“Uruguay is an eye of calm in a global storm”

And I’m excited that Uruguay has embraced renewable energy. I’m a big fan of renewable energy and deal with it extensively in one of my businesses. Besides being clean it is now the least expensive alternative in many places. It makes sense to embrace it and not fight it, and Uruguay is ahead of the pack in that area.

I’m also excited about being on the doorstep of one of my favorite cities in the world, Buenos Aires. I love Argentina, but it doesn’t rank well compared to Uruguay in terms of our evaluation criteria. It’s great to go for a long weekend to Buenos Aires and then come home to the laid-back stability of Uruguay. In fact, Uruguay is convenient for regional travel to Brazil and Chile too. My wife and I love traveling and the southern cone of South America is one of our favorite areas. And Uruguay is the best place for a home base.

Guru’Guay: Your other business is as a risk management expert. What have you assessed as Uruguay’s relative strengths and weaknesses in an increasingly unstable world?

Assessing strengths and weaknesses relates directly to our country evaluation model for our business to help expats. Developing models for evaluating countries is like developing models to assess risk. Yet there’s also a positive aspect to it. We like to think of it is moving toward a better life, not just getting away from or mitigating risk.

Based on our country evaluation framework, here’s a list of Uruguay’s strengths and weakness.

Uruguay’s strengths include high rankings in terms of plentiful sources of water, a temperate climate, political freedom and civil liberties, and corruption (lack of). It is well above average in terms of healthcare, human development, economic freedom, the cost of living (affordability), income equality and sovereign debt. Very few countries score as highly in all these areas.

Uruguay’s weaknesses are that it has no local resources of energy other than renewable electricity production, so it is dependent on petroleum imports. And as a small country, it is not a wealthy nation and does not have the resiliency of a large amount of sovereign wealth compared for example to a place like the US.

In an increasingly unstable world, when measured overall, especially, Uruguay is one of most resilient countries that an expat could consider.

Guru’Guay: In your half-day 1:1 with me, we discussed what you expect to find difficult about living here and I suggested some solutions. What are your thoughts since?

I really appreciated your consultation and I thought that was a very insightful question. No place is perfect, and if you become an expat, it’s inevitable that there will be things from where you’ve lived before that you will miss in your new place.

I’ve learned how valuable it is to be part of an expat network. It is an invaluable resource for learning the ins-and-outs of living in a new place, and it’s a great way to meet like-minded people. San Miguel is one of the easiest places to quickly plug in to that network. So, I was concerned about the best way to go about plugging into expat networks here.

Given that there is not a strong English-language expat network in Uruguay, one of your suggestions was to develop relationships with locals in our areas of interest. We’ve become friends, and will be developing even more friendships, with people who run good restaurants and wineries in the area. They are important focal points for networking and eventually meeting other expats, as well as developing local friends.

Also, dealing with Spanish is challenging here for someone used to San Miguel where many of the Mexicans in businesses and restaurants, as well as medical professionals, speak some English.