Originally Posted by Life_Platinum

I do not know of anyone who was hurt in this disaster.

We had a minor glitch that is important for those flying to Chile in the future. During the past year, the Chilean government and the US government have agreed to change the requirements for admission, meaning that no longer tourists will be required to fork over $150 at SCL to enter the country. However, there is a free tourist card that the airline will give you that is to be filled out and stamped when entering Chile. Somehow in the darkness of the night, we had left our tourist cards behind along with some clothes, and when we tried to check out from the Luxury Collection property in SCL, we were told we would need to pay 19% tax on our hotel bill as well as every other hotel bill we would have while we were in Chile. Also it may be impossible for us to leave Chile legally. What to do????

The Concierge at the Luxury Collection property spent 3 hours trying to get the photocopy of our tourist cards from the hotel at Villarrica. Finally after about 4 phone calls and hours of frustration, he succeeded in having them email a copy of our cards to his desk so that we could avoid taxes at this and other properties. The other review on this site discussed difficulties in Lost In Translation events similar to what we had.

So, if you come to Chile, handle the tourist cards as carefully as your passports if you are a U.S. citizen.