Equations in Chile

As I walked through the airport enthusiastically looking forward to having a day discovering Chile I came across a sign- a sign that read “reciprocity fees for the following citizens”. Needless to say among the flags on the sign was the American one. This was quite a downer on my first adventure, but I thought as I used the first bathroom I found- okay how much do I want to pay for 6 hours in Chile. I was quick to decide on $20 (a limit for most of my spending), but decided to settle on $40. After all, I was working on being less tight with my money. I quickly got in line to find out as much as I could about this reciprocity business since there was an important equation to consider: a ratio of hours vs. cost. I had normally in the past done equations in order to figure out whether a fee for an event with limited time was worth it. For example, if the cover to a club was $20 and there were only 2 hours left it wasn’t worth it; however, if there were four hours the price was cut in half to $5.00/hour thus meriting consideration. Today, I didn’t even need to do any math to know that I wasn’t going to get to visit Chile. When I asked how much the “reciprocity fee” would be she answered $131 when I exit and $30 upon return. Deep sigh… I was bummed. The word reciprocity kept on running through my head and I wondered if that’s how people felt when they came to visit the United States. All I wanted was to do a little discovering and even some spending… I would have to wait for a time when the equation made more sense. I walked through the airport to maybe do some shopping, but I saw a price and it was in thousands. The price was on a bag of magnets: 5,890… I think not. After almost 20 hours of travel the last thing I wanted to figure out were exchange rates – sorry Chile.