Chile Forum

Chuck J 3.0 wrote:

enjambedline wrote:I failed to mention that I currently live in Santiago. However, if someone can answer the questions I asked, I would appreciate it. I really need to validate the information I've been given. Thanks

Yes. And yes.

It's more fun to go to Argentina though. As well as the wine it's good to get a decent steak once in awhile.

Isn't the cost around $100 or so? Getting the visa extended, not the steak and wine.

mlightheart wrote:

Chuck J 3.0 wrote:

enjambedline wrote:I failed to mention that I currently live in Santiago. However, if someone can answer the questions I asked, I would appreciate it. I really need to validate the information I've been given. Thanks

Yes. And yes.

It's more fun to go to Argentina though. As well as the wine it's good to get a decent steak once in awhile.

Isn't the cost around $100 or so? Getting the visa extended, not the steak and wine.

Cost me 101USD the times I went to the Santiago office, it may be more now? It's like going to the DMV in the USA, a big office, a crowd of people sitting around waiting for their number to be called, and it's deadly dull. The cost of going to Argentina on the bus (7hours from Stgo.) and staying overnight was actually slightly cheaper for me.

That's not including dinner and wine.

I also really liked the bus ride up the mountain to the pass. I always got a window seat, I liked to look down at all the traffic and switchbacks with no guardrails.

We've been here just over a year now and have gone to Argentina twice, gotten a visa extension twice. Cost us $50 000 pesos and change both times. The Santiago office was friendly enough, it just took forever. The second time, we went to the Extranjeria in Llolleo and it was completely painless, very short wait, friendly service (thanks for the tip EEUU!).

The lady there was so helpful in fact that while we were getting the visa extension, she suggested we just get my boyfriend a temporary visa (I'm Chilean) instead of spending money on extensions and Argentina. She said we just needed to provide an official letter/statement from our bank showing our savings (you do have to have enough), I would need to provide some official notarized statement that he's my partner and some other stuff, don't recall what now but I do know it was easy enough to get. I told her that we had not gotten around to pursuing that because we didn't want to spend the money on lawyers right now and I can't recall perfectly but she said that there was no reason for a lawyer and no charge (or very little) for the extranjeria filing the papers and she would check our paperwork over before filing to make sure that everything was complete, that was a service they provided. Anyhow, we've just been lazy about following up on it all, since we're still on the fence about how much longer we'll be here. And quite frankly, we've been looking forward to going to Argentina. Looking forward to some steak and my boyfriend is hoping to find shoes out there, we can't find his size in Chile (47).

Still, if you're in the San Antonio province, definitely worth it to go to the offices in Llolleo.