Spring is here. I walked the four miles or so to the Old Town (Ciudad Vieja) and renewed my visa. The office is at Misiones 1513, a few blocks from the sea. In Plaza Libertad there were people strolling around sight-seeing and buying food, though street food isn’t the way of life it is in India or Malaysia or Morocco.
Actually, you don’t need a visa with a US passport. But I was told I’d have to leave the country and reenter after 90 days, so I’d been planning on making the boat trip back to Buenos Aires. That would have been about $70. Fortunately, I googled and found that all you need to do is show up at Immigration and ask to extend your stay. That cost was roughly $15.
Moral of the story: Sometimes the information on the web is wrong and you need to talk to people to find out the real deal, Other times, people are repeating misinformation and you need to verify from the web.
The whole thing took about an hour, mainly because I had to go out and change money. The Uruguayan peso has strengthened a bit recently, trading at 21 and 22 (compra and venta). So I didn’t want to change any more than I absolutely had to. The man at the cambio seemed to understand my cheese-paring mentality. No problem, he said in good English, as I handed him a hundred. I’ll change twenty for you.
It’s what I like about people here. They seem to understand the notion of “making do.” It’s not a shame. In the US, at least until the market-crash wised people up, a lot of my friends would consider this unseemly haggling.
So far, things have turned out much as I expected, except for rent (higher than expected) and food (much higher than expected). The weather really is temperate. The environment really is pristine. The people really are easy-going. The roads really are safe and good. And it’s not crowded or scruffy or polluted or noisy, as parts of Buenos Aires are. (It’s also not as much of a party scene).
Electronics are expensive – but I expected that. Few places in the world are as cheap as the US for electronics.
My one gripe is keeping in touch with everyone. Skype is relatively inexpensive but the sound isn’t great. I keep calling landlines in the US and in India and getting all sorts of background noise and distractions. The connection disappears. And sometimes it takes ages to get through. If this is the replacement for telephones, I’m not impressed.
The Indian government and a number of private companies have got around to Latin America and are investing in land here. The idea is to produce food more cheaply than can be done in India, even after adding shipping costs.
So maybe Indian pensioners and retirees won’t have to spend their entire savings on food and water in the future, as I’ve been afraid they might.
Maybe also, India won’t be destabilized by the bombing in Afghanistan…
Maybe China and India will be able to see eye to eye on their riparian disagreements…maybe…
Maybe…
But I’m not holding my breath.
Muchisimas gracias for this entry. I hope you continue the “on the ground” reports from MVD. I agree with you and Mr. Bonner about the next wave of deflation,
“A second reason is that we still haven’t come out of the deflationary movement of the economy. We had the first wave of contraction last year, followed by an artificial bounce provoked by stimulus money and a lot of happy talk from the pundits. Now the second contraction has begun. Gold might do well in a deflation relative to other commodities, but it has (so far) tended to sink when the market sells off, and that’s precisely what happened yesterday. No surprise there for me at all.”
and that you are wise to stay in greenbacks awaiting an increase against the peso.
I am not familiar with the Plaza Libertad, but in 18 more days I will be sitting in the Plaza de la Constitución in front of McDonalds and the Iglesia having my morning “lomito con huevo” and “café con leche”.
it’s a lovely place and practically every building in my neighborhood warrants a second look..
I like that Jon Stewart is actually being poterayrd in a positive way on a conservative site for once!And I do think that Ron Paul is one of the straighter shooters of all the candidates right now, but I don’t think his physical image is enough to win. He is for sure smarter and more level headed than most of the others, but he looks weak and old. The pundits are right when they say charisma is needed these days, unfortunately. That is my only possible explanation as to why he isn’t getting the press coverage he should be getting.VA:F [1.9.7_1111]please wait…
I don’t know whether it’s just me or if everyone
else experiencing issues with your blog. It appears like some of the written text
in your posts are running off the screen. Can someone else please comment and let
me know if this is happening to them too? This might be a issue with my internet browser
because I’ve had this happen previously. Thank you