#282 – The Expat Files: Living with the Realities of Life in Latin America

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:14] Hello there all you expat wannabes, I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the Expat Files, living in Latin America. The show that tells you just what it's like to live, work, play and or retire down here in Latin America. It's a mix of the good, the bad, the ugly and the great and it's all right here so let's get started. Now when expats come down here and buy or rent a house, many times when they find a deal in a great location and it's very cheap and the house or rental unit is nice too, the problem is because you are in the third world and Latins have their set of standards and you have yours, one of the big complaints I hear and I complain about it myself is that the kitchens and bathrooms in particular are not up to first world standards, even in those luxury condos and apartments that are really ultra first class all the way with

[01:01] granite and marble everywhere, arched Spanish ceilings with rainforest hardwood beams, beautiful rustic Spanish terracotta tile everywhere and just a lot of really unique details and craftsmanship yet when you go into the kitchen or the bathroom, often they'll have that beautiful granite countertop yet they'll have a $59 stainless steel trailer court sink and crappy faucets made in China that leak after about two months and stranger yet in a lot of the luxury homes especially the ones built in the last 20 or 30 years, they'll have a beautiful porcelain bidet in the bathroom, now go figure. It's hard to reconcile something like that in the same room as a stainless steel trailer court bar sink, yep and I mentioned this in a show a long time ago that in some of the older houses, those elegant Spanish style jobs, they'll have a bidet in every bathroom

[01:50] and it's obvious they never use the things because you can tell when you look at them that they're dry as a bone and they've been that way for ages and just as an aside here, how many of you have confronted with one of these things would know what to do with it? Tell you the truth the first time I saw one which was back in Europe in the early 80s I wanted to try it but it scared the hell out of me so yes I chickened out and I bet if I did take a poll only one out of maybe 10,000 Americans has ever had the cajones to squat on one of those, god that conjures a nasty image huh? But back to the point that in Latin America you could have a spectacular house or condo in every way except when it comes to the kitchen and the bathroom and it's not that there's anything wrong with Latin contractors and construction people, it's just that they've got no concept of ergonomics, you know ergonomics.

[02:37] For example, opening the bathroom door only to find that it doesn't swing freely up against the wall but it slams against the toilet or a nearby countertop. How about walking into a kitchen and seeing the stove in the refrigerator on the opposite wall from the sink which means if you're preparing something in that kitchen you're always doing the 50 yard dash and the lighting in these kitchens even in the richest houses is atrocious. In fact I've yet to be in a traditional Latin kitchen where they've actually had a light over the sink, that means if you're doing anything near the sink at night you feel like you're in a movie theater which reminds me of another idiotic mistake Latins often make in their kitchens. When they have a nice big window or set of windows in the kitchen, isn't that the obvious place to put a sink so you get that nice natural lighting when you're working at the sink or

[03:24] the adjacent countertop? Well I wish they'd tell these Latin contractors and architects about that because you just don't see it much. In fact many kitchens believe it or not don't have windows at all and exhaust fans well they haven't heard of those yet either even though you can buy them in the hardware stores which brings me to bathroom exhaust fans which I guess only restaurant owners seem to know about because you don't see them in the average Latin home but let's just say you should do your best to stay out of the average Latin bathroom which by the way are generally lit like medieval dungeons too and of course everyone buys the absolute lowest wattage light bulbs that they can since electricity is so expensive down here but then again it's one of the very few things that's more expensive than it is up in the first world. Anyway so you hear those complaints all the time from gringos who just have nothing but

[04:12] good to say about the rest of their upscale houses or condos but they hate their bathrooms and kitchens so let's talk about that for a bit. When you first buy a house or you rent you're gonna run into those kind of problems and all the gringos and expats who rent just live with it because you're not gonna put your own money into tearing out the bathroom or the kitchen and doing it right but at least you can put in an exhaust fan and put in brighter lights and if they're like most bathrooms and kitchens they're dungeons so brighten them up by painting them white or some bright color then put in a couple of big mirrors that'll help because it seems for some reason Latins are addicted to pukey colors like vomit green, bile yellow, bloodshot pink, baby poop brown and faded swimming pool blue yuck and you see those five horrid colors in particular

[05:00] mixed and matched everywhere in Latin America especially in the middle and lower middle class neighborhoods and like expat Eddie says it's not something you want to come home to after one too many tequilas but then again if you do toss your cookies it won't affect the decor. Oh and now that I'm talking about housing and real estate a bit let me mention this Latin America is just chock full of really excellent carpenters woodworkers and craftsmen in general and though when you walk into most of their shops their places are dirty dusty disorganized chaotic and even dangerous but this is Latin America so there is no EPA or OSHA or any inspectors at all so when you do see a guy in a shop like that wearing a mask that's his own choice because he's probably already got a foot in the grave anyway what

[05:45] these little carpenters and cabinet makers can put out can be spectacular indeed in fact the other day I was at a woodworking shop watching a guy put the finishes on a tea card wood cabinet man was that a sight to behold and cheap I'll say but we'll talk about that later anyway I was in there because the next pet friend of mine decided he's gonna rip out his old 25 year old kitchen and have a brand new one installed from scratch and you wonder why he didn't do it a long time ago well it seems to be a male thing once we get used to something we can put it up with it forever even if it sucks now the fact is and you probably know this already a lot of us ex-pats who live alone are real dyed in the wool cheapskates I mean come on that's what brought a lot of us down here in the first place the cheap cost of living right and ladies you know this about guys in general when left to our own

[06:32] devices we can live and survive quite nicely and even prosper under conditions that no woman would ever tolerate do you remember that hit Broadway play some time ago called in defense of the cave man well it's true we do like our caves oh and by the way that Broadway play in defense of the caveman actually made the rounds down here in Latin America in Spanish of course in fact all the big hit plays in one-man X eventually make the rounds down here in Spanish of course too with a nice big lag time I might add of about five to ten years but I digress as usual anyway now as you might imagine a lot of single expat males come down to Latin America and they rent or buy two and some of them as any bell curve will bear out have very good taste some of them have pool hall and trailer court tastes and the other eighty percent of single males well they just want to

[07:20] have a living room with a comfy chair a gigantic screen TV and a place within reach that'll hold a six-pack of beer and a large pizza and that I can tell you is the style of a lot of backpackers I know that ended up living down here in Latin America and the ones that stay usually end up teaching English at a private school which pays about four to six hundred a month so on that it's impossible to live like a first-world person though you do live better than the average land however in that case the housing situation reflects that low salary and would not be acceptable to most of us anyway for now I'm talking about single expat males who come down here to live and not just the backpackers all of the single guys basically no matter how much or how little they pay for their places they always sort of end up looking like a college dorm room after a party unless of course

[08:06] you've got a cleaning lady which most of us have and that way if you have people over to the house once in a while she'll make you look way better than you deserve but as we know if there's a lady in your life or your courting things are very different and I know no one up north uses that archaic word courting but down here there is a Spanish equivalent to it so for all you single guys and gals that's something to keep in mind and in Spanish it's cortejo or noviezgo and in Spanish a boyfriend is called a novio and girlfriend novia so anyway if you expat guys are married or have a novia it's a whole different story and your house or condo ends up looking the way she wants it and you know I'm not complaining that's the way it should be though most guys still need their 52-inch TV and their comfy chair even if it's back next to the maid's room way behind the garage

[08:57] and what's that called your cave of course anyway no matter what you say if you're married or live with someone long enough and they have good taste it's bound to rub off on you whether you like it or not and you know some of us guys do and some of us don't know our limitations or our strengths or weaknesses and that's why I admire so much the way expat Eddie shops for furniture now he knows he's got trailer trash taste I make sure he never forgets that so you know what he's learned to do and I think it's really good advice for all of us men when he buys a new place or rents a new apartment or whatever he goes to a nice upscale department store or furniture store one that has nice complete displays of rooms obviously done by an interior decorator so what Eddie does is he just walks into a place like that and says I'll take that bedroom set just like it's displayed the

[09:47] carpets the artwork the dressers the end tables the wall hangings the lamps the flower displays the clock the works so in the last few years anyway if you didn't know any better you'd actually think that Eddie had some taste but no he doesn't but he's just smart about buying things and since he's got a full-time cleaning lady even after a year or two the stuff still manages to look pretty nice now the thing you do have to remember when buying furniture in Latin America and by the way they make some absolutely spectacular furniture down here even better than some of the finest stuff in the first world anyway just a few general tips worth repeating remember of course never to have wall-to-wall carpeting but small area rugs and throw rugs are okay as long as the cleaning lady takes them outside every once in a while and gives them a good once-over and if you don't have

[10:32] a cleaning lady you'll never do it so don't get any rugs at all unless you don't mind sharing your house with a few nasty species of insects and remember you should never have fabric upholstered chairs or sulfas and the reason for that is if any of your friends or family have kids I guarantee your upholstery is gonna end up saturated with ice cream or sugary sodas or whatever sticky candy the kid happens to be sucking on and if you have pets well I don't even want to go there now I've been in hundreds of Latin houses even in houses that are mansions I've seen really nice upholstered living room furniture turn it to something so stained and disgusting within about two years that I wouldn't give it to goodwill so how do you beat that well of course you always buy darker colors in real leather or I hate to say it man-made fake stuff you know vinyl and you know these days

[11:22] a lot of vinyl or man-made fake leather looks and feels so much like real leather that honestly I can't tell the difference except it doesn't smell right smells like plastic I'm sure they're working on that too though I know some of that man-made stuff that can actually pass in a couple of years you can tell it's not leather for some reason it doesn't wear like leather does with age and it'll really take a beating if it's in front of a window and gets a lot of Sun whereas real leather can take a lot more abuse and right about now you guys might be thinking oh hell a nice piece of leather furniture is gonna cost me two three four thousand bucks and others might be thinking what a jerk Johnny is for encouraging us to kill animals for furniture well just to let you know down here they don't kill cows for the leather down here they kill cows for the meat and when bossy

[12:10] quits making with the milk so what do you do with the hide then make clothes and furniture right well don't forget down here in Latin America they specialize in leather there's leather shops everywhere and by my reckoning you could get leather furniture of the highest quality for about half of what you'd pay for it in the States even less when the department and furniture stores are having sales for example one furniture store was having a great sale recently and I bought a matching pair of plush leather sofas in black very good quality stuff and it was one of those sales where you buy one and the next thing you buy is half price the big stores seem to do that about twice a year down here so it's worth it to wait for the sale so get this I bought two black leather sofas one a little smaller than the other but they're a matching set for get this 800 bucks

[13:00] for both so anyway even if you're on a budget don't think you can't afford really nice furniture I mean real high quality leather furniture that you may never have been able to afford up in the States and another thing let's talk about dining room and kitchen sets for a minute here sure you can get all the Chinese junk if you go to Sears or any of the local department stores they ship all that crap in there too now but down here they have such fine craftsmen such great wood workers in their little mom-and-pop shops that you could buy a complete teak dining room set with beautiful teak chairs we're not talking about laminate here we're talking about solid rainforest hardwood with tabletops or dressers made with giant gorgeous slabs of the stuff for example you could get a teak or coba or any rainforest hardwood dining room table with a set of six chairs for

[13:49] under a grand sometimes for even half of that in fact expat Eddie just bought one and it's so nice I hate to put a glass on it and mess it up with a watermark I'll let him do that first and he paid about 850 for that and it's solid all the way through and so heavy you can barely lift it and one more thing I'll tell you about Latins they buy those nice teak furniture sets like that and they never put a glass top on it so after about a year it's all scratched and wrecked they just seem to take care of everything like they take care of their cars and what's a glass top 30 or 40 bucks well they just don't get it so let me tell you about these little carpentry shops now and what's happening with furniture and cabinet making down here now recently I've been into a few of these shops checking out kitchen and bathroom cabinets and there are quite a few

[14:36] of these little places in every small medium and large latin city and since there's little or no zoning in latin america these little places can just pop up anywhere and one of the last ones I visited was right next to an evangelical church which kind of made me smile because I knew the buzz coming out of those saws was a perfect match for the noise that passed for singing coming out of that church when I was there they had a nice little competition going two carpenters going head to head Juanito from Salvador versus the carpenter from Nazareth so anyway you can go into any one of shops and even some of the bigger outfits when you walk in there but you can get past the sawdust and the deafening noise of the saws you'll notice that these days 90 to 95 percent of all the work

[15:21] being done is in that junky crappy particle board called melamine the stuff they use to build doors walls and cabinets in really cheap beginner house construction and in the cheapest low budget furniture you know it's like low grade formica it's crap anyway down here in latin america where there's this huge building bubble going on there's so much of that tracked home construction that has this kind of junk in it that all these little carpenters and cabinet makers are extremely busy even though if you spend a little more money you could get some of the best rainforest hardwood in the world and they've got dozens of beautiful rainforest hardwoods to choose from tic coba cypress palo blanco mahogany and I don't mean mahogany that you're used to seeing that light porous stuff you get up in your cleveland lumber yard I'm talking about Honduran mahogany

[16:08] and that stuff's so dense and heavy if you don't have a carbide blade on your saw that's super sharp in a minute it'll start smoking and jam while you're cutting your wood and of course the carpenters and cabinet makers and woodworkers still work with that great stuff but there's just less and less call for it it's all about demand and the middle classes can't afford it but they can't afford the junky tract housing that's going up everywhere at least the banks and developers are making it possible for them to get financing on very basic starter homes for like 50 to 70 000 bucks little cracker box houses and the doors and trim and kitchen cabinets are built out of the cheapest stuff imaginable melamine and the real kicker is I was in a lumber yard just recently while a container truck was unloading doors and guess what they were coming from china

[16:55] cheap melamine press board doors of course and some vinyl coated junk too so there you have it folks they have the best wood in the world down here but the locals can't afford it I was pricing outdoors and they had these white vinyl coated melamine jobs for like 35 bucks a piece you know for inside doors and closets real trailer court junk you know then the next step up was a solid pine door and believe it or not now you can get a solid pine door down here that comes from china or indonesia too or somewhere in asia or you can buy a solid pine door which weighs about twice as much from the pine that's grown in central america now a light skimpy pine door coming from asia will run about 40 or 50 bucks and they look nice enough but a door of the local dense

[17:42] rainforest pine will run about 50 or 60 bucks now get this if you want a really exquisite door you can get a rainforest hardwood door too call but teak mahogany your choice sanded but unvarnished and unfinished now for anywhere from 100 to maybe 175 bucks and i guarantee you a door like that in the states would cost you anywhere from 800 to maybe 1500 bucks if you could even get that kind of wood because some of those rainforest hardwoods are protected and can't be exported but you can't use them within the country without a problem but anyway my main point was when we went pricing new kitchen cabinets for my friend the carpenter said he could do a basic small kitchen with cabinets on two walls for about 1200 bucks complete in melamine yuck then he took us into the back of his shop to

[18:32] show us a nearly completed kitchen cabinet set in melamine and it was awful his work wasn't awful but the material was but this is the amazing thing here's this trailer trash melamine kitchen but it's got a solid marble top on it i mean it's an absolutely stunning piece of work and get this with a cheap trashy stainless steel sink stuck in it another trailer court touch right and my gringo friend said look i don't want melamine but i do like this countertop whatever i get i want a countertop like this and the carpenter said a granite or marble top comes with the price of the cabinet it's part of the deal which shocked us gringos and made our jaws drop because we knew that a top like that would cost two or three thousand bucks in the states maybe more who knows

[19:19] so down here you get the melamine kitchen cabinets for 1200 bucks and they throw in the granite or marble top isn't that cool or maybe it's the other way around you get the granite or marble top for 1200 bucks and they throw in the melamine cabinets talk about a decorator's idea of heresy so i guess you learn something every day right or you somehow forget what you learned a long time ago and for me it was the fact that granite and marble and jade by the way are indigenous to central america it's so common it's cheap so as long as you buy it here where it comes from versus buying and installing it up in the first world you save on taxes import duties and shipping oh and by the way i do have to mention that in some of the upscale and very high end building developments they're installing get this synthetic vinyl parquet flooring man is

[20:08] that low class or what and of course it's imported from the u.s or china or whatever i just don't get it they've got beautiful hardwood parquet floor down here and they're installing vinyl parquet how horrible huh and where she had a good percentage of these high-end projects are using trashy stainless steel sinks too i guess that's why they call it the third world right and that's why so often when an expat coupled by a place they budget an extra grand or two to rip out that trash and put in real porcelain sinks and higher quality fixtures and what do they do with the brand new junk they ripped out they give it to their gardener or cleaning lady's husband of course and that's why locals love working for gringos because upscale latins would never do that for their help in fact upscale latins would never think of upgrading that vinyl parquet

[20:56] flooring or their stainless steel sinks either so it's a mute point oh and by the way regarding roofs down here you know like i've said before don't ever put an asphalt roof on your house because the sun down here in the tropics will just kill it so what do people with money do well they have a concrete roof and they either paint it with a waterproof coating which isn't very waterproof after a while or they have a beautiful spanish terracotta tile roof installed which comes in a variety of styles the rounded traditional type like you see in europe or overlapped pieces of one by one foot spanish tile now if you had a really big house let's say 3,500 square foot and your roofing area was about 2,000 square foot and you lived in the states and had a real terracotta tile roof installed i guarantee you're looking at 10 or 15 grand

[21:44] but down here where they make that tile and make it beautifully you'll pay about 50 cents a square foot for that stuff and about a half a buck a square foot to have it installed so if you have 2,000 square foot of roofing area what would cost you 10 or 15 grand in the states is going to cost you a thousand bucks more or less so the product itself the roofing tile is not only a quarter of what you can get it for the labor is about a fifth of what it would cost in the states too so if you come down here why not get the best for the price of an asphalt roof up in the states you could have real spanish tile that'll last a lifetime maybe three okay now let's really change gears for a second as you know i like to tell the good the bad and the ugly and i don't sugarcoat things why should i have got no agenda and i've really got nothing to sell though you might say yeah johnny you give seminars so you're making money well let me tell you doing my kind of

[22:33] seminar takes about a month of first world style treadmill work for me and you know i already have enough money so that i can live down here exactly like i want without ever having to work another day in my life as long as i don't live more than a week just kidding of course i couldn't live like this up in the states that's one of the big reasons i'm down here and one of the main reasons expats come right now let me tell you there are a lot of people who just aren't cut out for this kind of life that means there's always going to be a percentage of those who end up packing up and leaving after a while because it just didn't turn out like they planned now i gotta tell you nearly all of the expats i know that packed up and went back 95 of those ended up on the tourist trail panama or costa rica where the locals are jaded and contaminated by the gringo dollar so

[23:20] new expats especially don't know it but they've got a big target painted on their backs especially during their starry eyed honeymoon period which lasts about six months to a year anyway because i won't sugarcoat things i'd like to read this little blog posting from a disgruntled gringo who couldn't make it down here then of course i'll throw my two cents in so here goes i want to thank oscar one of my seminar guys for sending me this it starts out like this living abroad is it worth it when i first set out over six years ago i would have said yes absolutely now this may be a bit dark and introspective but if you have been thinking about moving abroad try to absorb what i say i was so hungry to get out of the u.s that i was blinded by the adventure blind to the long-term consequences blind to the difficulty and stumbling blocks

[24:09] not just those that newbies run into but those that continue to plague seasoned pros now i'm going to stop here for a second and say i'm going to paraphrase here because i'm not part of this guy's blogosphere and i don't get all the pet names and abbreviations and terms he uses with his blogging buddies and i'll condense and modify this thing as necessary anyway he says i think i have it figured out and here's an effort not only to get my own thoughts in order but to share with others in the hopes that you may avoid the pitfalls then he goes on to say one of his own expat friends says everyone who starts a blog on uragway ends up leaving the place now at first i said that was bs at the time but he was absolutely right in fact it's not just him i can give you a long list of my expat friends who have left already or are getting ready to leave uragway

[24:58] for greener pastures most of them on their way back to the u.s oh yes there are a few holdouts but the numbers are dwindling then he says all the little groups and societies of expats we had that once thrived down there are mere husks of what they used to be and yes there are new arrivals to uragway but not really the way it was six years ago or so when the first wave seemed to be hitting which in my opinion was the best of the bunch anyway and the most adventurous souls that could be found and then he says moving abroad will change you it will stress you to your breaking point and test your resolve it'll make you change your opinion of people and places and of things in deep fundamental ways in fact i'm definitely not the same person i was five years ago he goes on to say as you change you too will likely come to a point where you no longer want

[25:47] to deal with the pitfalls of living abroad and crave the simplicity and familiarity of the USA despite its warts and wrinkles it sucks for sure but everywhere else sucks worse he goes on to say moving abroad will stress and most likely destroy your spousal relationship as well call me a naysayer but even if all things are going generally well for both parties your paths and motivations for living abroad will eventually diverge and the atmosphere will become toxic as these paths tug each other apart once again nobody tells you this stuff when you're going to sign up it happens to countless relationships i have watched and it happened to mine despite leaving the dark realm of Uruguay for the promised land of Chile now note that my ex-wife and i have

[26:37] no ill will towards each other and i still have great relations with her family but time and stress have set us in opposite directions then he says the only relationships that will survive abroad are those where the assignment is temporary even the staunchest couples i have seen with both arrive with stars in their eyes and everything in alignment i've watched this spark wither and die countless times it's not just Uruguay it's everywhere maybe there is something to settling down at home and having a simple life it never sounded like it would suit me but then i look at the disaster trail behind me and wonder why i didn't just pull the plug a long time ago okay i'm gonna stop there because we're getting towards the end of the show now and i've only gotten through about a third of this email so we'll pick right up on this for the next show so

[27:25] stay tuned and i'm telling you you're gonna find this extremely interesting so do put that in your ipod and smoke it south of the border down mexico you've been listening to the expat files living in latin america coming to you twice a week from somewhere south of the border email me the expat files at gmail.com and don't forget to check out expatwisdom.com to sign up for your free reports on latin america see you next time nos vemos she was a picture