I went to Uruguay for a month between June and July, 2008. Many places i'd been to before had been as a tourist, either being at a hotel or not staying for long enough to really get used to much at all. However, my girlfriend lives in Uruguay, so I went to stay with her and her family who aren't ... Read review
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Advantages: Cheap, fairly safe, great places to eat and see Disadvantages: Diverse people and places, with some being quite poor
I went to Uruguay for a month between June and July, 2008. Many places i'd been to before had been as a tourist, either being at a hotel or not staying for long enough to really get used to much at all. However, my girlfriend lives in Uruguay, so I went to stay with her and her family who aren't terribly rich, but could support me being there. As a result, I got a feel for what it is like to live there, rather than visit it.
Most ... ...who are not like this, so sorry if it sounds like I am stereotyping UK people here!) have no idea where or what Uruguay is. I myself didn't know till recently. It is a small country (about a quarter of the size of france) located in South America, on the east coast just below Brazil and just above Argentina. Spanish speaking, the inhabitants are mainly white, with some hispanic mixture thrown in. Many of the descendants are from Spain, Italy, a small ... more
I went to Uruguay for a month between June and July, 2008. Many places i'd been to before had been as a tourist, either being at a hotel or not staying for long enough to really get used to much at all. However, my girlfriend lives in Uruguay, so I went to stay with her and her family who aren't terribly rich, but could support me being there. As a result, I got a feel for what it is like to live there, rather than visit it.
Most people that I know (and there may be many people who are not like this, so sorry if it sounds like I am stereotyping UK people here!) have no idea where or what Uruguay is. I myself didn't know till recently. It is a small country (about a quarter of the size of france) located in South America, on the east coast just below Brazil and just above Argentina. Spanish speaking, the inhabitants are mainly white, with some hispanic mixture thrown in. Many of the descendants are from Spain, Italy, a small German influence and some British mixture. I think there may also be some Portuguese too.
Their currency is the Uruguayan Peso, which is - at the time of writing - about 38 to the pound. Even with globalisation, money is more valued there - by that I mean that if you lost a 10 peso coin there, it would be a bigger loss than losing 25 or so pence here. As a result, conversion between currencies can be a bit misleading. By that I mean I got Haagen Dasz ice cream for about £3 - pretty good price to be honest - but my girlfriend thought I was crazy to pay so much for ice cream - it was just way too much for her, even as a treat.
o Food and shopping
Some prices of other things. Mozerella is a very commonly eaten cheese and is pretty cheap. Usually comes pre-sliced. Bread is "American" - small and square, 550 gram loaf is more expensive than an 800 one in the UK. Milk is ridiculously cheap at about 50p for a litre (which comes in bags by the way, strange!). Meat is where you're looking at the real savings - beef is very common and very cheap. Even the most expensive beef there is less than £10 a kilo - which is about normal price here! Veg and fruit is widely available but not particularly eaten as regularly as it is here - the whole 5 a day thing isn't so key to people's diets there. Rice and pasta are commonly eaten with meals. The main cooking oil is rice oil, which is slightly fattier than the sunflower oil that is often used here.
Uruguay is very like America, in many respects. For example, they have McDonalds and Burger King like many countries - but I think they have been franchised from the US marketting team (or however its done!). The menu is the same as in America - quad stackers and all that. Also, they have a lot of Hershey's chocolate in the shops, as well as Oreos which are popular, the American version of Milky Way, the American sized packets of M&Ms and they drive on the right side of the road.
Saying that, they do have Cadbury's Dairy Milk - however this is simply the name and, alas, the varieties (except "Dream" which is "Cream" there) are all different, with the basic chocolate tasting almost identical to every other brand of chocolate in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay - completely tasteless. It is very strange, but their chocolate - despite the ingredient lists being the same as the UK equivalent - has no real taste at all to it. You eat, go to "taste", and feel nothing. So, if you like chocolate and caramel and that sort of thing, I would stick to something that is very local to South America called Dulce de Leche.
This is something I have never seen before here - it doesn't exist. It is basically milk, boiled with sugar, to create a brown thicky spread - like caramel. You can also get it with added cream, to make it thicker. It smells like cream cheese, but it tastes wonderfully and warmly sweet. They put it in deserts, cakes, sweets, chocolate, pancakes, in restaurants. They eat it with loads of stuff. Or if you're like me and my girlfriend, you spoon it out of the jar. You can make it here by boiling a can of Nestlé condensed milk for about 3 hours (theres instructions on google).
Uruguay has the record of holding the world's largest barbeque. So, they have a lot of meat for sale. If you ever visit there, some names of things and what they are:
- Asado. This is the name for a barbeque, but more commonly (and this is an abbreviation of I think a longer phrase) it is the name given to ribs - specifically cow ribs. Unlike your greasy chinese, these ribs are cut along the ribs, so you get a lot of meat on them. Best got from a restaurant - they will either cut the bone off it when they cook it, or they will serve you a slice of a rack of ribs.
- Chorizo - basically a big fat sausage. For some reason, when it is cooked it stays a dark pink in the middle. Tastes pretty nice, but I dont want to know what it is made of.
- Chivito - imagine subway, then imagine a greasy spoon cafe, then imagine that the sub is actually a burger. It is a huge burger, served with bacon, cheese, egg, olives, lettuce and tomato, other salads and a range of mayo-based sauces. Different places have different ways of doing it, but for about £2.50 you get a pretty hench burger which is difficult at best to eat with your hands alone. Worth a try, if you like burgers and don't care about calories.
- Churros - sort of like hard, thin yum-yums. Not too nice, personally, but they are fairly popular
- Bizcochos - essentially they are small pastries, like mini croissants and doughnutty type things. Usually youll buy a bag of them, telling the person at the deli counter which ones you want. Then they slap a label on and charge you for a bag of them, like in sainsbury's or something.
Overall, their food is great. If you are health conscious or want to know what is in all your food, I would be very careful with what you eat, since I am sure that there is a lot of salt and fat in things. But the country is pretty slim, so I guess it can't be too bad. It is easy to eat a lot there and some of the places you can eat out at are fantastic for both service and value.
When it comes to consumer electronics, it is a bit different. People get far lower wages than we do here in the UK and they work longer hours, too. Even students work a lot longer. Healthcare isn't free either. So people don't have the time that we do here to enjoy entertainment goods so much. As a result, video game consoles aren't sold in any big electronics shops (not that there are many of those, either). If you go to Uruguay, don't expect to pick up cheap games. Downtown, theres a few dodgy shops with cheapy copied games - I even saw a few that weren't genuine releases! Consoles sell easily for three times what they would in the UK or US. Plus, they all use NTSC - because even though the TV signal is really the same as PAL, the colour signal is the same as NTSC (some weird PAL-N standard there). So basically, don't buy games or consoles there. Plus, because of the price of the goods and the market in which they are available, prices are nearly exclusively in dollars (although you can pay with pesos, too, in most cases). Dollars are just a more stable and recognised currency, I guess. Toll booths take currencies in Reales, Argentinean or Uruguayan Pesos and Dollars. Some places will take Euros too, I think, but basically if you take Dollars to Uruguay, you will pretty much always be able to use them, except for buying little things like food or snacks.
o Culture
People in South America think Brits are cold. Why, I have no idea. I think we are awesome. What I can say is that Uruguayan people are very diverse. On the street you can see dogs walking around, seemingly stray, old VW beetles parked at the side of the road, rusty cars belching black fumes with poor kids on the streets - and then turn a corner to see a Porsche Carrera just sitting there. Crime is apparently fairly low, and I admit I didn't see any, but I wouldn't ever have my phone or iPod out in the street.
My girlfriend has been mugged before, by kids, who can apparently be quite threatening. Poverty is mostly on the outskirts of the cities, but you will get people on the streets at traffic lights wanting to clean your windows for a few pesos. I have heard of people being pickpocketed on busses, so I avoided using them. Some buildings look very nice though and for the most part, the shopping centres I went to had fairly comfortably-living people shopping in them. In some parts, the shopping centres were very packed and there were the equivalent of "chavs" in there - though without all the expensive sports gear. Everywhere in the world has their equivalent, I guess.
Without any real religious influence in the country and with lots of imported goods from America and Argentina, one of the only noticeable cultural things seems to be Yerba Mate, pronounced "Sherreh-va Martay". It is basically some herb that is sold in big packets - fairly cheaply - that is put into some cup-like wooden gourd thing and when hot water is poured in, it is sipped through a straw. The funny thing is seeing people walking around the streets doing this, and with a thermos flask under the arm they are holding the cup in. Argentina has a couple, but Uruguay has loads of people doing this. Walk around for long enough and youll find people of all ages, genders and richness drinking this stuff. The gourds they drink from all look the same, and the flasks are always pretty big. People will just go to work, shopping, to the market with this stuff. It tastes horrible!
So, while I never actually had any bad experiences, I did see a lot of people "loitering" around places, making me and my girlfriend feel sort of uncomfortable when walking around on our own.
o Places
I wont go into much detail about the places, since they are for another review, but the country has quite a bit of history. Colonia, for a start, was a fort town I think, apparently something to do with keeping the Portuguese out (who had control of it for a while) and as a result there are quite a few old ruins and things around. Nice to look at. Montevideo has lots of old buildings and architecture - theres a few British built railway stations and any fans of St Pancras will love one of the stations somewhere around there, which is huge and abandoned. Punte del Este has probably the least history that I saw when I visited, but it does have a very Miami'y feel to it, with all the palm trees and expensive houses and buildings.
So a few tips for Uruguay, and important things to know.
- Restaurant tips are around 10%. Some places (and youll have to check or be careful for this) might have service charges at a flat rate per person if you eat inside - I know that the pizza place "Don Peperone" did - but that might be one place, it might not be standard, I don't know.
- I think you need up-to date vaccinations, like DTT (I think it is?) and MMR. Other than that, there is no real health risk associated with Uruguay.
- The country is fairly secure, since there is no threat like bombings and stuff, being a lot key country, but you really shouldn't take risks like taking your phone out in the street with people around. I came back to the UK and saw girls with their phones around their necks - I just wanted to pull the thing off and throw it at them!
- Like the UK, tax is charged on the price of the item, so there is no sales tax (rate is 22%).
- Seatbelts, MOT, Tax and all that is very leaneant. There is no need for any rear seatbelts in a car and cars can be put on the road even if they are falling apart in places. So be careful on the roads - drivers don't seem to be particularly good, despite never seeing any crashes.
- You don't need a Visa (well,with a US or UK passport anyway) but you do have to fill in various forms when entering, by plane and boat. Customs probably won't search you - I know that coming in by boat was very easy. However, don't bring dairy or animal products in with you - there is a salmonella thing around I think (hence why at McDonalds I couldn't get a McHuevo - McEgg :[ )
- Things to buy include amethysts and pretty windchimes. The windchimes I got were made from slices of geodey things and they were both cheap and colourful. Amethysts are found in the north of the country and big, colourful geodes are on sale in many places. I think there could be money to be made in taking back lots of amethyst-related products if you know your stuff and prices, but really I would use it as more of a chance to get a nicely coloured pretty thing for yourself, if you wanted it. Uruguay has some very deep and colourful purples in their amethysts.
- Winter is in July, but even so it can still be hot. During my stay, it was very cold at times but also very hot some days! Summer can go into the 30s, so no hotter than the UK really. Their summer is in December/January.
Overall Uruguay surprised me - with significantly less strict rules of health and safety and other things, there is much more freedom and sensibility with many things in the country. Saying that, is is a Latin American country and there is a fair amount of poverty. If you had to go somewhere in South America, I would check out Uruguay in summer, especially Punte del Este and it's beaches.
