Visas are issued on arrival ONLY if prior arrangements are made through the foreign ministry. A visa or letter from the foreign ministry is required to board an airplane bound for Sao Tome. Local travel agents e.g. Gold Tours can process visa application through the ministry in a week if you email the information page of your passport and the application found on their web site. In this case you pay a service fee to the tour operators in addition to US$100 Oct/09 to immigration on arrival to have a 30 day visa stamped in your passport. Yellow fever vaccination is checked on arrival at Sao Tome airport.
As of October 2009, the Sao Tome Embassies in Washington, DC, Lisbon and UN Mission in New York and appear to have been abandoned with all listed phone, fax and e-mail addresses failing.
In Europe, a STP visa may be obtained in Brussels: Square Montgomery, 175 Avenue de Tervuren, +32 2 734 89 66. There is no STP diplomatic mission in Oceania. For travellers arriving from mainland Africa, there is a STP diplomatic mission in Gabon: B.P. 49, Libreville, 241 72-15-27.
There are few embassies in STP. The embassies with dual accreditation to STP are: Libreville, Gabon USA; Luanda, Angola UK; Yaoundé, Cameroon Canada; & Abuja, Nigeria Australia. The nearest New Zealand embassy is in Namibia.
