Exploring Uruguay

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Where Do You Pay Your Bills in Uruguay?

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You pay your bills at the Abitab… The what? 

One thing to look at when estimating your cost of living in Uruguay is your monthly bills, how much they are and where/how you pay them.

When we lived in San Diego, we rarely pulled out the checkbook and mailed a payment for anything. We paid everything online… from our electric bill to rent and everything in between. If it wasn’t set up to direct debit from our account, we would have our bank set up to automatically send a check out to whomever. 

In Uruguay, we go to the Abitab to pay our bills… We could go directly to the company, but the Abitab is the “all-in-one stop.”

Abitab

Our porter collects our mail and slides it under our door… The majority of our mail is our monthly bills…

A Quick Shout Out: Celeste and Ren’e; we just got your Christmas card… Thank you very much…

When we get our monthly bills, we open them, complain about how much they are (since the value of the US dollar has dropped, our cost of living in Uruguay has increased) and then walk down the street to the Abitab.

How much are our bills?

We've had a lot of questions about cost of living in Uruguay lately, so here are some of our fixed costs in Uruguayan Pesos per month:

  • Internet: $2,604 (Antel, ADSL 4 MEGA 4096/512)
  • Home Phone: $343 (We have to have a home phone for our Internet because it’s ADSL.)
  • Electricity: $3,500 (give or take… but this should go up because we’ve been running the AC at night lately)
  • Gastos Communes: $3,375 (This is our building common expenses; It covers our water, trash, heat, building maintenance and our Porter)
  • Health Insurance: $3,999 (3 months after Kaylee gets here it’ll go up to $4,926)
  • Emergency Service: $870 (After Kaylee gets here it’ll go up to $1,160)

The point is that all of our bills seem to arrive around the same time… for a total of $14,691 per month.

Now you have your bills… what is an Abitab and how do you find one?

Abitabs are little offices that are speckled all throughout the city and the countryside. Each of your bills has a barcode on it that is scanned in by the clerk at the Abitab… You pay the clerk, they give you a receipt and you go on your way.

It’s a little bit of a pain not to be able to pay our bills online or drop a check in the mail, but we’re fortunate enough to have two Abitabs within 2-3 blocks of us.

One thing to ask your realtor when searching for a place to rent or buy is, “Where is the nearest Abitab?” 

For those of you already living in Uruguay… How far away are you from the nearest Abitab?

Getting Your Uruguay Visitors Permit Renewed Without Leaving the Country

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Banner_ppal We wrote a blog a few months back about our trip to Buenos Aires to renew our 90-day visitor’s permit for Uruguay. The last three months have flown by! We were surprised when we looked at the calendar and realized it was already time to renew our visitors’ permits again.

Instead of taking another trip to Buenos Aires, we wanted to spend that time visiting Punta del Diablo, Uruguay. We had heard from other expats that you can have your visitors’ permits renewed at the Uruguay Immigrations office in Montevideo, so we decided to do that this time around.

We took a cab from Pocitos to the Uruguay Immigration office in Ciudad Vieja, which cost us about UY$ 100 (U$S 5) each way. Much less expensive than paying for the Buquebus!

The process was very simple and straightforward. It reminded us a lot of going to the California DMV, only the Uruguay Immigration office is much more efficient. All in all, I’d say we spent 20-30 minutes there.

We had a little mix-up with the new girl at the front desk (she wrote down the wrong service), but other than that, we were pleasantly surprised with the efficiency of getting our visitors permits renewed at the Uruguay Immigration office.

Full instructions on getting your visitor’s permit renewed at the Uruguay Immigration office can be found on the Exploring Uruguay website.


Amazon Ships to Uruguay!

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Zoë received several Amazon.com gift cards for her birthday last year. We had asked for them as one option for gifts for her since we didn’t want to haul any more “stuff” with us on our move to Uruguay (her birthday was the day before we left for Uruguay).

We got an excellent tip from a member of the Exploring Uruguay Forum that books and DVDs are exempt from duties and taxes so we decided it was time to place an order with Amazon. So, we ordered Zoë some new books and a DVD of her favorite show Shushybye Baby(we lost her copy on the trip down to Uruguay).

We weren’t sure how the delivery would work, but it went very smooth! I placed the order on October 14 and received two packages on October 29. They delivered the boxes directly to our apartment. It didn’t even look like they had been opened and one of the boxes was quite large (we spent around $100 on books and the DVD).

You can see Amazon’s shipping rates and transit times to Uruguay here.

If you’ve been wanting to get some new English books or DVDs, we highly recommend ordering from Amazon.com.

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Boycott Uruguay Taxis This Friday

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NoTaxis We apologize for the short notice, but wanted to let everyone currently living in Uruguay know that there is a call to boycott taxis on Friday, October 30.

The boycott was organized after two young people were killed in two separate incidents where taxi drivers ignored stop signs in Montevideo. One of the victims was a passenger in a taxi and the other was a young mother of two who was killed while walking down the sidewalk. A third young woman has been in a coma for a month.

We’ve talked about Uruguay driving on our blog in the past, but these stories really drive home the point. So, if you want to make a statement against reckless driving in Uruguay, please join the boycott of taxis for the day.

You can read more about the reasons behind the boycott of Uruguay taxis here.


The Exploring Uruguay Forum is Now Live!

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Thank you to all of our blog readers for asking so many great questions about Uruguay. The number of questions we’ve been getting has increased significantly, so we decided it was time to create the Exploring Uruguay Forum.

We’ve been working hard on getting the forum ready over the past several days and we’re excited to announce that it’s finally live.

So, come by the Exploring Uruguay Forum today and post a question about Uruguay. Or, share your experiences with living in Uruguay, or visiting Uruguay.

Thanks in advance for contributing to the community!

How Do You Pay for Things in Uruguay?

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UY Pesos, Dollars or Plastic? We use all three.

I don’t know why, but our US banks won’t allow us to pull out more than $2,000 UYU at a time. So it’s easier for us to pull ou U$S300 and saves us two $58 UYU transaction fee at the ATM.

We typically take our US dollars to a Cambio (see pic below) to exchange them for UY pesos so that we get the best rate of exchange.

Unfortunately the Cambios aren’t open on Sundays, so occasionally we’ll be stuck with US dollars and no simple way to exchange them for UY pesos.

Then I buy a coke at the market across the street with a U$S 100 bill and get the change in UY Pesos (but don’t expect many of the stores to do that for you until you’ve established yourself as a regular customer).

Most places will accept US dollars, but if you hand them a hundred dollar bill, they’ll usually look at you like you are crazy… Very few places could break it (U$S 100 is about $2312 UY pesos).

However, if you walk into some stores, like electronics stores, you’ll see everything is priced in US dollars rather than UY pesos. I guess paying U$S 1500 sounds better than $34,680 UY pesos…

Also, because the sales tax here is 22%, we try to pay for everything we can on our debit card. Why? Because we get 8% back on most purchases when you pay with debit/ credit cards (with a few exceptions like grocery stores) and we don’t get stuck with a currency transfer fee.

Unfortunately, even though Visa and MasterCard are accepted at a lot of places, we’re finding more places don’t accept plastic than do (especially restaurants). I guess the fees are pretty high for businesses.

Of course there are places, like the ferias, that only accept UY Pesos. So, there really isn’t a simple answer to, “How do you pay for things in Uruguay.” It’s really a mix is UY pesos, US dollars and plastic.

We learned through trial and error how to balance the mix and hope this blog provides a little clarification for you.

Doing Your Laundry in Uruguay

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One thing I wasn’t quite prepared for is the process of doing laundry in Uruguay. You can’t just decide one afternoon that you need to wash a pair of jeans and have them clean in an hour or two.

Why you ask? Well, you won’t find many clothes dryers in Uruguay apartments. They just aren’t that common. All of the clothes drying is done on clotheslines, either on balconies or even out of the window! We have several clotheslines on the balcony off the master bedroom.

That’s because we, like many people, do have a lavarropa (washing machine) in our apartment. It’s in our kitchen… strange place, I know. But that’s a common location for it in Uruguay apartments. The only problem is that our lavarropa takes about 1.5 hours just to wash a small load.

So, I try to do one load of laundry at night and then hang it to dry in the morning. If I’m diligent about it, I’m able to keep up with our laundry. However, I often fall behind (it’s easy when it’s raining and you can’t hang the clothes out to dry) and that’s where the lavaderos come into play.

A lavadero is basically a full service Laundromat, which is your second option for doing laundry is Uruguay. All you have to do is drop your laundry off and they wash, dry, press and fold everything for you. It’s really quite convenient, and they typically have everything ready in two days.

And, like most services in Uruguay, it’s reasonably priced. We had about seven loads of laundry (small loads) done for $500 Uruguayan pesos (which is U$S 21.58). Not bad.  Here are the prices from the Lavadero across the street (just click on the image and you’ll be able to see a larger view). Remember, the prices are in UY pesos.

Dry cleaning is readily available in Uruguay as well. In fact we have a tintorería (dry cleaner) right next door to our apartment building that even does one-hour dry cleaning. I used them once to dry clean three shirts and it was just under U$S 3.00 per shirt.

So, while doing your laundry in Uruguay can be a process, it’s just another part of the culture that we’ve adjusted to.

Renting an Apartment in Uruguay

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Renting an apartment in Uruguay is a very different process than our experiences in the States. Oftentimes in the US, you deal directly with the owner. However, in Uruguay, typically both the owner and the renter have a real estate agent (inmobiliaria) representing them.

As a renter in Uruguay, it’s best to have more than one real estate agent representing you… we had four. Why? There is no MLS (multiple listing service) in Uruguay, so oftentimes only the owner’s inmobiliaria and a few of their friends know about each available apartment.

Every real estate agent will have different apartments to show you, so you don’t want to limit yourself to only what one agent has to show you. Luckily we were given that piece of advice our first week here.

We decided to spend our first week exploring Pocitos to get to know the area, and start looking at apartments our second week in Montevideo. We had our room at the Punta Trouville Apart Hotel reserved for three weeks, and we were hoping to have an apartment before the end of that three-week period.

The first apartment in Uruguay we decided to check out was one we saw on the Internet. It was a fully furnished 2-bedroom apartment listed on the Internet for U$S 600.

When we contacted the inmobiliaria, she showed us the apartment and told us the rent was U$S 650… It was also listed as being in Pocitos, but it was actually in Parque Batlle. Next inmobiliaria please.

Our next inmobiliaria showed up to our hotel in a cab and said she didn’t have enough money to pay for a cab to the property. It was a “3-bedroom house” in “the heart of Carrasco,” furnished at U$S 620 per month.

We planned on staying in Pocitos, but that is an AMAZING deal for a furnished 3-bedroom house in Carrasco. She told us it had a “nice patio and a parrilla” and it was “not to far from the beach” and it was “walking distance to everything.”

Well, it was actually in Carrasco Norte. The “3-bedroom house” was a quadra-plex and the unit was a center unit. The 3rd bedroom was off of the kitchen and led to the parrilla, and didn’t have a door… I would consider it a dining room.

It was walking distance to the Portones Shopping Mall; “They have all the stores there, you don’t need any others.” And it was a good 2-3km from the beach… LOL, at least we got to see part of Carrasco we would have not otherwise seen.

After that, we had two other realtors we were working with and they were both phenomenal. We started out looking at furnished one-bedroom Uruguay apartments, thinking that Zoë could sleep in her travel crib in our room since we only planned to sign a six-month lease initially.

While it was a nice idea, we quickly realized we just wouldn’t have enough storage space for our luggage… or much privacy.

So, after seeing several very nice fully furnished one-bedroom Uruguay apartments ranging from U$S 500-900 our first week of looking, we started viewing two-bedroom apartments in our third week in Montevideo.

On Wednesday, we had a full day of apartments to see with our real estate agent. (BTW, because we did a 6-month lease with option to extend; we paid a premium. If you are willing to do a 1-year lease, you can get an even better price…)

The first two-bedroom apartment we saw was beautifully furnished, but overpriced at U$S 1200 per month (gringo discount). Then we saw a couple of Uruguay apartments in a compound type community. The whole community was gated with 24-hour security, and it even had a market and jardin (preschool) in it.

We were told there were a lot of international people and people from the US who lived there. They were reasonable priced U$S 700-850 range, however, the community was very secluded from the heart of Pocitos, where we really wanted to live. In addition to that, if we wanted to live with a bunch of people from the US, we would have stayed in the US. Zoë was tired, so we went home to rest for the day.

The next morning we were out looking at Uruguay apartments again. The first one we saw was down the coast a bit, right on the Rambla.It had amazing views (the yacht club on one side and the beach on the other, but again, it was just a bit too far from the area of Pocitos we wanted to live (at U$S 1000 per month).

The next apartment we saw was a small two-bedroom apartment overlooking the park, and a couple blocks from the water. At, U$S 850, it was perfect. We decided we would take that one…

Until we saw the next and final apartment on our tour. It was only a half of a block from the water and one block from the park. It was nicely furnished and the second bedroom was a little bigger, which was nice for Zoë.

It also had a pool, parrilla (barbeque), gym and 24-hour security. It was slightly more at U$S 900 per month, but gastos communes was less (basically like HOA fees that you as a tenant are responsible for when renting an apartment in Uruguay).

So, we went to lunch to talk about our options and decided to make an offer on the final apartment we saw. We made an offer that day, Thursday. We offered a little less than the asking price, in exchange for paying six months rent up front.

Unfortunately the owner lived in Argentina and was out of town, so we were told we’d have to wait until Monday for an answer. Monday came and we received a counter offer, which we quickly accepted.

However, on Tuesday the owner decided that since Zoë walks, she wanted to renegotiate (I guess she was afraid Zoë would break something). We decided that we weren’t interested in renting from her at that point, and made an offer to rent the other apartment we liked.

Unfortunately, that owner decided that since we did not have an Uruguayan job, he didn’t want to rent to us (even though we were paying six months rent up front plus a security deposit). At least he let us know immediately.

Our real estate agent assured us this was not common, and that it was the first time they’d ever experienced anything like this when working with families like ours to rent an apartment in Uruguay.

Luckily, there was an apartment that had just become available in the heart of Pocitos that they could show immediately.

So, Brian went down to take a look at it (Zoë was down for a nap) and it was perfect! It was bigger, less expensive than either of the other places we were looking at (U$S 700 per month) and right on 21 de Setiembre (one of the main drags in Pocitos), one block from the park and 5 ½ blocks from the water. It has a lavaropa (washing machine), drying lines on our back balcony, and we have a front balcony as well.

We immediately put in an offer on it. It was accepted; we signed the papers Wednesday and moved in on Thursday. It was a great feeling to know that we’d be out of that hotel. As much as we all love each other, we also need our own space.

So, even though it was a trying process to rent an apartment in Uruguay, we’re happy with the way things turned out. We love our apartment. Our porters are great (yes, we have porters… it’s pretty cool). Our apartment came with a parking spot, which we don’t need since we don’t own a car, and Mario (one of our porters) was able to rent it out to another tenant for $1000 Uruguayan pesos per month. So, that essentially dropped our rent to only about U$S 655 per month. We couldn’t even get an unfurnished studio for that price in San Diego, let alone a furnished apartment with porters!

We would also highly recommend the inmobiliaria who helped us our rent our apartment in Montevideo, Uruguay. They are professional, very friendly and extremely helpful. We also found that they had the most listings to offer us to look at in the Pocitos area (they cooperate with several other agents to find you the perfect apartment to rent or buy in Uruguay). You can visit their website here.

As promised here are pictures of our new apartment in Uruguay:

Front Balcony
Living Room
Kitchen
Guest Bathroom (small shower behind door)
Master Bathroom
Zoë’s Bedroom
Master Bedroom
Back Balcony

Massage in Montevideo Uruguay

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UPDATE: Jan is no longer in MVD. Both her and Ken moved on to the beautiful Andes in Ecuador. Not only will we miss them, but our backs will too 😉

If you’ve been looking to get a massage in Montevideo, Uruguay, you have a few options. There are a number of clubs or “spas” around that offer massage services. If you want an “okay” massage, you can get one… BUT… if you want a GREAT massage you’ll want to go to Jan Wallace.

Even though most of you haven’t heard of Jan, many celebrities have. Jan started practicing massage in 1983. She was trained in Oregon and first licensed there. Oregon has very strict licensing guidelines as opposed to Uruguay, which has none.

After practicing for many years in Oregon she moved to San Diego, California where she worked at La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad. La Costa Resort and Spa is the #2 Spa in the world. She was Barbara Walters preferred massage therapist at this spa. After Jan’s time at La Costa, she created her own massage business in San Diego.

Now Jan lives here in the Pocitos area of Montevideo, Uruguay. We had the pleasure of meeting Jan and we immediately took advantage of her services. Wow…  Jan gives an awesome massage. We are now her regular clients.

She is trained in a variety of massage techniques, including Swedish Massage, Shiatsu/Acupressure, Reflexology, Sports Massage, Lymphatic Drainage Massage, Trigger Point Therapy, Deep Tissue and Pregnancy Massage.

Additionally, Jan one of a select few individuals in the world who practices Bio Energy Therapy. Bio Energy Therapy is a non-invasive treatment that can help with may chronic problems that are often considered incurable. We opted to use this therapy to help heal some back, neck and shoulder pain. We were surprised at the speed with which we experienced positive results. Jan can explain this technique in much greater detail if you’re interested in learning more.

World Famous Tattoo Artist Visiting Uruguay:
Set Your Appointment Now

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Johnny Luck, world famous tattoo artist, is in Montevideo, Uruguay from now through August 15, 2009.  He is setting appointments to work out of Good Luck Tattoo on 21 de Setiembre @ Hellauri.

If you want or need a tattoo, please contact us to set up an appointment. In the meantime, Johnny has an extensive portfolio with him that you can touch and feel, and a couple of examples of his work posted online. Click here to check out his web page.

Click here to contact us.