In all the years i have been traveling to Argentina I have never paid their reciprocity fee. This trip I was paged in the airport in Santiago and told I could not board the LAN flight to Mendoza until I went to the LAN office and paid the fee. $160.00 and good for ten years.
For me Mendoza is a very worthwhile stop.

Also major currency issue in country. Present official exchange rate is 5.21 to 1. Try not to use ATMs or credit cards. Covert dollars at a Casa de Cambio. Exchange rate this a.m. was 9.7 to 1!!!

They have been doing this for a few years now unless you had an older entry VISA. I was a resident until recently but I was still able to use the old entry VISA on my US passport until last December. Anyone heading to Argentina now needs to log in to the Argentina government website, pay the fee in advance, print out the receipt and keep it with you to show to immigration when you arrive. I had to do that recently for someone in my company at the Miami airport. AA would not even give him a boarding pass until he showed his reciprocal receipt.

A lot of countries are doing this now. I don't see a problem with any country "doing to us what we do to them". It is just a major pain when to find out about it for the first time when you are at the airport.

We had to pay it last April....I think a one time entry fee was just $50.

I just paid mine today online. I leave on Monday, May 20 for a week. Looking forward to it as this is my first time to Argentina.

If u need to, we can provide a tutorial for the process.
Rgds,

Bill, this is exactly why I DO use my debit card abroad. The local exchange places screw you. My bank does the exact rate calculation for the minute, not the trumped up fee. They add a $3 surcharge, but it is much better than what you get at the exchange houses.

quote:

Originally posted by larrys:
Bill, this is exactly why I DO use my debit card abroad. The local exchange places screw you. My bank does the exact rate calculation for the minute, not the trumped up fee. They add a $3 surcharge, but it is much better than what you get at the exchange houses.

If you use a debit card in the example above, you will get the slightly over 5.1 exchange rate. That is the official rate and will be the one your bank uses.

You were lucky Biil. You got paged in Santiago. Half a dozen passengers on my flight including me made it to BA before being unceremoniously placed on the next flight back to Santiago.Cost us extra airfares as well as the inconvenience of the flights on top of the fee. The upside of all this was that we got smashed in the bar at the airport while we waited for our flight back to BA. Apart from that hiccup the hunt went well.

quote:

Originally posted by larrys:
Bill, this is exactly why I DO use my debit card abroad. The local exchange places screw you. My bank does the exact rate calculation for the minute, not the trumped up fee. They add a $3 surcharge, but it is much better than what you get at the exchange houses.

If you use your card you will get 5.1 for every dollar

If you use cash you will get 9.7 for every dollar...


So you get much mor of the local currency by using cash in this example.