#101 – The Expat Files: Real Stories from Latin America

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

[00:03] Hi everybody, I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America. The show that tells you what it's really like to live, work, play and or retire in Latin America. I tell it just like it is, not the version they give you in those glossy travel magazines, or the picture they paint for you in those international traveler websites, where they're only trying to sell you something. What's it really like for expats living in Latin America? Well, it's time to take off those rose colored glasses and find out. So let's get started. Now one thing you'll notice if you've been down in Latin America a long time, is that off the beaten tourist track, you'll run into some gringos and first worlders that seem to have gone native, completely native. And they seem a lot more like 1960s hippies than they do first world tourists.

[00:49] You know, a little scruffy around the edges, long greasy hair, that is if they're young enough to still have hair. And another telltale sign is they're usually wearing some kind of beat up flip flops or Jesus sandals, all year round and for any occasion. And if you look close at the sandals, they'll have really dirty and battered feet. You know, the kind of dirt that's permanently ground in, where a shower or a bath just won't make a dent in it. And with your eyes closed, you can usually tell these guys have gone native. They generally have an overpowering aroma of BO. And I'm not kidding you, I'm talking about women as well as men. And sure, some of these guys are actual ancient hippies from the 60s and 70s that somehow made it down here to Latin America for whatever reason. Or they just came down as backpackers some years ago looking for enlightenment or a guru, who knows. And they found that the living was cheap, and easy, and low pressure.

[01:35] And of course, they soon discovered they had that certain advantage that first world people always have when they land down here, which I call the gringo advantage, where even a common middle class or even white trash guy from the first world suddenly finds himself treated like a minor celebrity, who by virtue of the fact that he's from the first world, finds that he somehow gains an unfair advantage over Latin Americans down here, even if you do look a bit scruffy and have BO. In the minds of Latins, we automatically get extra points in practically everything, including business, intelligence, decision making, and romance. And Latin people stereotype us like this, whether we deserve it or not, and a lot of times we don't. And I know exactly why they do it, why they add these unfair points to our score. Just walk into any Latin American's house, from the lowest dirt floor tin roof shack,

[02:21] to the mansion of the richest guy in town, with his bodyguards and his swimming pools and his hummers, and you'll see that everything they put material value on, all the technologies and labor saving devices, 99% of that stuff, originated in the first world specifically from the United States. So it's obvious that if everything Latins want and crave came from the United States originally, they can't help but stereotype us, as people with superior intelligence, and that we have the mightest touch. And you just have to look around the commercial centers in Latin America to see why they think that way. All the big successful first world companies and franchises that come down here, make the Latin version of commerce look dull around the edges and cheesy. And that's why everyone wants to work for a first world transnational or a franchise. So to our great advantage, that's how Latins think of us. That is, Latins who don't live in the tourist areas.

[03:08] The ones that don't have very much contact with us gringos at all. And that way the myth is perpetuated, but when you get to the high volume tourist areas, where we flood in and contaminate their beaches and resorts, with ourselves and the gringo dollar, well that nice stereotype that I'm talking about wore off years ago. In fact, in most of those tourist places, we're only treated like a commodity, like dollar signs. And in reality, deep down they quite resent us, and the higher cost of living that we always bring in our wake. But we've only lost our luster in those high volume tourist areas. But in the rest of Latin America, that 98% where you can walk around for hours and only see a handful of first world persons, if you're lucky. In those places, that superior first world stereotype still flies high. And you know, I can quite understand why in those high volume tourist areas, the locals

[03:56] put on a happy face, but deep down they sort of resent us and are just looking to get the dollars out of us. It reminds me of that old song, The Backstabbers. Remember the lyrics? They smile in your face all the time they want to take your place. Think about it yourself, if all of a sudden in your hometown up in Cleveland, a bunch of rich people from Monaco came down and started buying up your best real estate, building really expensive developments and high priced housing you could never afford to buy, but they'll hire you to do the gardening, the painting and the dirty work. So after an invasion like that, how would you feel about the people from Monaco? You'd probably resent them too, but you'd want a piece of their money wouldn't you? But let's say you're living in Boise, Idaho, and a few people from Monaco came in and built a luxury compound or a golf course. Just a few of them. Well I bet you the whole town would treat them pretty much like visiting dignitaries,

[04:44] and that shine would never wear off, as long as there was only a few of them around and they weren't rattling their jewelry on your face every day at the supermarket. But back to my original point, like I said, when you're down here off the tourist track, sometimes you'll run into first world people who've gone native. They're getting by by selling homemade jewelry and a kiosk on the street, running or working in a dingy restaurant in a bad section of town next to another hundred or so hole in the wall joints. And then there's that stereotype of the first world beach bum, sometimes actually living in a rickety old boat in an out of the way fishing village. And nearly always when you run into these guys that have gone native, they're hooked up with a low class latin girl and they've usually got a couple of kids. And predictably the kids are a little scruffy around the edges too. Now the truth is, every one of these first worlders who has gone native has his own strange

[05:30] story to tell of how he landed down in the third world and how he slipped into that particular lifestyle that he's in. Now when I first started to run into guys like this, I used to ask myself, how did they get like that? How did they go from middle class American, most of them first world college educated with some ambition to proverbial beach bums living on a few hundred bucks a month, like the locals. Well, I used to think that a lot of these guys had psychological problems, but after talking to a lot of them at length and getting to know quite a few of them, I came to realize that there are a lot of first world people who just don't fit in very well at all with the first world rat race and stress machine. And when they lived up in St. Louis, they were sort of unhappy and unfulfilled, and they didn't feel quite right or comfortable with their own lives, but they really didn't know why. And since it was the only thing they knew, they slogged through it the best they could.

[06:18] But one day by hook and crook, they end up in the third world, for whatever reason, the Peace Corps of backpacking trip for the summer or whatever, and they see that down here it's just more in line with their kind of lifestyle, specifically laid back with great weather and an atmosphere that's infinitely more relaxed. And it's so easy down here to open a small little business on a shoestring, something you can almost never do up in the first world, and it's also so very easy for you to hook up with a beautiful Latin romantic partner who'll help you out 100% with any business ideas you might have, again because you've got that gringo advantage working for you. And for a first world person like that, it just seems like no hard work at all to set yourself up down here in a comfortable lifestyle, however you might define it. And some first worlders just prefer no thrills and basic.

[07:03] And when you look around down here, that retro hippie lifestyle seems to be a very comfortable groove for a lot of first world expats who've landed who aren't into the rigid structured style and high competition, pressure sales and marketing that you always see in first world businesses. Think of it, if it only takes a few hundred dollars a month to live down here, if you want to live like the locals that is, all you really have to do is set up a little stand on a street corner and start selling things. Think about it, if you want to live like a local, all you have to do is start a business that makes $10 a day. That's it. That's 300 bucks a month, right? And I know a lot of these first world guys that have gone native, they've set up little stands with jewelry or handcrafted items, they sell used clothing or books or decals and stickers, or tell fortunes or do sketches, and they don't even work a full day.

[07:49] They work 2 or 3 hours, make 10 or 20 bucks, and the rest of the day is free because they've hit their quota. The fact is, it's just so easy to survive down here on so little. If you choose to go native, it's almost like being on a constant backpacker vacation. And for some first world people who've been into yoga and spiritualism and meditation and all that Sedona post hippie enlightenment stuff, for them, Latin America is one place you can really live out that kind of lifestyle with practically no effort, money or resources. Not to mention, the weather's always nice so you can live that lifestyle 365 days a year. Now you just try to live that spiritually enlightened lifestyle in California or Sedona up in the first world, you better be making at least 30 grand a year or you're going to be freezing in the winter and bunking with the homeless. Now besides seeing these first worlders who have gone native, and by the way, most of

[08:38] whom are middle aged adults believe it or not, so you're going to notice a lot of those scruffy people in the Jesus sandals are gray haired and balding. Anyway there's another group of people who've gone native and they're much younger between the ages of 16 and 25. Now they look and act pretty much the same as the older people who've gone native. You know, scruffy hippie flowing style clothes, Jesus sandals, dirty feet and all that, working in little hole-in-the-wall restaurants or bakeries, selling jewelry and handcraft items and little kiosks on the street. But what you'll soon realize is that these guys are not from the United States or the first world. They're actually self-styled, new age hippies from the wealthier Latin American countries like Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica and Panama. And nearly all of them claim to be on some kind of spiritual or personal journey and

[09:24] they travel around Latin America looking for like-minded spirits and places that are tolerant where they can hang out and just do their free-spirited thing. But in reality, if you really analyze it, they're just young kids rebelling against their conservative parents, like a lot of us did when we were in high school and college. So these scruffy teenagers and young adults, though they look and act like a lot of the first world people who've come down here and gone native, the younger ones are pulling an act that's not gonna last forever. After a few months or even a few years, after they've run out of money, and after they're tired of living in flea-bitten $5 a night hotels, when they're finally fed up with the bug bites and the cold water showers, if that stuff doesn't get them to pack their bags and move back home, the threat of mommy and daddy back in Chile cutting off the emergency money transfers unless they come back home, finish college and get a real job, well when

[10:11] that finally happens, that's when they burn the hippie duds, get deloused, go back home and join the establishment. But they'll always have that memory, a version of their personal wood stock or hate ash berry, no matter how distorted. So next time you're walking through a small beach town in Colombia and you come across a few tattooed and pierced, gothic looking young people all in black, with black hair, black fingernail polish and black eyeliner, or some rather young looking hippie types, with flowing tie dyed clothes and rasta hair, you can be sure that no matter how pathetic their lifestyle looks to you, in case of emergency they've got their daddy's master card stuck away in a sock somewhere. Those young kids are poor by choice, not by fate. But it doesn't last long and usually by the time they're 25 years old. They're back in Buenos Aires or Panama City worshipping the god of consumerism, just like

[10:58] their parents. Now my buddy Expat Eddie has a few words to say about people like that. He says those rich kid hippie wannabes reminds him of when he went to a kibbutz in Israel with his rich Jewish girlfriend, an ex-girlfriend, and a kibbutz he says is just like a hippie commune for entitled rich kids, though with a little bit more structure and a lot more soap and water. And after a month or two of commune life, milking cows and stoking the compost pile and all that, they always head back to their privileged life back in the states. Anyway down here, once in a while when you run into these young hippie wannabes, if you're talking with them and you hit the right buttons, often they'll go into some kind of discourse or a rant on new age philosophy, spirituality, the eastern religion of the month and all that. And when that happens to me, my eyes start glazing over and I kind of look around for

[11:44] an escape hatch. You know, the same kind of feeling you get when there's a knock on your door on a Saturday morning and there's a couple of Mormons standing there ready to give you a spiel or worse yet a Jehovah Witness handing you a watchtower. Now Eddie always tells me I'm too much of a soft touch with these guys, that when guys like that start off on some kind of spiritual or religious rant, he says I give him too much wiggle room. And he's probably right, but you should see Expat Eddie handle those guys. In fact, one time we were standing at a kiosk full of handcrafted items where Eddie was fingering a nicely done handcrafted recreational pipe and the young hippie guy presiding over that little business operation was having a heated discussion with another scruffy looking kid on a neo-spiritual journey about the differences between Hinduism and Buddhism. And Eddie was trying to get the attention of one of the guys to haggle out a price on

[12:31] that pipe. Then finally, Eddie had enough and he broke in and he said, hey, listen, you guys, listen. Thomas Edison did a thousand times more for humanity than Mother Teresa, Krishna, Buddha and the Peace Corps put together. Think about that the next time you switch on a light. And I gotta hand it to Eddie. He left those guys speechless. Anyway, Eddie got that hand carved pipe for three bucks and the bidding started at six. Eddie says he learned the art of haggling at the kibbutz. Okay, enough about that. Let's move on. And now I'd like to talk about something that practically plagues every single Expat who's ever come down here. Now, like I've said so many times before, even in today's broadcast, Latins always think of us first world tourists and Expats as wealthy. Even if we come down here looking like hippie backpackers, even the humblest Latin knows

[13:18] that making a trip down here to Latin America for a first worlder is going to take a couple of thousand dollars, probably a half a year to a year salary of the average guy down here. And then we come down with all these expensive gadgets, smartphones and iPods and kindles, high-end cameras and watches and real designer label camping, hiking and backpacking stuff. Stuff that they could never possibly afford. So it's not much of a leap for them to think of nearly all of us who come down as rich. And there's really no exceptions to that belief. And even Mormons and people who come down in church groups are considered by locals to be high class and wealthy because they themselves could never afford to take a week or two or three or even a month to fly off to a foreign country and help somebody in need, like all these first world charity volunteers do. For the average Latin person, that would not only be out of the question, but a complete

[14:05] impossibility. Now, I told you how that Latin stereotype about us first worlders really works in our favor in so many things, in business and social relationships and even romance. But there's one annoying downside to it, which I'd like to talk about for a second. And here it is. It's that Latins feel absolutely no compunction about hitting you up for a loan. And that includes Latins that are long term friends, girlfriends and boyfriends and families of girlfriends and boyfriends, including casual acquaintances, gardeners and cleaning ladies and maintenance workers, bodyguards and garbage men. Even people you run into very casually at the market or the laundromat. You're the go to guy when they're desperate and short on cash. And as a rule, Latin America is a society that's always desperate and short on cash. But aren't we all sometimes?

[14:51] Now personally, I've been down here 20 years and I must have been hit up at least 50 times already. Not that I fell for it every time by no means. But in the beginning, I got sucked in real good. From my own Costa Rican lawyer no less, to the tune of 25,000 bucks. Now in a way, I'm almost glad I got stung like that. Because it taught me a lesson. A not so cheap lesson, but it taught me a lesson and I never fall for it anymore. Now that's not to say I don't occasionally lend a Latin person money down here. But when I do, I never expect to get it back. I always consider it a gift. A kind of charity. That way, if they don't pay it back, I'm not disappointed. And if they do, it's almost as if I've won a small lottery. And that's not to say I lend out big quantities of money. No, not anymore. I learned my lesson with the 25K that my lawyer screwed me out of.

[15:36] Now let me just clear up one thing. I'm not saying that lawyer was a crook. At least he didn't set out to intentionally screw me. He's a good and faithful guy in almost every other respect. But you don't want to lend the guy money. And I found out later it's not a good idea to lend money to any Latin down here. Because it almost always turns out badly and you end up losing a friend. But of course, how was I to know that? And here's how it went down. Now in Costa Rica, like a lot of other places in Latin America, you always need to get yourself a lawyer. And in time, as you get to know him, you always end up getting into a discussion with him on where to get the highest rates of return on investment vehicles since the banks pay notoriously low rates. Now everybody knows if you get into a money market or you buy T-bills in the United States, you only get to get 1 or 2% return on your money. Now 5 or 10 years ago, you might have gotten 5 or 6% or even more.

[16:25] But those days are long gone, so everyone's looking for vehicles that pay a lot more. Lawyers down here in Latin America, especially the ones that speak very good English, have their share of first world clients and upper end Latin clients. And it seems they always have at least one client, that is land or property rich and cash poor, who's looking to get a private loan and is willing to pay high interest. And that's when your lawyer will step in and try to arrange a deal. He'll match a client who's cash poor and land rich to a client who has some cash and who's looking for a high interest rate. And unfortunately, he picked me. Now a few years ago in Costa Rica, the banks were paying about 5 to 7% a year and private parties were offering to pay 15 to 20% if you made them a loan. And of course, they'd offer up some kind of property as collateral because you'd be

[17:10] nuts to do a deal like that without any default protection. Because after all, if the guy can't get a bank loan and he's coming to you and he's going to pay that kind of interest, obviously, the bank considers him a bad risk and his credit probably sucks. And of course, your lawyer wants to make that deal work because he's always getting a piece of it, though you'll never know how much. And you don't really care if you're getting 15 or 20% interest as long as you're collateralized if the guy defaults. Okay, so my lawyer draws up the papers, I loan out the 25,000, I get a mortgage and a nice little commercial property in a shopping center in downtown San Jose. And the deal is, after the guy pays his last payment to me on a 10-year payback schedule, I hand that mortgage back and we're even. So far, so good, right? So everything went okay for the first three years, he paid me on time and everything, and then I get a call from my lawyer and he says he's just done a deal with the guy I

[17:58] made the loan to. Now my lawyer has the paper on that debt, in other words, my own lawyer is the guy that owes me the money now and he's got to pay me the payment every month. Not the original guy, he's completely out of the picture. Which is just fine with me because he's my lawyer and there's no third party to deal with anymore. And he actually asked me if it was okay if he took on the debt himself and I said, hey, that's great, I would prefer it that way actually. And so after another year went by, my lawyer kept up with those monthly payments right on schedule. Meanwhile, I decided to move down to Columbia and he kept up with the payments for about six months and all of a sudden they quit coming. And after he got about two or three months behind, I called him and I said, hey, what's going on? And then he told me this long sorted story on how suddenly his wife had turned gringa on him. In other words, she was going on shopping sprees up to Miami, maxing out the credit

[18:46] cards and spending him into oblivion. And I know he wasn't lying because I knew his wife and she just loved to put on airs and drop names of all the gringa friends she had. A real classic gold digger. And I've seen that kind of thing dozens of times. In Costa Rica especially, I've seen wives of prominent Costa Ricans like him turn into mass gringa style consumers. Anyway, and then he told me he had some ideas to sell some property and pay me off and sell a car and all in all it looked like he was doing a juggling act and it didn't sound good. And he was genuinely sad and worried. I could tell. I knew this guy. He wasn't about to screw me over, but his wife was putting him in a really bad position. He'd married a Costa Rican ballbuster who wanted to live like a first world gringa. Okay, so suddenly he started paying me again and he actually caught back up with his payments.

[19:34] Then about 6 months later, the payments stopped again. And I called up to find out what was wrong this time and he said, well bad news, I've got a lot of expenses. I've got two kids in college up in the United States and it's costing me everything to keep them there. And when I heard that, I knew it was his wife again. She insisted on the kids going to first world university and you know what that costs? Foreign students, as you might know, always pay the highest rate. Man, they were really trying to live like upper middle class first world people. And even Costa Rican lawyers don't have that kind of money. And then, somewhat true to his word, he ended up selling off a piece of property or a car or whatever and he caught up with his payments again. And then a few months later, he quit paying again. And when I called up he said, oh I've got a really big problem and I don't know what to do. One of my kids up in the United States got involved in drugs and now he's in a California

[20:21] rehab center and I gotta pay for it. And I'm sorry Johnny. I know I owe you that money but my family comes first and I hope you understand that. And of course I was really pissed off but at that point you can't get blood from Iraq. So after about another six months went by, I took a drastic step myself and I called him and said, I know you can't pay me but I need that money. And I have the mortgage on that property in that commercial center in downtown San Jose. Now what I'd like to do is I like to sell that thing and get my money and if there's any more left over you can have the rest. And I mean with all the problems we've had, do you think you could at least do that for me? And he said, oh Johnny, I'd like to but you know, you don't have a mortgage on that building anymore. I said, what do you mean? I have the paper right in my hand, signed, sealed and registered that says I have a mortgage

[21:07] on the property until the final payment of the loan is paid up. And he said, well that's not quite the way it is Johnny. When I took over the loan, remember when we switched over from the original borrower to me? That mortgage note was canceled and it became a signature loan and instead of that mortgage, I guaranteed the note with my signature. There's no mortgage backing it anymore. And I was silent for a few seconds, I had to think about that one. Finally I managed to say, what? You mean all this time I didn't even have a mortgage on that property? And he said, yeah, in the beginning you did. The guy who you originally lent the money to turned over the property to you as collateral. But when we did the switch, I made a signature loan out of it. I thought I told you that, don't you remember? Well guess what? Stupid me, I don't remember. So in the end, I didn't lose out completely. I got about 4 years of payments, about $13,000 out of it.

[21:56] But as you can see by this example, it's just not a good idea to do any kind of loans whatsoever. You're doing it at your own risk every time. And even if you really trust the guy that you're lending money to, like I trusted my lawyer, any number of unforeseen things can happen and there is a pretty good probability that you just won't get that money back. And I've heard a few dozen stories from other expats, pretty much like my own. And of course the excuses always come, and it's always a sickness or a hospitalization or an operation. And even when things seem to be going good for the person you lent the money to, as time goes by, in my experience, and so many expats, you'll always end up hunting that guy down for the monthly payment. And sooner or later it'll get to you and your friendship just won't be the same anymore. Like Benjamin Franklin always said, the easiest way to lose a friend is to lend him money.

[22:42] Okay, maybe he didn't say that exactly. But he did say neither a lender nor a borrower be. And here's a bit of advice. No matter how good that interest rate looks to you when somebody proposes a loan, and even if they give you the papers on a business, a house, or a car as collateral, just remember you're not in the first world. If things do go sour and you do end up in court, sometimes it could take six months, a year, or even more for you to get registered ownership of those properties you hold mortgages on. I mean, the process that you have to go through after a default to get the property registered legally in your name can be a nightmare, because, well, cases like that just aren't priorities with the legal system. In fact, an expat friend of mine in Honduras filed a lawsuit against a car dealership in the municipal court system, and that was about five months ago.

[23:30] And the case still doesn't even have a hearing date in court yet. So needless to say, at all costs, you want to avoid going to court because you could die of old age before you even get to the trial date. And worse yet, they never resolved the issue at the first court date. That's not the way they do things down here. Even in civil cases, you'll have three or four more court dates, and those will be spread out months into the future too. And then there's those oh-so-common cases of friends and acquaintances that want to borrow really small amounts of money from you, like the cleaning lady or gardener that wants to borrow $10 from you, with the age-old standby excuse that they need money to buy medicine for one of the kids. And that may or may not be true. It probably is, but you never know. And like I said, if you feel generous and give them the $10, don't expect it back.

[24:17] Or go subtracting it from their meager pay, because it's just not worth the hard feelings it's going to cause when you have to explain to the gardener or the cleaning lady that you subtracted $10 from their future pay because of the money you lent them a few weeks earlier. I found that they almost never bring it up, and if you do, they look a little perplexed. And it's kind of a stressful ordeal when you're the one that has to refresh their memory. That's why I say, if you're going to be a softie, look at it like a gift, not a loan. Okay, so once in a while you have the cleaning lady and the gardener hitting you up for money. Small amounts, $5 or $10, big deal. But when you get a knock on your door, when there's a guard standing there in full uniform and with a shotgun, and you recognize him as the guy that's responsible for letting cars in and out of your gated community, a guy you never really talked to in your life, you just wave at when you go by, and suddenly he's at your front door asking to borrow $5

[25:07] or $10 bucks. That my friends is when you really know you're not in the first world anymore, and it gets worse. Sometimes when you're sitting at a birthday party at someone's house, and you happen to be talking to a guy that's sitting nearby for 5 or 10 minutes, a guy you just met, he may be your wife or your girlfriend's distant cousin, well don't be surprised if by the end of the night, he suddenly worked up the courage to ask you for a $50 or $100 loan for grandma's cataract operation, or for a sick kid in a family or whatever. And you know, I really wish they'd come up with another excuse. Talk about lack of creativity. Well you really shouldn't be surprised when things like that happen. It's happened to every long term expat I know that's ever been down here. Now of course it's not as regular as all that. You don't get hit up every week. But if you're down here long enough, it's gonna happen to you. And if you've been touched by friends up in the states, you'll know what I mean.

[25:55] And of course expat Eddie has a lot of loan stories, and here's one of them. Eddie rented an apartment recently for his girlfriend, and he made a deal with the landlord, who was a lady, to pay six months ahead and get a free month's rent out of it. And after he had his girlfriend all moved in, there was a knock at the door, and the daughter of the landlord said, would you please come over to the house, which was next door, my mother would like to talk to you. So he went over, knocked on the door, and the mother handed him a piece of paper, and it was a past due $3,000 hospital bill, and she asked Eddie for a loan to cover it. Now, Eddie had only met this lady once. Then Eddie gave her his famous line, why don't you go to the bank and ask them for a loan? You have a house, you own this, right? And the lady said yes, but the bank won't give me a loan. But then Eddie had that famous comeback, which is great, but I find it a little hard to use

[26:42] myself because it's pretty harsh. He said, if the bank won't give you a loan, that must mean that you're a bad risk. And if the bank thinks you're a bad risk, then I'd be pretty stupid to lend that money to you now, wouldn't I? And you know, Eddie really makes sense when he says that, but over the years he's been stuck for a lot more money than I've ever been stuck for. Not because he's not shrewd, he is, but he's a sucker for a pretty face. And over the years, a good number of his girlfriends have really taken him for a ride. But please don't get the idea that most Latin American girls are gold diggers, they're not. The vast majority of them are very low maintenance, and I'll talk about that in another program. But Eddie always seems to fight his girlfriends in the wrong places, like tourist areas and expat bars. And if you want a jaded, US dollar-contaminated Latin beauty, that's just a place to find one.

[27:27] And expat Eddie of all people should know that, but he just can't say no to a pretty face. You've been listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America, coming to you each week from somewhere south of the border. And don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America, theexpatfiles at gmail.com. Once again, The Expat Files at gmail.com. See you next time on Spamos.