#127 – The Expat Files: Navigating Latin America – Tips, Legal Advice, and Cultural Insights

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. Let's start off today's show by answering a few emails. Dear Johnny, I want to book a flight to explore. Costa Rica doesn't sound like the best place to find out more about becoming an expat. I don't know Spanish but I want to take somebody's advice which was, get on a plane and find

[00:50] out for yourself. What I need to know first is how to find a safe cab and a safe hotel once I'm off the plane. So as far as the hotel is concerned, I like the standard that you laid out on a past show. Nothing costly, however, just as you described. I'm also interested in perhaps at least talking to an attorney and getting some ideas down there. Which country would you recommend for the first time visitor? I have my options narrowed down to Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Colombia for the time being. How much cash should I bring down and is it safe to trust an ATM down there? I hope to hear from you shortly. And I'd love to find out more about your seminar and possibly fly down to find out more at another time. However, in the interim I'm looking to be on a flight within a couple of weeks. Thanks for all the great info Johnny, lala, and lala to you too.

[01:38] Anyway I'm glad you mentioned my upcoming seminar which I'm calling the insider's guide to Latin America featuring me and some expert expats who I've known a long time down here and they're specialists in legal matters, tax law, residencies, banking, corporations, flying under the radar and all that. So in a few months I'll be taking a special group of people on my insider's tour of Latin America. And it won't be anything like the ones in the glossy travel magazines, that's for sure. Or those expat websites that are always trying to sell you something. And you could bet that at this seminar I'll be talking about things I just can't speak about on the radio. Because there are certain advantages and secrets down here that I just wouldn't want everybody to know. I mean, Chris Angel doesn't do a trick. Then after that, stop and tell everybody just how we did it now. Or everybody would go home and try it in their living room, wouldn't they? Then Chris Angel would have to go back to living with his ma.

[02:26] Enough said about that. So if you're interested, just email me, theexpetfiles at gmail.com as usual and you can be sure I'll keep you posted. But remember attendance will be strictly limited. Now let's get back to that email. First he says he got some good advice from a friend who said just get on a plane and go down. I agree with that. However, don't go to a high volume tourist area like Costa Rica unless you're strictly going for a fun and a sun vacation. In fact, nothing makes me laugh more when I run into somebody who says, yeah I've been to Latin America, I know the Latin culture, I've been to Costa Rica, and you know that's like a Latin guy saying, yeah I know the United States, I know the culture, I've been to Disneyland. Which means if you want to know Latin America and you want to see the culture, then don't go to a busy tourist area. Then he asks, how can I find a safe cab and a safe hotel once I've gotten off the plane? Well you know, in Latin America there are a lot of safe hotels in good areas and a lot

[03:15] of safe hotels in very bad areas. What I mean by that is, you could have a nice safe cheap hotel in a bad area and that wouldn't be a good thing if you just want to go out and explore on your own because in that case you either want to stay holed up in that hotel, which is safe inside and nice, and if you want to go out you'll end up calling a taxi all the time. Because if you're in a bad area and you're not with a group, you'll never want to go outside walking alone, especially at night. So here's a really good tip for finding a cheap hotel down in a good area in Latin America. And I mean a cheap nice hotel. What you do first, is when you get off the plane you go to the information desk at the airport. Logical enough, right? And you get the most detailed city map that you can, and sometimes you'll just get it for free because it's from the country's tourist board, or you might have to pay two or three bucks. Who cares, right? But what I mean is you want a detailed map with cities and streets marked on it.

[04:00] And if you're in one of the Altiplano regions, you know, one of those regions like Antigua Guatemala, which is up at about 6,000 feet, or Bogota, Colombia which is up at 8,500 feet, well in those high Altiplano regions you have to get a map that shows you the zones or the districts of the city. Especially in a big city like Bogota. Because those Altiplano cities are just not laid out in a straight XY grid fashion like cities in the states. So you really need a detailed street map, or you really won't know what the hell you're looking at. But in a small city like Antigua, which only has about 40 or 50,000 people, almost any city map will do. But remember, if you're flying into a country through an international airport, and your idea is to go to a very small town like Antigua Guatemala, or let's say Copan Honduras, which has under 10,000 people. Well in that case the international airport you're landing just might not have a city

[04:47] map of those towns. And you'll have to wait until you get to your destination town to get a nice little map. Which like I said before, you can always pick up at the Tourist Information Center, which you can find in every airport and in every Latin American town near the Central Park. So if you ask a taxi to take you to the Central Park, Parque Central, you'll almost always be within a block or two of the information desk that's operated by the country's tourist bureau, and a front desk person will always speak some English. After all, tourism is supposed to be their business, right? But let's go back again. Suppose you do land at an international airport. Let's say you're going to Honduras and you land at the airport at San Pedro Sula, which is a pretty good sized city of about a half a million people. Now suppose at the airport you got your nice detailed map of San Pedro Sula now. And by the way, if you come in really late at night, or you're flying in very early

[05:34] in the morning, often there won't be anybody at all at the information booth. It's generally a 9 to 5 job because, after all, big airports are run by governments now, aren't they? And information booths are run by the government tourist bureau, so occasionally you just might be SOL. In that case, take a walk over to the rental car section of the airport. You know, Avis, Thrifty, Renerk and all that. And many of those are open 24 hours a day because it's their business to rent cars and to be there when flights come in. It's not like a government job where you can sit on your dead ass all day, twiddle your thumbs and still get paid. And they'll always have a good city map. Because after all, if you rent a car, you're going to need to know how to get around, right? And every time I've been in one of those places, they give you the map for free. Whether you rent a car or not, because those places are first world franchises and they have first world customer service. Now here's a golden tip on that.

[06:20] Whether you're at the information booth or at Thrifty Renerk Car, you give the gal or guy at the desk a pink or yellow or red transparent marker, and you ask him please to mark or circle the good zones or districts with a felt marker color, the safe zones, the ones that you're able to walk around all day long as a tourist in safety. Then in another felt pen color, have him or her mark the zones that are not safe, the ones you should always pretty much stay out of. Then with that third felt marker, have that person mark the zones that are very expensive. And those are probably going to be the wealthy suburb areas and the central business sections that have the big international hotels like Hilton and Marriott and all that. Okay, now you've got your start. The next thing you do is you find your cab driver. Now in Latin America, you often have many different cab companies.

[07:05] And when you're at the airport, you'll see three, four, five, six, or seven different kind of cabs. Green cabs, white cabs, yellow cabs, and there'll always be a few scab cab drivers, you know, that don't have markings at all. Sometimes the only way you can tell it's a cab is that it's got a light box on top that says taxi, but it looks tacky and not permanent. And those are the ones you definitely want to keep away from. And there are also cab companies that have fleets of cars that are exactly the same model and style. Like for example, one cab company might have 25 or 50 white Toyota Yaris's with four doors. And another cab company in the same town might have a fleet of 25 Hyundai's, all of the same model and color. But the trick to finding a good cab driver is to ask at that tourist information booth or the desk person at the rental car company, Thrifty, Avis, or Rennereck, and just mention

[07:53] that you're going to come back and rent a car in a day or two. But right now you're just tired and you want a taxi to get to your hotel. And that's when you ask them what taxi service they recommend. And of course they always speak English at the information booth and at the rental car places so you'll have no trouble there. Now these people know which taxi services are the most dependable, reliable, and reasonable. So if they suggest you take the Yellow City Cab Service, whose taxis are all Toyota Corollas and are actually green and white, not yellow at all. But hey, this is Latin America, right? Anyway, walk towards the taxi area outside the airport doors and just pick one of those. But the problem is, if you're not in a high-volume tourist area, the taxi driver probably won't speak English. And if he does, he probably only knows 10 or 20 words. However he does know the words Hotel, Dollars, Dinero, and Price, Precio.

[08:39] And right here I should note that if you don't know any Spanish at all, it does pay to learn this little phrase, Cuanto Cuesta. Now that means, how much is it? And you can use that in a restaurant, on a boat ride, at a shoe store, at your hotel, or wherever. Cuanto Cuesta. How much does it cost? Cuanto means how much? Cuesta means cost. And I'm only mentioning this because our emailer says he doesn't know any Spanish. Otherwise, if you know a little Spanish, you can get by pretty easily with clerks and taxi drivers and such, even in non-tourist areas because around the airport you do get your share of international people coming in and out. And though they might not be tourists, they might be Walmart executives, who knows? But anyway, even in those places there'll be just enough English spoken around that airport, that even a non-Spanish speaker won't exactly get stalled. And if the country you're flying into does have any medium or lower-scaled tourist sites,

[09:27] like Honduras has Copán, a tiny town with major Mayan ruins on the outskirts, which I definitely recommend for archeology buffs and people who don't like crowds, and also Honduras has Roatan, a great inexpensive island getaway with perfect white sand beaches and some of the greatest scuba and snorkeling in the world, because it's located right on the second biggest barrier reef in the world. Anyway, a country like Honduras, which does not have high-volume tourism like Costa Rica or Cancun, has just enough trickle of first-world tourists that most camps that do rotate around the international airports do speak 50 or 100 words of English, which is plenty enough to get by for what you're looking for, which is a good, safe, cheap hotel, like our buddy Lala said in his email. Okay, now you've got that city map in your hand, and it's all marked up, the good and

[10:12] bad zones and districts, right? And you also know where the expensive areas in town are, because you've got those marked off too. Now even if you don't know a word of Spanish, and therefore you can't read that map, well once you've found your cab driver at the airport, all you have to say is hotel, and he'll say que hotel, which means what hotel? And then you can just say quiero un hotel, which means I want a hotel, and it's always nice to slap a few por favor after it, because it's something that Latins do all the time and they're very polite. Por favor means please, but a literal translation is for your favor. Por is for, and favor is favor. Or you can even say it in English, I want a hotel please. And there's a good chance he's going to know exactly what you mean. So the word quiero is a good one to know too, which just means I want.

[10:58] For example, if you want a beer, you say quiero beer. Even if the Spanish word for beer is cerveza, if you don't know that, you haven't watched any Tarantino movies lately, have you? Anyway, quiero means I want, and if you want to go to the bathroom, you say quiero bathroom. Now almost all Latins in the service industry, meaning taxi drivers, hotel clerk, and restaurant waiters and waitresses, they know banjo means bathroom, and hotel means hotel in Spanish, same thing, and taxi means taxi in Spanish too, same thing, but Latins don't know what a cab is, so if you say cab, you're just going to get a lot of blank stares. But that's what's nice about the Spanish language. A lot of words are the same in English as in Spanish, for example car is quiero. What could be simpler than that? You just have to roll your tongue a little bit to get that one out. And sometimes you'll run into an old timer that says otto mobile, which of course is

[11:45] automobile. I mean, how could you screw that up? Now you've heard the term másomenos before, haven't you, which means more or less. Now that also means average in Spanish. So if you think something's just okay, you say másomenos. So if a taxi driver takes you to a hotel, and you're sitting in the car looking at it from the outside of the cab, and the taxi driver turns to you and says, está bien? Now I guess 80% of everybody up in the first world knows that Spanish term. Está bien, which basically means, is that okay or is it okay? And if directed towards you means, are you okay? Like when expat Eddie has a bit too much to drink in a bar or a disco, and he starts looking a little green around the gills, one of the waiters will always say to me on the sly, tu amigo, está bien? Está bien? In other words, what this guy really wants to know is if Eddie can make it to the bathroom

[12:32] or not, and he usually does. So anyway, when your taxi driver takes you to a hotel, he's going to say, está bien? And you're going to say, másomenos, if you think it's okay. Or you just answer back, está bien, if you think it's okay. But how do you find a hotel within your price range? Like you said in your email, you're looking for something a little cheaper, you know, on the reasonable end. So you tell the taxi driver right off when you first get in, quiero un hotel, which means I want a hotel, tipo merio? Now tipo means type, sounds just like type, tipo in English. A type of hotel, in other words. And merio means medium, like English, medium, merio. So you just told him, you want a hotel, a medium hotel. And he knows what that means, a medium priced hotel. Quiero un hotel, merio means medium, average.

[13:19] And if you're really filling your oats, you can say, quiero un hotel, merio, presio, means price. So he knows exactly what you mean. Now those are all words that sound just like English words, don't they? So it shouldn't be hard for you. So once you've gotten that message through to the cab driver that you want a hotel, an average priced hotel, and he'll say, está bien or okay, but before he takes off with you, you establish a price with him, the price he wants to take you there. So cuanto cuesta, again, the same word, right? Cuanto means how much, and cuesta means price, how much is it going to cost? And then of course he'll give you a price, and then before you take off now, you ask him where that hotel is on your map. Now that's the $50,000 question. And all you have to really say then is, don de está el hotel, which means where's the hotel on este mapa, which means on this map.

[14:08] Or simply yet, just point to the map and say, don de está. And now you're going to know if it's in a good zone, a bad zone, an expensive zone or not. So you know right away if he's picked a decent, medium priced hotel in an area, that's safe. But you don't have to stop there. I suggest you have him pick two or even three hotels while you're sitting in the car with him, and have him point them out on the map too so you have some choices in case you don't like the first one he takes you to. Because a lot of times what you'll find is that a taxi driver has a friend or a brother-in-law or an uncle who has a junky little hotel, and if he picks up a tourist like you that doesn't exactly know where he or she's going, he's always going to try to take you there first. And I can tell you I've had that happen to me more than once. But you see, if you have him pick two or three other hotels, you can bet he's only got one

[14:54] brother or uncle with a hotel. So if you've got other choices, you won't get railroaded into the hotel he wants to take you. And of course, some of these cab drivers cut deals with little hotels and they get a piece of the action if they bring a client. And there's nothing wrong with that if the hotel is nice and it's to your satisfaction, but you should know there could be some collusion going on there. Now another thing you can do before you even take off from the airport with your new cab driver is you could have them write down the names of three hotels for you, and then you tell him to wait right there. You'll be right back in about 10 minutes and give him a dollar or two just for waiting. And he'll do it because he's not using any gas just sitting at the taxi stand with his motor switched off. But don't leave your bags with him. Don't do that. Instead, what you're going to do is you're going to go back into the airport where they have an internet. They always have an internet in or very near the airport.

[15:41] And sometimes there's two or three. Anyway, you get on the internet and you Google those three hotels really quickly. And when you do that, you'll get a number of listings mentioning that hotel's name, which usually includes one site called the TripAdvisor, which I think is TripAdvisor.com. Anyway, you'll get it when you Google a hotel. And that site will have five or 10 or even more critiques on that hotel from people who have stayed in it. People who have bothered to write to TripAdvisor, people who have had enough time on their hands to make a comment or two about that very hotel. And usually in that list when you Google a hotel, you'll also get a Lonely Planet review from the Lonely Planet guide, which will be in English too. So in no time you'll have a great idea what that hotel is like and even the neighborhood just by the comments. And most times the people who critique the place will even have pictures posted so you

[16:27] can see what it's like before you even get there. And those aren't the only good sites that might pop up when you Google a hotel like that. But be sure when you Google that hotel, you put in the country and maybe even the city because there's about 6,000 hotels in Latin America called Plaza del Sol or Hotel Las Palmas. So you really want to narrow it down a bit on your Google search. And the next question our email listener asks is how he can hook up with a local lawyer so he can have a powwow and ask him some questions. Now just a bit about lawyers. If you're on a tourist trail like Costa Rica, Cancun, Xtapa, Acapulco, Rio de Janeiro, Panama, you're going to find that almost all attorneys speak English. And they even put ads in the paper and in tourist magazines in their area in English too. And those are ads that say English spoken here.

[17:12] Well you can bet if it says English spoken here or the ads 100% in English, if you have that lawyer do anything for you, he's going to be twice or three times the price of someone who doesn't put that in their ad. And by the way, you can look in the yellow pages for a lawyer in any city down here, big or small. Actually it's the green or blue pages in the telephone book which are the pages devoted to the professional services like general practitioners, medical specialists, dentists and lawyers. And down here in Latin America, the yellow pages and telephone books in general are not dead yet. Not like they're dead as a doornail in the first world since the internet supplanted all of that stuff. There is a lag time in everything down here like I said before. Things take a while before they make it down from the first world and settle into the minds and hearts of the Latin Americans. And that includes telephone books. Sure, I'll admit, the white pages are shrinking.

[18:01] Fewer and fewer of the common people are entering their names and addresses into the white pages. But the yellow pages and the blue and green professional pages that I talked about are alive and well and probably won't fade away for quite a few years. Though you can go on the internet and find all those listings too, just like you can up in the first world. But the problem is, you see, less than 30% of the people in Latin America have internet in their homes. That's because 50% of the people down here make $300 or less a month. So even if they could afford basic wireless internet, which only costs about $12 a month down here for a basic 256K service, which is kind of crappy, but still, it's internet. And at $12 a month, that's pretty affordable, even if you only make $300 a month. But the problem is, you have to buy a computer and keep it maintained with a decent active

[18:48] antivirus and all that. Most people down here on the very low end, people making $300 to $500 a month, who actually go out and buy a computer, almost never buy a brand new one. And they don't buy a decent antivirus, they either get a free one off the internet or they do without. And even if they do install one, they rarely do the updates. Because they just can't afford to drop $250 to $500, which is like a month or two salary for them. That would be like the average American dropping $4,000 or $5,000 to buy a computer, if you compare it to what the average American makes per month. So anyway, since less than 30% of the population down here has an internet connection at home, they still use the phone book and the yellow pages. And here's the other thing, at least half of that 30% of the population that does have internet down here, only the kids in the family know how to use it. Older Latin Americans are very conservative, and the over 40 or 50 crowd, especially the

[19:36] women of the house, who never had any computer training at all in school when they were young, because computer training in school just didn't exist till 5 or 10 years ago down here. Anyway, most of the adults in a Latin family are afraid to get on their kid's computer and start screwing around. But that's not so true at all of adults in wealthy Latin families. That wealthy 2 or 3% of the population that can afford to have SUVs and blackberries and iPods, and of course, bodyguards. Now adults in those families are on their computers all the time, just like the average American adult in the first world. Anyway, the point is, there is a lag time with the demise of the phone book down here. It looks like it's going to take 5 or more years before it actually starts fading away. So anyway, as far as attorneys, it doesn't matter if you're in a tourist town or not. You can make an appointment at an attorney's office and they won't charge you for the first visit.

[20:22] But always remember that attorneys in those tourist towns are going to be a lot slicker than the ones outside the tourist areas. And a lot more expensive. Now I've always found that in small and big cities off the tourist track, if you look in the yellow pages or Google attorneys and you see any nice big slick ads, advertising a big group of specialized lawyers in a professional complex, now I like to keep away from those too. Because if they're in a big professional building, they're going to have a high overhead and they'll be more expensive too. Just have a look at the parking lot and see what kind of cars these guys drive. If they're driving mid-range Toyotas, great. If they're driving SUVs and Volvo's, forget it. My advice is always go to a young lawyer between 25 and 40 years old because you'll know he graduated fairly recently. He'll definitely be computer savvy and speak English. Because all law schools and professional schools down here these days require that a student

[21:10] learns English. Because down here in Latin America, a big part of their curriculum is international law. Simply because so many of these Latin American countries depend on tourism, mining and the import-export business. And if you don't know your English well as an attorney, it can be quite a handicap. So young lawyers under 45 almost always speak English. But not too many lawyers over 50 years old speak English. Because back then when they went to school, there wasn't a big push on international trade. And they didn't have computers back then in their schools either. So definitely you want a younger, hungrier lawyer. One that's not partners in a big group. So if you are checking in the phone book for lawyers, which is by the way, abogados with an A, which in English actually means advocate. Which is another word that's pretty close to English so you should be able to remember that fairly easily. And actually when you see it spelled out, it looks a lot more like advocate than it

[21:58] does when you say it. So you go on the phone book and you get a few names and you Google them. And most all of the young ones have nice websites. So you can see what they look like, how old they are, and all their services. And if they don't have an alternate English website, which most of them don't, you just hit Google Translate. Then you make your selection, call them up, say habla inglés, which means do you speak English. And if his secretary doesn't, she'll put someone else on the phone who does. And if she says, lo siento, no habla inglés, that means I'm sorry I don't speak English. And if she doesn't pass you to someone who does speak English, well you can figure her boss the lawyer probably doesn't speak good English either. But that's unlikely. Young lawyers almost always speak English these days. Okay, we got the lawyer part of that email settled. Now our emailer is asking, which country do I suggest that he start in? Well I don't suggest any of those high volume tourist areas and I mentioned them earlier

[22:47] in the broadcast. Because although there's a lot of sun and fun in those places and a lot to do, they can be double or even triple the prices compared to places off the tourist trail. And if you're planning to start a business down there, especially a brick and mortar business with an office and a staff and a crew and all that, you're going to have some very stiff competition from first world people that came down a lot sooner than you did and had the same idea. Not to mention that the startup costs in those more developed countries like Costa Rica are very much higher than countries like Honduras, Salvador and Guatemala. And you really should check out my past show when I mentioned the startup costs in the first world versus countries down in Latin America. If you remember I said the startup costs for an average small business in the United States was $100,000 or so. And to do the same thing in Costa Rica, it was around $30,000.

[23:33] But to do the same business down in Peru or Salvador or Guatemala, it was $6,000 to $10,000. So based on those figures, doing business in Costa Rica is about three times more expensive startup cost-wise than if you did the same thing in a neighboring country. And the other thing is, depends what you like in weather. If you like being near the beach and sand and you like hot and humid, then stick around the cities and towns in the coastal areas. But if you're like me and so many other expats, once you've discovered the Altiplano cities, the ones that are up high, about 4,000 feet or higher, and because of that they have eternal spring weather, once you've experienced those nearly perfect climates, you really don't feel like living on the beach full-time anymore, believe me. I mean, personally, me and a lot of expats like to visit the beach once in a while. And quite a lot of us even have beach homes in Cabana, where we can, with a one or two

[24:22] hour drive, get away from the high elevations and lay around the beach in a hammock and drink pina coladas and daiquiris. To me and so many other expats, that's the perfect life, having a place in the Altiplano where you stay most of the time, and then when you want to go to the beach, you head to your Cabana. But again, it depends what you like. But what I've just explained seems to be the best of two worlds for expats. And even if you don't have the money to build a little beach house in Cabana, which could set you back 50,000 bucks or more, if you don't have that kind of money, you can still live in the Altiplano and go to the beach when you feel like it, which is only a couple hours away, then you could rent a cheap hotel in Cabana when you feel like it. But if you decide to take up permanent residence on the beach, then you're pretty much stuck in the heat and the humidity for the foreseeable future. And I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of getting up every morning

[25:10] with a permanent coat of sweat on my body, because that's what it's like in the beach towns down here. Remember, we're pretty close to the equator, most of us, a lot closer than you guys up in the first world. And you know, for all the sun and fun you do have in a beach town, it can be torture too. Imagine climbing up on your roof to check out a leak in your skylight. You can't even touch the shingles or the roofing tiles, you'll fry like an egg. And after 10 o'clock in the morning, if you're just taking a short walk on the road to the beach, your immediate thought is just to get out of the sun and find some shade. And if you go to the 7-Eleven and don't find a piece of shade, and let me tell you, in beach towns, any shade in a commercial center or a parking lot is like solid gold. Because if your car doesn't end up in the shade, it's an absolutely miserable experience once you come back to your car and get in. There have been times that I couldn't even put my hands on the steering wheel it's been

[25:55] so hot. And after a while, you know what sun like that does to your dashboard and upholstery? So I'm just warning you that if you live in a beach town, especially in Latin America, when you're close to the equator, it's mostly not sun and fun. It's mostly for a lot of us expats who know it well, hot and miserable. But the sunsets and the nights are just great. There's a lot of action in some of these beach towns, but if you're not into scuba, snorkeling, or water sports, you're going to have most of your fun at night. Just ask Expat Eddie. When he's at his beach house, he just hangs around in the house all day, sipping cocktails and watching first world sports. He's a night owl like a lot of other expats who have houses on the beach. At least at night, you can walk barefoot on the sand without scorching your feet. Believe me, during the day you just can't do that. And as for that question about using ATM machines, you're completely safe if you use an ATM that's

[26:43] in or next to a bank, or in ATM machines located next to or in a big hotel, and all airport ATM machines. In fact, in my 20 years down here, I've only heard bad stories about one particular bank's ATM machine. It's a bank that's located all throughout Central and South America called BAC, which stands for Banco de America Central, and it's an international bank with headquarters in El Salvador. But I've heard stories with their ATMs in tourist towns that when you take a cash withdrawal, a day or two after that, you have a zero account balance. You've been cleaned out. But when you report that back to your branch bank, you get your money back, but it takes about a month. So it's not a total ripoff, just a big inconvenience. Anyway, to be safe, just use those ATM machines in those places that I mentioned before. And another thing, I like to make sure that no one's standing behind me when I'm withdrawing

[27:30] money. And that's a good idea even up in the first world. 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, The Expat Files at gmail.com. Once again, The Expat Files at gmail.com. See you next time. Nos vemos.