Exploring Uruguay

Expat & Travel Resource Guide

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How Young Expats Make Money Living Abroad

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Aces
We get a lot of questions about how young people can afford to live the expat life, especially in a country like Uruguay where wages are very low. Even without a retirement income, there are many options that allow young people to live abroad as expats.

There are people with online businesses and people that telecommute for companies in their home countries. Then there are people like our friend Lyle, who make their living playing online poker professionally.

Originally from Canada, Lyle currently lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but is planning to move to Punta Del Este, Uruguay next May. He spends his days playing poker and enjoying life as an expat.

He just launched his website and blog, which tell the story of how he makes his living playing online poker. If you enjoy playing online poker, or just want to explore another option for making an income online, check out his website and blog.


The Expat Cookbook – That’s What We’ve Been Up To

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It has been a couple weeks since we’ve posted a blog. We apologize for leaving you hanging (because we know you live for our blogs ☺), but we’ve got good reason!

We’ve been hard at work putting the finishing touches on our latest project, The Expat Cookbook.

The what? The Expat Cookbook… There are a lot of foods here that you just can’t get or are pretty expensive to buy. We never realized how much we took for granted Ranch Dressing and Hot Sauce. Since, we’re both very good cooks, creating The Expat Cookbook just made sense.

You can check it out through www.ExpatCookbook.com. It’s an eBook, so you can download it and use it right from your computer or print it out if that’s what your heart desires.

Try the recipes… Let us know what you think…

Have a great day and great eating to you!!!

Another Great Uruguay Expat Blog

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Another Uruguay Expat blog we frequent is Total Uruguay. It is run by “Lee from Pocitos” and in addition to a blog, the Total Uruguay website also features forums and other information on Uruguay. If you aren’t familiar with this Uruguay blog, check it out.

Lee is also responsible for organizing the Sunday Expat meeting that has traditionally been held at Old Maz in the Pocitos area of Montevideo. However, Old Maz is moving to a new location, under a new name, and will no longer be open on weekends. So, a new location for the Sunday Expat lunches has been chosen.

Starting August 30, the Expat lunch will be held every Sunday afternoon at 1 pm at the following location:

Fellini Ristobarette
Jose Marti 3408 (corner of Benito Blanco and Jose Marti)
1 block from the corner of Av. Brasil and Benito Blanco
Pocitos, Montevideo

You can find more information about the weekly Expat Meeting in Montevideo on the Total Uruguay website.

We’ve eaten at Fellini a couple times and it was great. One time we got lasagna to go (it had ham in it like almost all food in Uruguay) and the other time we had gnocchi. Both were great. We’ll definitely be checking out the new location for the Montevideo expat meeting in the coming weeks.

Break Out Your Favorite “Old Time” Pop Hits: La Noche De La Nostalgia

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La Noche De La Nostalgia is easily the biggest night out of the year in Uruguay… Even bigger than Christmas or New Year’s Eve!

What is La Noche De La Nostalgia you ask? Celebrated the 24th of every August, it might as well be a national holiday. In 1978, owners of a local radio station came up with the idea to celebrate the night before Uruguay’s Independence Day, August 25.

They organized a dance party featuring old-time pop hits from the 50s, 60s and 70s (hits from the 80s and 90s are incorporated today). Why “oldies?” To help everyone remember all time musical classics… hence the name La Noche De La Nostalgia. Local radio stations feature these classic pop songs starting at the beginning of the month all the way up until the night of the big celebration.

Today, everyone around the country takes part in the celebration… young, old, city people and country folk alike all turn out for La Noche De La Nostalgia. It’s not unusual to see whole families out together to celebrate. Whether it’s at one of the huge open-bar tent parties around Montevideo, or at a house party hosted by friends or family, just about everyone gets in on the celebration.

It’s the perfect night for such a celebration… with the 25th of August being a National Holiday; everyone has the day off work and can sleep in to recover from their long night of celebrating.

We’ll be having a few friends over for a celebration of our own… home cooked Mexican food. Yum. I guess that’s our way of conjuring of a bit of nostalgia for San Diego.

I’m sure the guys will go out for a few drinks afterward… not sure where yet since we’ve read that everywhere sells out. I’m sure they’ll find somewhere to join in on the celebration. Next year I’ll get to celebrate La Noche De La Nostalgia in true Uruguayan style as well (unfortunately it’s a just a little bit too much excitement for this pregnant woman this year).

But, for those of you do want to go out and celebrate, here are a few of the biggest parties to check out (if they aren’t already sold out!):

La auténtica Noche de la Nostalgia de Oceano y Zum-Zum
Address: Hipódromo Nacional de Maroñas (Montevideo Comm)
Cost: entry + drinks UY$ 1100 (inc vat.) per couple (single tickets will be sold at the door if remaining)

Reíte de la nostalgia (Laugh at Nostalgia)
This is an “anti-nostalgia” party running for its fifth year
Location: Centro, Rondeau and Colonia / ex-Plaza
Additional information: www.fotolog.com/reidelanostalgia

Rock to the Future
Location: SONIC, Buenos Aires 584
Cost: UY$ 150

Noche de los recuerdos (Night of Memories)
Location: Carrasco Polo Club (Servando Gomez and Camino Carrasco)
Cost: UY$ 400

More events can be found by clicking here.

There are also a couple of other Uruguay blogs that have written about La Noche De La Nostalgia that you may want to check out:

Total Uruguay

URMovingWhere.com

Global Post

Punta Del Este Expats

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.