Hmm, I seem to be on a writing spree. I’ve had a cold/flu since Sunday so maybe I’m starting to feel better. Also, we just got past the winter solstice so the days are going to start getting longer! Even though it’s the first days of winter (cold) the days get longer (sun) which is good (smile). Maybe the cold (the weather and the one in my nose) along with the short days accounts for my more-negative-than-usually rantings lately. Uruguay is a wonderful country. Those of you who live here can probably relate to some of the things I wrote about in my last few posts. Those who aren’t here yet should know what to expect. One of the things that attracts a lot of foreigners to Uruguay is that it feels like going back in time to a more innocent era. One of the things that drives a lot of foreigners crazy about Uruguay is that it feels like going back in time! There’s good and there’s bad which can sum up life anywhere on this planet. The good in Uruguay, in my opinion far outweighs the bad. Sometimes I get frustrated and impatient and wish things would change but then I realize that if things were to change too much it just wouldn’t be unique anymore.

With few exceptions every couple in the expat community here is binational. Gay (JP and me) and straight (almost everybody else). Has anybody else noticed this? We have Uruguay/USA, Uruguay/Canada, Uruguay/Brazil, Argentina/Canada, Germany/Canada, Colombia/USA, and more. It’s really one of the things I love about the community here. It’s not a North American group, or an English-speaking group. It’s nice. It is, for me, one of the special things about life in Uruguay.

It would be nice to have more out gay people in the group though. JP and I are getting tired of carrying the rainbow flag around by ourselves.

This is a venting post!

I know, I know, I’m doing a lot of bitching but I consider this my therapy, okay?

Hola everyone. It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been very busy working on my Web projects. Plus for the entire month of February I was forced to used Microsoft Windows (yuck). I’m gonna do some venting in this post. Normally I try to concentrate on the good and forget about the bad but right now I just have a need to let some frustrations out.

First topic for venting: Miami-Box (www.miami-box.com). I’ll start by saying a few good things about them. They’re cheap, the people are generally pleasant, and they do a great job delivering letters and magazines. Now for the not so good. On January 31st the power adapter for my Apple laptop (my girlfriend as JP refers to it) died. So, on January 31st I ordered a replacement online from Apple. It arrive in Miami at the offices of Miami-Box on February 6th. Well, that’s when they emailed me telling me that they received it. According to FedEx they received it the day before at 1:55pm. I didn’t have the power adapter in my hands until late in the day on February 28th — 28 days after I ordered it and 23 days after Miami-Box received it.

Miami-Box ships out of Miami on every Thursday. My package arrived there on a Monday. It should have been delivered to me by February 12th or 13th at the latest considering it would have to go through UY Customs. For some unexplained reason it didn’t ship to UY until the following Thursday, February 15th. The following week JP called them asking when they’re going to deliver it. They explained that it was being held in UY Customs at that they could represent me and pick it up (for a fee) or that they can give me the paperwork (for a lower fee) and we could pick it up ourselves. We asked them to do it for us and do it ASAP. On February 26th they delivered to the house the paperwork for clearing Customs. JP called them back. They asked him who he spoke with the previous week because they had no record of us requesting them to do the clearing for us. We were left with two options — return the paperwork to them or go to the airport and take care of the clearing of Customs ourselves. Early in the morning on Wednesday, February 28th JP went to the airport with the paperwork from Miami-Box and attempted to clear customs.

I believe I wrote about the DNA (UY Customs, Dirección Nacional de Aduanas) process in another post. To sum it up you have to move papers around to nine or ten different people receiving signatures, stamps, and approvals at each station. That Wednesday morning JP made it through four or five of the stations before they told him NO! they won’t release the package to him. It turns out there was no invoice in the box so they had no idea how much the adapter was worth so they didn’t know how much tax to charge him!

After he came home I printed the receipt from Apple’s Web site and went back to the airport. Since JP had already started the process I only had to go to seven different people to finally pay the taxes (two different taxes collected by two different cashiers on two different floors). In the end I was happy since I had the adapter, packaged nicely in three nested boxes.

All together, Florida sales tax, shipping from Apple to Miami, shipping from Miami to Uruguay, transportation for JP and me to and from the airport two times and the taxes charged by DNA cost about US$120. The adapter itself cost US$79.

Okay, finally as of last week I have my laptop up and running again. The story continues though. In the meantime I called Apple support (using Internet VOIP phone service Vonage which deserves a post of its own). Apple arranged to have another adapter sent out to me for free since it’s within my warranty period. The box they shipped it in was to be the box I used to return my defective adapter. Also, they were including the paperwork and shipping label I’d need to return the defective one. They said I’d have ten days after receiving the new one to return the old one or I’d be charged US$79 (plus tax and shipping).

On March 1st I received an email from Miami-Box stating that they received the adapter from Apple. It made it on the flight to Uruguay that same day. JP called Miami-Box on Monday. They said that this time it wasn’t held by DNA and that they’d deliver to the house on Thursday or Friday. Since we had only ten days to return the defective one to Apple and since all the return information was included in the box with the new one we arranged to pick it up at the Miami-Box office here in Montevideo on Tuesday. It didn’t arrive at their office until yesterday. JP went to their office with the defective adapter in hand planning to use the info received with the new adapter to ship the old one back to Apple via FedEx. Well, that didn’t happen.

This time around the people in Miami-Box in Miami opened the package from Apple, threw away the box and all the paperwork and put the adapter, which was packaged in a zip-lock bag, in with the rest of my mail. That’s why DNA didn’t hold it to collect tax, they didn’t see it. Since Miami-Box threw away the box and papers that came with the adapter we had no way of returning the defective one!

Today I called Apple and explained what had happened. They wanted to ship me a new box so that I could return the defective part. NO! I told them that I’ll pay for the return shipping, just tell me where to send it and what information to include in the package. They told me. JP ran over to Punta Carretas shopping to send it via DHL. (After my last experience with DHL I’d sworn that I’d never use them again but FedEx is on the other side of town and we wanted to get this out to Apple ASAP.)

DHL charged US$58 for three-business-day delivery and because of the way they do thing it’ll probably get held in US Customs upon arrival in the United States. The Uruguayan Post Office would have cost half the price and with FedEx I had never paid more than US$30 to send anything to the US (and they get it there in two days).

Lessons Learned: I will never use Miami-Box again for anything other than magazines and letters. Even those I’ll switch back to USABox. And I will never use DHL again neither for sending or receiving packages. NEVER! And, I’ll do whatever I can to avoid having anything held by DNA. Hopefully UY and USA will enter into a free-trade agreement and all this Customs b.s. will be a thing of the past. (Oh no, I brought up politics so I’ll probably get a ton of email about US imperialism and the reasons they want a free-trade agreement with UY. All I know is that I don’t want to pay huge import fees and spend half a day trying to get things released from DNA.)

USABox might cost a little more but their advantages are worth it. They email you the moment they receive anything in Miami (I’ve checked the delivery time of things on FedEx’s Website and USABox usually emails me within two hours of receiving packages). Also, for envelopes they scan the envelope, post the picture in your inbox on their site and email you a notification. They’ll either send you your mail on a set schedule (e.g. once a week, or once a month) or they’ll hold it until you notify them to send it. When you request them to ship your mail you go to your USABox inbox on their Website. You put a check mark next to the items you want them to ship. This is cool since if you have one thing that you need urgently or if you have something that you suspect will be held up by DNA you can have them shipped separately from the rest of your mail. If you receive junk mail you can delete it from your inbox which will tell them to throw it away for you.

Another cool thing about USABox is that they won’t open your packages unless you request them to (you have to describe the contents and declare a value on their Website). When you enter your shipping request they give you the option to repackage everything for you. If they do repackage and if it reduces the cost of shipping they’ll split the savings with you. USABox normally uses DHL to ship but for US$9 more they’ll use FedEx instead. From what I’ve heard FedEx is much better at clearing things with DNA (actually, a DHL employee here in Montevideo told me this). After everything I’ve gone through with DHL using FedEx is worth the nine dollars.

Oh, one more venting thing. Miami-Box’s Website is only in Spanish and as far as I can tell all of their employees are monolingual (Spanish only). Now, I know, everybody in the world doesn’t need to speak English, and they’re an Uruguayan company and Uruguay is a Spanish speaking country but they’re offering a service shipping from the United States to Uruguay. Everything they receive in Miami is in English (letters, magazines, and most importantly, packages). If they had an English speaker in Miami opening packages they might have realized that the paperwork that came with my Apple adapter was important. Another point is that Montevideo is a world capital and there are people here who are more comfortable with English so why don’t they at least have their Website in both Spanish and English?

If you decide to join USABox and click on any of my USABox links on this page I’ll get a referral credit. I have no idea what that means but it sounds cool so if you enroll with USABox please use one of my links, okay?

I have some more venting to do (about Microsoft, Windows, and Internet Explorer) but that will have to wait. Since it’s been so long since I posted any photos I wanted to upload a few then I have some work to do.

The Family

Parque Rodó

The Golf

Playa Ramirez

Around Town

Some people have asked me for an update on my visa situation. Nothing much to report. I’m here legally (thankfully) and am waiting on two things. The first was the civil registry wouldn’t accept the copy of my birth certificate since it did not list my parents’ names. I sent for another official copy from the mother land and that has arrived so we just have to have it translated and submit it to the civil registry so they can issue my Uruguayan birth certificate.

The second paperwork we’re waiting on is my FBI statement of no criminal record. I had it done before I left the motherland (went to the local Seattle police, got fingerprinted, and sent the request to the FBI). What I didn’t do was have the Uruguayan consulate legalize it before leaving the USA. That’s being done now. Once these two minor issues are taken care of I will receive my official cedula, or national ID card.

I posted the following as a reply to a comment on one of my earlier posts. I’m including it here since others may be interested.

Sorry for taking so long to respond to your comment. There is a different class of visa for investors (anyone who invests over US$100,000 either in real estate or by opening an account at the Bank of the Republic). I believe there are benefits to that class of visa but I’m not sure what they are exactly. One thing I’ve heard is that you’re able to import a car tax free which with my type of visa, rentista, (income from outside of the country) I’d have to pay some huge tax on the import of a car. Plus with the investor’s visa there are restrictions on what you can do with that $100,000 for x number of years. The rentista visa process here isn’t really too complicated and the government doesn’t deny visas arbitrarily. They do want all of the paperwork to be in order which is why I used a visa consultant (highly recommended if you are not fluent in Spanish).

Often people ask me what’s different between life in Uruguay and the United States. That’s such a huge and very general question. I could devote this entire blog to just pointing out differences. For this entry I’m going to report some statistics. These are just numbers and numbers are easily manipulated plus methods of gathering facts can differ from country to country.

Since numbers are neither good or bad and interpreting numbers is often very subjective I’m going to only point out a few of the differences that, in my opinion weigh heavily in favor for Uruguay. 1) Overall crime is less. 2) 94% of the eligible population voted in the presidential election. 3) HIV infection rate per capita is half of the US. 4) A huge percentage of the population is nonreligious. 5) Terrorism is virtually nonexistent.

Okay, some of the numbers I don’t like. 1) They sell Big Macs here! 2) There is crime. 3) Wages are very low. 4) Telephone service is very expensive. 5) Internet usage is relatively low.

Here are my sources: Nationmaster’s page on Uruguay. CIA World Factbook page on Uruguay. Nationmaster’s page on US. CIA World Factbook page on US.

Population: UY 3,344,000; US 298,444,000: UY has 1.2% the population of the US
Area: total: 176,220 sq km (slightly smaller than the state of Washington); US 9,826,630 sq km: UY has 1.8% the area of the US
Life Expectancy: UY 76.33 years; US 77.85 years

CRIME
Assaults per 1,000: UY 1.3; US 7.6
Burglaries per 1,000: UY 1.6; US 7.1
Car thefts per 1,000: UY 1.2; US 3.9
Year abolished death penalty: UY 1907; US n/a
Fraud per 1,000: UY 0.33; US 1.26
Murder by firearm per 1,000: UY 0.025; US 0.028
Prisoners per 100,000: UY 209; US 715 (highest of all nations in the world)
Rapes per 1,000: UY 0.05; US 0.3
Robberies per 10,000: UY 1.57; US 1.38
Total crimes per 1,000: UY 21.70; US 80.06

DEMOCRACY
Civil and political liberties (scale 1 (low to 7 high): UY 6; US 6
Compulsory voting: UY strict enforcement; US n/a
Presidential election voter turnout: UY 94.7%: US 49.3%

ECONOMY
Big Mac: UY US$1.82; US US$3.15
GDP Real growth rate: UY 6.5%; US 3.5%
Gross National Income (per capita): UY US$5,617; US US$33,070
Literacy: UY 98%; US 99% (UY ranks higher than 153 countries in the world including Spain, Greece, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Israel, Panama, Colombia, Mexico, China, Brazil, and India)

HEALTH
% of population using adequate sanitation facilities: UY 94%: US 100% (UY is tied with Paraguay and is higher than 94 other countries listed including Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, China, and India)
% of population using improved drinking water sources: UY 98%; US 100% (UY is tied with or higher than 116 other countries)
HIV AIDS Adult prevalence rate: UY 0.3%; US 0.6%
Happiness level> Quite happy: UY 59%; US 53%
Happiness level> Very happy: UY 21%; US 39%

MEDIA
Average cost of a 3-min. local call: UY US$0.17; US US$0.09
Personal computers per 1,000: UY 102; US 544
Mobile pones per 1,000: UY 190; US 651
Televisions per 1,000: UY 229; US 741 (Americans watch 28 hours of television per week. Statistics for UY are not available.)
Internet users per 100,000: UY 20: US 55 (Highest is New Zealand with 79 and lowest is Tajikistan with .07. World average is 18.4)

MILITARY
Expenditures per capita: UY US$73; US US$936

PEOPLE
Ethnic groups: UY white 88%, mestizo 8%, black 4%, Amerindian (practically nonexistent); US white 81.7%, black 12.9%, Asian 4.2%, Amerindian and Alaska native 1%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.2% (2003 est.)

RELIGION
Church attendance: UY 31%; US 44%
UY: Roman Catholic 66% (less than half of the adult population attends church regularly), Protestant 2%, Jewish 1%, nonprofessing or other 31%
US: Protestant 52%, Roman Catholic 24%, Mormon 2%, Jewish 1%, Muslim 1%, other 10%, none 10% (2002 est.)

SPORTS
World Cup Wins: UY 15; US 6
World Cup Wins per 10 million people: UY 43.911 (#1 in world); 0.203 (#49)

TERRORISM
Global Terrorism Indicator: UY 0: US 3 (scale from 0 to 5; 0=no terrorism deaths)
Terrorist Acts > 2000-2006: UY 3: US 98

A bunch of my gay friends are reading this blog as well as some guys (and gals?) who have stumbled upon it. I know some of you are considering a move to Uruguay so I thought I’d write a little about gay life here. Actually “a little” is all I’m really qualified to write since I haven’t really sought out the local gay scene. When I was in my twenties I lived in New York City and Miami. Back then I did plenty of socializing in gay discos, bars and night clubs. These days I’d rather stay home and watch paint dry than hang out in a bar. So if anybody is looking for a source for gay nightlife info I’m definitely not your guy.

As for everyday life as a gay man in Montevideo it’s pretty much been a non-issue. JP and I are completely out. We have gay friends and straight friends. Mostly straight friends actually. Uruguayans as a whole are very educated and therefore maybe a bit more open minded. Uruguay is also a non-religious secular society with a very strong separation of church and state. Because of their history (mostly Spanish and Italian immigrants) the culture has a lot of Catholic influences but without active meddling from the Vatican. [I don’t want to turn this into an anti-religion post since, though I’m an atheist, I respect everybody’s individual spiritual choices and I whole-heartedly defend the freedom of religious expression in the context of true separation of church and state. I do have a problem though with organized religions that preach hatred and intolerance towards gay people.]

In Montevideo there are several gay clubs and bars but there is no gay ghetto. I’ve noticed more gay people in the Pocitos and Punta Carretas neighborhoods but that could be because these are the two neighborhoods where I spend most of my time. Again though, these are definitely not gay neighborhoods like Chelsea, West Hollywood, the Castro, or South Beach.

I received the following comment from Larkin:

“I’m also gay and in my mid-20’s. I’m moving to Montevideo from Atlanta in May. Info on gay Montevideo is hard to come by, I know that it’s laid-back, and that’s part of it’s appeal to me. Any info on what neighborhood to rent in (Pocitos perhaps?)”

Yep, Montevideo’s gay scene can definitely be described as laid back. Pocitios is probably a good choice for you. There a lot of younger people (20s and 30s), it has a nice beach, and there’s plenty of restaurants and shopping within walking distance. Pocitos is a densely populated neighborhood with many high-rise apartments. Punta Carretas and Buceo are on either side of Pocitos and they’re both more mixed with high-rise apartments and single-family houses. Both are very nice. Parque Rodó is also a cool area. It’s probably more middle class while the others are middle to upper.

A great source for real estate listings is BuscandoCasa.com. Also, my realtor Lucia del Castillo is absolutely wonderful. She’s been in real estate here in Montevideo for a very long time. She speaks English and is very, very honest. She and her husband don’t have any children so Lucia has “adopted” JP and me as her sons so I’ve gotten to know her on a personal basis as well. Her Web site is luciadelcastillo.com and her email is info@luciadelcastillo.com.

This is part of a comment from William:

Wow what a gold mine, to find your blog. I’ve been reading Uruguayan Blogs for a little over a year now. My interest comes from wanting to find a place for semi-retirement. I’m a young 47 year old Gay man living and working in Seattle. I’ve read most of the other noted English language blogs and recently purchased Southron’s e-guide to Uruguay. But since I am gay and I don’t speak or read Spanish I’ve found hardly any info from a gay perspective.

The book William refers to, “Southron’s Guide to Living in Uruguay,” is an absolute must for anybody considering a move to Uruguay. It’s a well-researched reference full of useful information. Southron keeps it interesting with a great sense of humor. You can buy it directly from Southron’s Uruguay Living blog.

If anybody out there has questions about specific topics — gay or not — please feel free to ask. Uruguay and Montevideo offer an endless amount of topics for blog posts but if I can address a subject that’s of particular interest to people I’d be happy to do it.

Every Sunday afternoon at 1pm there’s an expat lunch at the Old Maz Deli. It’s a cool group of very diverse people from all over the world (though mostly gringos). On most Sundays there’ll be somebody new who’s in town either checking out Montevideo or who just moved to Uruguay. This post has nothing to do with the Sunday lunch except for the fact that I took these pictures this past Sunday as I was walking to Old Maz. It was an incredibly beautiful day. (If you’re ever in Montevideo on a Sunday afternoon stop by and have lunch with us!)

By clicking on the photos you can see a larger version.

The Fish Market at Rambla Gandhi and Calle Tabaré

OCA Flags on Rambla Gandhi

People Enjoying the Sunshine

A New Flowerbed

A Family Relaxing on the Seashore

Cala di Volpe Boutique Hotel

Rugby Anybody?

One of the Few Sea-Front Restaurants

Okay, I couldn’t resist taking this shot. Tienda Tits and a Barbie kiosk is Punta Carretas Shopping. Somebody really has a sense of humor to put these two next to each other.

Tits, MasterCard and Barbie. Master the Possibilities!

Check out the Uruguay Travel Section in The New York Times. There are some interesting articles about Punta del Este, Montevideo, and the country in general.

Totally unrelated . . . my shipment from Seattle has been in Uruguay for almost three weeks. They’re finally delivering everything on Friday. Hopefully they won’t charge too much for storage. It’s going to be nice to have some furniture in this house! Updates and photos will be forthwith.

Being an expatriate doesn’t sever all ties to the motherland (what I call the USA). Before I arrived in Montevideo I set up an account with USABox.

With USABox you will have an address in Miami, Florida. You have all your mail (including FedEx and UPS packages) sent there. When you receive anything in your box they scan the outside of the envelope or, if it’s a package, they enter a description and email you. Your online inbox shows each item waiting to be sent to you. If something’s obviously junk you can simply delete it from your inbox and they’ll throw it away. If you like to shop online and receive several boxes of merchandise you can request that they repack everything to save you money on shipping. You can control when items are sent to you. They have different monthly plans which include varying amounts of shipping included. Their default shipping company is DHL (which really sucks here in UY) so I pay $9 per shipment to have them use FedEx. USABox is cool for expats who haven’t decided on where they’re going to live yet. Maybe you’ll give Uruguay a try for a year then move on. If that’s the case all you do is change your forwarding address with USABox and they’ll send your packages to your new address anywhere in the world including anywhere in the USA. It’s great also for people who do a lot of traveling for their jobs.

If Uruguay is going to be your home then you should check out Miami-Box. I discovered them by accident last week. I was in a taxi stopped at a red light and I saw next to us a mini-van with Miami-Box (miami-box.com) painted all over it. When I got home I checked out their website. Their name is the only thing in English on their website which is probably why I didn’t find them before moving to Montevideo. If they’d maintain their site in more languages than Spanish I’m sure they’d do a lot more business, after all Montevideo is a capital city with diplomats from all over the world. Since it’s a mailing service from the motherland to Uruguay they should at least have it in Spanish and English. Oh well, seems obvious to me but I guess they must have enough clients that they don’t want to be bother. I digress.

Their service is simpler. You’ll have an address in Miami. Once a week they load up all the mail for all of their customers and send it via air freight to Montevideo. You pay each week based on the weight of your shipment. If you receive nothing you pay nothing. They have their own delivery fleet in Uruguay and they will take care of clearing customs for you if necessary (at a fraction of the price of DHL!).

A nice feature of Miami-Box, which might make the service interesting for everyone in Montevideo including locals and expats from other countries than the USA is that they offer free magazine subscriptions. Of course nothing’s ever really free. You do have to pay the shipping on the magazines. Then again if you paid for the magazine subscription you’d still have to pay extra to have it shipped to Uruguay so it’s a pretty good deal.

Another service they offer is letting you shop online without a credit card. Good for people without international credit cards. I didn’t pay much attention to this part of their site but I think the way it works is you email them a link to what you want to buy, they calculate the cost, you deposit the cash in their bank account in Montevideo, and they buy the item for you.

There are a lot of people in Canada and Europe reading this blog so if you folks know of similar services available in your countries go ahead and post them as a comment. If anyone has used USABox or Miami-Box feel free to share your experiences as well.

We had our first out of town visitors. My friends Mirlan and Oscar were vacationing in Argentina. For the last day of their trip they took the ferry from Buenos Aires to Montevido to hang with JP and me. Mirlan and I have known each other for almost five years. This was the first time I met Oscar but I’d definitely call him a friend now; he’s a cool dude.

As you may have guessed from the title of this post Mirlan and Oscar are Cuban. They both live in Miami now. After having lunch at Punta Carretas Shopping we took a walk across the street to the Punta Carretas light house. Afterwards we went to a restaurant in Parque Rodó for a beer. Coincidently our waitress, Ileana, is also from Cuba. She’s been here in Uruguay a year or two.

For dinner we went to Ciudad Vieja. Afterwards we took a walk through downtown and went to a casino. I walked in the place with US$20 and left with UY$732! A profit of about US$10. Not bad. A 50% return on investment after 90 minutes.

The next day Mirlan and Oscar caught the 1pm ferry back to B.A. and that night they flew home to Miami. It was nice spending time with them and showing off my new hometown of Montevideo. I think they enjoyed it. Maybe next time they’ll stay longer.

Here are a few photos of their whirlwind visit.

Three cool Cubans; Ilian, Mirlan and Oscar.

A Cuban sandwich. Oscar, JP and Mirlan.

Oscar and JP having a laughing attack.

Barney and Bamm-Bamm.

Mirlan with the Punta Carretas lighthouse.

View of downtown Montevideo from the tip of Punta Carretas.

Oscar and Mirlan with the luxury
apartments on the Rambla Gandhi in the background.

JP striking a pose.

Mirlan on the rocks (AKA Cuba Libre).

Oscar in Punta Carretas Shopping.

Mirlan summoning his flock.

Mirlan and JP

Mikey, Mirlan and Oscar

Mirlan and Oscar attempting a Tango.