or El Salvador reset my 90 days?

No. The four CA-4 countries share one ninety-day allowance, so moving between Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua by land changes nothing on your clock. Cross as often as you like. The total stays the same.

Which countries do reset the CA-4 clock?

You have to leave the zone entirely: Mexico, Costa Rica or Belize. Belize borders Guatemala but never joined the CA-4.

How long do I have to stay outside the zone before the clock resets?

We cannot give you a confident answer. We were told two or three days. We have heard a few hours is enough, and one place we read said twenty-four hours. Since we have never done a reset run ourselves, ask at the border you plan to use and allow more time than you think you need.

How much is the Guatemala tourist visa extension, and where do you pay it?

Twenty-five dollars a person, which for our family of five came to a hundred and twenty-five. Guatemala publishes immigration fees in US dollars and collects them in quetzales at the rate of the day. Payment happens at a cashier inside the immigration office in Zona 4, Guatemala City, in cash. They do not take cards.

How long does the Guatemala extension give you, and does it start from the day you apply?

Ninety days, added to the end of your original ninety rather than counted from the day you file. Whenever in that window you apply, you end up with a hundred and eighty days from the day you first entered the CA-4 zone.

Do children need apostilled birth certificates to extend a stay in Guatemala?

Not when both parents and the children are there in person with the children's own passports. Guatemalan immigration told us that directly when we asked, and at the desk nobody asked to see ours. Where it does apply is when one parent is there without the other.

What happens if you overstay in Guatemala?

Guatemalan immigration publishes a fine of fifteen quetzales for each day past your authorized stay. We were also told that a bad enough overstay can cause problems re-entering later, but nobody would say where that line sits, and we have not tested it.

Does extending my visa also extend my vehicle's import permit?

No. A vehicle brought in on a temporary import permit runs its own ninety-day clock, and that one belongs to SAT rather than immigration. Two offices, two errands, even at the border.

How do the other CA-4 countries compare on extensions?

Guatemala and El Salvador are the generous ones, ninety days each. Nicaragua works in thirty-day blocks at twenty-five dollars a month up to a ninety-day maximum, so the same three months costs three times what we paid. Honduras we were told is thirty days for about twenty dollars, though we could not confirm it.