Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, is the kind of human city that cities should be. Orderly, safe, pleasant, the city’s streets and its beachside promenade — along what is called the Rambla, which stretches for many miles — are full of joggers, bikers, dog walkers, and others just out enjoying life and themselves. I almost gave Montevideo a miss, but am glad I did not.

Montevideo always figured big for me as a kid, since it was off Montevideo, in the Rio Plata, where the German cruiser the Graf Spee engaged in a pitched battle with British warships in the early days of World War II. Following the battle, the ship put into Montevideo in neutral Uruguay, only shortly after to be put back to sea and then scuttled by its commander, Captain Hans Langsdorff, to keep it from falling into enemy hands. I was very interested in that war, no less in the saga of the Graf Spee, and thoughts of that childhood fascination came to me often during my days in the city.

While I’d never previously been to Uruguay, the second smallest country in South America, tucked in between Brazil and Argentina on the Atlantic coast, it initially was my first choice for relocation. Later, however, it dropped down on the list due what I call the “two ‘c’s” among my concerns: Cost and climate. All the reasons Uruguay was previously at the top of my list have been apparent to me during my five days so far in the country, but those two “c”s have been driven home in ways that are hard to ignore. If I can figure out how to deal with them, it might well again rise to the lead — so far, anyway. I do still have five more countries under consideration and which lie ahead in the itinerary of my voyage of rediscovery, so am reserving judgment for now.

In many ways — and others here have confirmed the thought — Uruguay is more European than South American. This connection shows up in its architecture, its patterns of life, its social structures and institutions, and even in its driving habits, which tend toward the aggressive. The country, especially the resort city of Punta del Este, is a favorite winter holiday destination for many Europeans.

Like neighboring Argentina and southern Brazil, a large percentage of the population actually derives from Italy. Not a majority or near majority as in Argentina, but a significant proportion. This influence helps explain some of the more liberal (in the true sense of the word) social trends that have been incorporated into the country, as well as some of the nuttier ones (like Fascism, present in the country’s past), that have alternately benefited and afflicted Uruguay over the decades and centuries.

To paraphrase Kerouac’s Sal Paradise, there must be a lot of Italians in Uruguay. Sorry. Just couldn’t resist. Showing my age, I suppose.

The irony

The irony is how this is such a livable country, but I wonder how people live here. Uruguay is said to be the most expensive country in Latin America, and I have no doubt but that it is. Prices are largely as high, or even much higher, as they are in the U.S., but the average income is about a third to a half of what it is in the U.S. I feel like the poor foreigner wandering around the supermarkets, my mouth open and talking to myself about the prices. No one else seems to do that, but I don’t understand how they can afford even the necessities of life.

“We practice frugality and minimalism,” one person told me, “which is why you make adjustments in your life and lead a simpler life, as is our case.”

I think I live pretty frugally in my normal life that I live in the U.S., and I wonder how much more frugality I can take. Last night, for example, I gave up on finding what I was looking for at a price I was willing to pay, and left the store with a single potato that I put to good use in preparation of my evening meal. One of my skills, which came in handy, is creating something from nothing. I guess that is one form of making an adjustment.

Most of the cars here are small, and for good reason. I just calculated what I paid for gas yesterday — 41 U.S. dollars for 22 liters — which works out to about $8.50/gallon. If I wanted to pay prices like that for gas, I could live in California, or in actual Europe. Again I wonder, how do people live here?

I ran into a display of appliances, TVs, and tools today, and while the TVs and tools were pretty pricey, though not outrageously so, the appliances weren’t bad, although most are a bit simpler than one would find in the U.S. One of those adjustments I suppose one makes, but that’s okay, as long as they do the job. At least one can still get a gas stove here, increasingly difficult in woke America. I even saw incandescent light bulbs. I’d buy a bunch if I could carry them with me, but I can’t. So I am condemned to the LED bulbs that are all one is now allowed to sell or buy in the Land of the Free.

Getting about

When I got in the rental Renault Kwid at the airport, I remembered I’d reserved a shift car. It’s been almost 22 years since I’d driven a manual, almost double that since I’d driven a Renault, but that’s okay. Driving a shift is like riding a bike or sailing a boat. Once one knows how to do it one never forgets.

If you’ve been following my posts, you’ve read about the lack of signs in Panama and the lack of, well, most things on the roads in Costa Rica. Uruguay is a breath of fresh air when it comes to getting about. There are actual roads, signs that not only exist, but make sense and are useful, route number markings, traffic lights, even left turn lanes and traffic circles (roundabouts to my British readers, called rotondas, locally), and actual traffic circle discipline. If they’d get rid of the speed humps, the bane of driving in any of these countries, it might actually be fun to drive around.

There are street names on most of the streets not just in Montevideo, but other smaller towns I’ve been in, too, often with arrows marking the direction for one-way streets. I soon discovered in Montevideo the street name signs are paid for by advertising. And the advertisements are twice the size as the street names on the sign. Until you figure that out, you’re likely to think there are lots of streets named Doña Coca or Acompaña and other such advertiser names. But at least they exist, for the most part. How civilized, right?

Once I left Montevideo on Sunday and began my way easterly, toward Punta del Este and the Atlantic side of the country, the signs actually have places on them one might recognize, like Punta del Este. Or simply El Este. One doesn’t have to know every obscure little place on the way to know in which general direction one is heading.

If it weren’t for the frightful price of gas, touring around the country could be enjoyable. In the past few days I’ve passed through places big and small, touristy and very local, and countryside so open and empty I felt I could be in Montana again, except for the ocean just a hundred or so meters to my right. For a small country, it has a lot to see.

Unfortunately, my other “c” — climate — has been reminding me that this is not the tropics, and the cold weather I seek to avoid is already making its presence felt. The day I arrived, last Friday, was, it turned out, the last day of summer. It was 33C/91F, sunny and wonderful. By the next day, the temperature had dropped to 20C/68F, and I’ve had more rainy, like today, or at least cloudy, than sunny days. Along with the rain has come very strong winds, blowing in off the Atlantic and kicking up some big waves. I’m already missing the endless summer I seek.

Montevideo is on the same latitude south as Rome, Georgia (between Atlanta and Charlotte), is north. And that means it can get cold. Quite cold. I’ve been in Rio Grande do Sul, just across the border in Brazil, in June, and just about froze to death. It can snow in Brazil, and Uruguay is further south, closer to the South Pole. It’s only March, but I’m already getting a taste for how cold it can get here. While the palm trees assure me, the blustery cold wind blowing off the ocean doesn’t.

Baring it all on Playa Chihuahua

My next stop outside Montevideo was Playa Chihuahua, one of the country’s legal nude beaches, called a playa naturista locally. There is a small, rustic community by the same name by the beach, which is a pristine stretch of sand stretching for miles, and that’s where I stayed for two nights. I was trying to plan my visit around elusive relatively sunny and warm days, and at least managed to score one of those, Monday, which was nice enough to be a beach day, though the ocean was way too cold for my taste. The other days were marked by strong winds and temperatures not exactly conducive to shedding one’s clothes.

I really liked Playa Chihuahua, and not just for the nude beach, though that is a major draw. I’m not a huge fan of clothes and there is a special pleasure that comes of being naked in nature. In any case, Playa Chihuahua seems like a laid back little community where one can settle in and be left alone, something that is a non-negotiable to me in my quest. I was able to garner a lot of useful information from one of the owners of the AirBnB where I stayed, and it turns out her husband actually builds the kind of prefab and container homes that make up a large number of the homes in Playa Chihuahua. One more inducement to keep Uruguay on my list.

I felt obligated to visit Punta del Este, and if this is the end of the season one could never tell. It is a city in its own rite, jammed with tourists, high rises, big yachts, and a cruise ship in its harbor. Staying in Playa Chihuahua, half an hour away, private jets passed overhead with regularity. Along with the hoi polloi, clearly it is a place for the rich and famous, too. A different kind of tourism than I experienced at Puerto Viejo, but touristy places just aren’t high on my priority list, regardless their nature.

Yesterday I moved on up the coast to a town called La Paloma, The Dove, where I am writing this. It has a certain charm of its own, and I’m staying in a little house that reminds me of a Hobbit house, with its quincha roof, quincha being the local version of thatch, and actually an entire traditional construction method. I’ve seen it as both quincha and quincho, but the woman who owns this place I’m sure said quincha, so I’m sticking with that. It probably has to do with Spanish’s gender endings, so as an adjective it would depend on the noun it modifies. This has definitely not been a beach day, so I’ve used part of the time to catch up on personal and business things, explore a bit, and write this post.

Decisions, decisions

Before I bore both of us to tears, I’m going to end this here. Decisions can be so hard to make. I’m not making any yet, but while the choices may be thinning a bit, new ones appear as old ones go away. My next stop is Botswana, in southern Africa, not as a possible relocation country but to visit a good friend, who is our ambassador there. I’ve lived in North Africa and traveled into the Sahara, but this will be my first time in sub-Saharan Africa, and I’m looking forward to it. Next post from there.

Featured image, along the Rambla in Montevideo

On the Passage of Human Rights, Montevideo

Big trees form canopies over the streets, Montevideo

Welcome to Playa Chihuahua

Sea gulls grounded by the wind on Playa Chihuahua

All images by the author

This piece also appears on my Substack, Issues That Matter. Comment, share, and subscribe, here, and there.

One correction to my previous post: In 1975, heading south from Guatemala with $22 to my name, I had four — not three — countries still to go through. Corrected on the online posts, but those reading from emails wouldn’t have gotten the correction. For the most correct version, it’s always good to read the posts online.