Can you tell me about living in Uruguay?...

In My Humble Opinion
1

Many web sites hype Uruguay as one of the best places in South America for ex-pat retirees to live.

If you’ve lived there, or spent time as a visitor, what did you think? Notable pluses, minuses, whatever?

2

I spent some time in Montevideo a few years ago and wasn’t impressed with anything about it. It’s poor and undeveloped even by South American standards. If you are serious about relocating there plan to spend a few weeks there and see for yourself. Don’t trust anything you read on the Internet.

3

I thought Montevideo was a pretty blah city. But I spend a while in Salto, which was a lovely old city, very nice people, it would be extremely livable.

4

My big brother lived there for a few years for work and he never had a very high opinion of the place. As far as I know the only things he liked about the country were the warm weather and traffic cops not really caring even if you drove way too fast. He didn’t really hate the place, just didn’t much care for it.

5

Here is a wonderful resource - if you want a good thumbnail of a country, this is it:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/uy.html

CIA Factbook

6

It tends to be a bit… squinty, though. Checking Spain, information for “local names” doesn’t include any symbols which are not part of the English alphabet (congratulations, dudes, you misspelled Spain’s Spanish name!); citizenship information is outdated and incomplete; Gibraltar is a country; the autonomous regions get called semi-autonomous but the autonomous cities (which are actually less autonomous than the regions) get called autonomous… official languages list is wrong…

and our date of independence is 1492. 1492 male duck’s eggs :rolleyes:

Oh, and our “national holiday” (countries only get one, according to the CIA) commemorates, not the day that Columbus et al. discovered America, but the year they did. Let’s have a 365-day parteeeeeee!

7

Independence for the UK: 1927. Seriously. Says that.

8

Try to picture the CIA disclosing everything they know, unbiased, to an online readership. Although, surprisingly, the CIA Factfook is less biased than none would expect. I guess maybe they were shooting for credibility, for a change.

9

Not “disclose everything” (talk about breaking the internet), but would it kill them to change that heading of “Independence” to something like “A few historical facts” and try to put them in something resembling order?

10

Poor and undeveloped? Are you sure you’re talking about Montevideo, Uruguay? The city, like all big cities, has poor areas but undeveloped it ain’t. I remember it being a nice city to walk around in with great food, quaint shops and friendly people - a large percentage of whom have their cup of yerba mate in handat all times.

11

QED

12

Costa Rica was the premier expat destination in decades past, it may still be. It isn’t because it is the cheapest country in Central America but because it is significantly safer than its neighbors. Similarly, Uruguay isn’t terribly cheap compared to other countries, but it is relatively cheaper than the US or Canada and the population is educated and healthy and the country is safer and less corrupt than other Latin American countries.

Uruguay is Argentina’s Canada. It is not Paraguay, a considerably poorer country.

13

Been to Punta del Este before. It’s okay. Food is better in Argentina if you like meat or Italian. Uruguayans might be more mellow than Portenos.

14

Adolf Eichmann liked it well enough. Until the Israelis found him there.

15

Which happened in the same year that JFK was elected president of Mexico, if I recall.

16

My wife and I have been thinking about retirement locations waaaaay too early and our dream is to retire to Costa Rica. Wonderful climate, great people, fairly honest government, but yeah can we afford it. Plus being Latin America, will it be another “paradise lost” by then…

One thing to keep in mind about Uruguay, flights are over 13 hours and could be $1000-2000 one way so if you are an American and choose to live there your connections with back at home family will be limited.

17

Yes, to put that into perspective Montevideo is almost the same distance from NYC as Cairo is and slightly less than further from Miami than Berlin is.