We have been considering Uruguay as a retirement destination

Hello Rall 62,

Welcome to expat.com!

For more visibility on the forum, I have moved your post to create a new discussion.

Hopefully our members who have been in a similar situation may enlighten you soon.

Also, could you tell us why you chose Uruguay as a retirement destination?

Cheers,

Yoginee

Expat.com team

Hi Rall,

If you have a retirement income I think you will like it here just fine but not knowing the language will isolate you if you are not in a location with others who know English or Afrikans or any other language you speak. If you don't have a retirement income that is problematic as your earning prospects are hindered if you don't speak Spanish. Other than that, the South Africans I have known don't seem to have any problem here. The culture is slow anywhere other than Montevideo but the people are nice, friendly and for the most part trustworthy. The land is good, there is lots of water and if you want to work the land it will produce. The real estate is not cheap and i believe I saw somewhere that Uruguay has the most expensive real estate in South America but depending on your expectations you can probably find something to work with. I think you will find Uruguay refreshing after living in South Africa.

@Rall 62 Let me know if you get a useful information on this, thanks. What's the situation in South Africa now?

Hello Norce,

Should you want to know the situation in South Africa right now, I suggest you ask this question on the appropriate forum which is the South Africa forum.

People living there are more likely to provide you with more details.

Cheers,

Cheryl

Expat.com team

@Rall 62 Hi Rall 62 I don't recomend Uruguay as a destination to live, neither for turism. I'm french, It's been 2 years now that I live here: corruption, crooks, brutality, bad quality of services and products (but vey expensive) , boring with a few things to do, hypocrisy, materialism, etc etc.

And the port of Montevideo is the main port of exportation of cocaine from Latin America (70% of the cocaine of the continent) to Europe. Your youth and we, parents, we say thank you Uruguay.

The "gastronomy" is inexistant and bad for health. Uruguay people are big with a lot of diseases. And they are massively vaccinated.

I spent 3 wonderful years in Mexico, and here in Uruguay, only 2 years and only bad souvenirs.

As regards investment, forget about it. Crooks, abuse, false documentation, false information, thefts, is all that you will find.

Uruguay is not even a latin american country, here they are descendans of spanish or italian people, they don't produce any music, they don't danse, they are cynical and sad, nothing to do with the great majority of other latino american countries.

@sandrinecabioch There are various way out of Uruguay, Airport is open with daily flights to some Mayor destinations, The Buque bus will take you to Buenos Aires with even more choices to fly away, And the border to Brazil is about 300 km

If you need a ride to the Airport or to the Ferry let me know I gladly will escort you out. Just remember take a one way flight

Bon Voyage ,

@sandrinecabioch Hello, salut Sandrine

Every place has good and bad things.

Honestly, I do not think Mexico is a paradise at all. Just read the news.

Of course some of the concepts you describe in your post are correct about Uruguay, but many people would be happy to live here.

Have a good day.

***

@Rall 62 good luck , me i want to live also in the countryside and rural area of uruguay and work as a simple agricultural worker and care about farm's animals in farms of uruguay of course if someone want to give me this job because i love the style of life in the countryside

@uru_guy

update:  One thing Uruguay is lacking terribly over the last three years is water, with this agricultural year having been the worst in memory of most locals.  There has been very little growth and the reason the exports of meat have been so high is because farmers having been selling the animals they can not feed.  In February 2023 (that is four month after this response was written) the exports declined on a year over year basis, because so many animals have been slaughtered because of the draught.  THe government is providing emergency aid to farms and the agricultural sector, but aid can not replace water.   If somebody wants plant stress analysis because of lack of water please private message me.

@Rall 62

As a South African you are most likely used to draught conditions.  We sadly have them now.  Depending on what your priorities are there are many options, price wise and in all regards.  I have been looking for a small farm for months.  I have not found mine yet, but we are very picky,  If you let me know what particularly is important to you, I would be happy to share my experience with you, if you private message me.  Be careful.  I have seen very good realtors here but I also have seen just as many impossible ones.  In any other country they would have died of starvation, and thta would have been the best for this country too.

@armin31 All that is going to change. Earlier this month, I bought a house adjacent to some land I had bought years ago. The new house has a borehole powered by Solar PV. As expected, we have had several wet days and the trees on my land seem to be quite happy now.

@ColoniaMan

Congratulations on the purchase of the house!  I hope you will spend much happy and peaceful time there!

A little bit of rain (which I too am grateful for) does not change the abnormal drought conditions we have now had for the last three years, with this one having been by far the worst.  I hope we will return to normal but that we will only know in one year.  The situation is much more serious than you make it appear.

a 21% inter annual drop in beef exports in February

https://en.mercopress.com/2023/03/02/ur … -last-year

on January 10th already almost 2/3 of the land was under severe drought or worse and almost all of the remaining under moderate drought. 

https://en.mercopress.com/2023/01/19/ag … in-uruguay

and we know that it rained only very, very little for another 2 months after that.

As a result the losses of the agricultural sector were staggering

https://en.mercopress.com/2023/02/02/ur … ister-says

And 50% of all electrical energy used in Uruguay had to be reported (empty reservoirs)

https://en.mercopress.com/2023/02/23/ur … lectricity

And all the cattle that was slaughtered because of a lack of growth and feed will not come back for a few years.  So I am afraid nothing much will change at the moment.  It is sad but it is so.

@sandrinecabioch, I grew up in Argentina, next door to Uruguay. So I won't address your comments as someone who has lived in Uruguay.

You seem to have had had very bad experiences with some locals and now you extrapolate your experiences to say that Uruguayans on the whole are untrustworthy, crooks, etc.

I'm sorry to have to correct you, but Uruguay is a Latin American country. Or do you think that Latin Americans are all dark skinned? Sorry to hear about your strong prejudices.

Mario

I'm sorry to have to correct you, but Uruguay is a Latin American country. Or do you think that Latin Americans are all dark skinned? Sorry to hear about your strong prejudices.

Mario
-@guynoir

That is true, although many of us locals have noticed that Uruguayan population has somewhat darkened across the years. This is something I've agreed with some colleagues.

My commentary above should have read:

And 50% of all electrical energy used in Uruguay had to be imported (empty reservoirs)
https://en.mercopress.com/2023/02/23/ur … lectricity

I could not edit it in the text so I am correcting it here.  My apologies.

Thank God for the rain we had recently.  It still is a drop in the bucket though.  Let us hope we will have more.

@new1990 good luck.

The countryside is worst. I really think that you won't be welcome at all, feel bad and just want to go back home or move to another country. I'm not sure if I can easily develop my ideas on this blog but I would like to, to prevent bad choices

@sandrinecabioch This is very strange I stayed in the old part of the city and I liked it, the people in cafes and restaurants were very friendly, there were people dancing near the city centre, if I had a problem with the language people were very helpful.

@armin31 is teh any reason why they don't use desalanisation?

@sierrademahoma  I will not go to Uruguay now because I discovered that Uruguay and Myanmar are the only countries that not give naturalization so  if i live there i will not get naturalization even it's almost impossible to find a job in uruguay from my country . The world has become closed and going and living in an other country is impossible for the majority of people, not before 100 or 200 years ago where it was very easy . I prefer to stay

in my country and not trying to go to live in uruguay now

@new1990

I do not want to change your mind about staying in your country, but unless I understand wrong what you say, it is actually wrong. You can apply for citizenship of Uruguay after 3 years if you are married or after 5 years if you are not married. So naturalization is not more difficult in Uruguay than in many other countries and it is intended path.

@ltoby955

Hello,

good question ... 

But on the other hand I think something that it does have a simple and logical answer, why they did not do it in the past:  They did not need it!  This year Montevideo is supposed to run out of water in about 2 weeks because the reservoirs are lower than ever before because we have had less precipitation than ever before.   I am sure they will do desalinisation in the future but this is not a short-term-fix for a city of 1 1/2 million residents, it has to be built with the long process that is involved in such a process.   

I have done an analysis of the stress level experienced by plants due to lack of water.  The last year and this year are the culmination of a really bad drought.  I could not find any evidence of anything similar having happened in the period that I covered (and that was over a quarter of a century). 

Therefore as another example for that this was unusual:  Most farms in Mexico for example are set up for irrigation.  Nothing would grow there without (although many areas have more precipitation than we have here, but it is a combination of soils and slopes etc).  Here we have been so well off, because of almost perfect soils and only temporary lack of rain that plants can survive and reservoirs for drinking water do not run dry because of these short dry spells, therefore only very few farms have irrigation equipment.  This too can not be solved over night.  It would change our farming totally. 

Anyway, this is my 5 cents worth. 

@armin31 Thank you.

@armin31 Uruguay gives citizenship, but not nationality. nationality gives it only to those who were born on its land. In the Uruguayan passport they write the citizen as a Uruguayan citizen, but in the nationality field the country of birth is written, meaning I cannot travel with this passport to free visa countries for Uruguayans citizens if i was

born in a foreigner country i must ask for a visa to travel and i will not be a 100% citizen because they will not give me the nationality, these informations are known on internet and youtube but me i discover them recently