March 19, 2005

10:01:49 pm Final Observations on South America  

March 18, 2005

In our last week in South America, we began a post summarizing our experience there. We never finished it then, but will attempt to do so now as we are about to depart New Zealand.

South America is an unknown continent to most Americans, who never think of going there. We encountered more Europeans than Americans, the former being more adventurous in their choice of travel destinations. We do think as a generalization that South American countries do a poor job of promoting itself as a travel destination to English-speaking Americans. Europe and Asia are more front of mind to Americans desiring a foreign continent vacation. Europe is an understandable destination given the heritage of the US, but Asia is further in distance and history, although closer to us economically. We do think Asia has a slight lead over South America in prevalence of English and availability of tourist facilities that match US expectations. This lead is only slight at most, however, and may be more in our imagination than real. Anyway, this slight lead ought is counterbalanced by the closer location of South America.

Whatever the reason why Americans don't go to South America in large numbers, they should. The array of fantastic natural and archeological sites to see tops North America in our opinion. Most Americans could name the Amazon (which we have not been to) and some are familiar with Machu Picchu, but no one seems to know Iguasu Falls (the best waterfalls in the world, making a mockery of Niagara); the Calafate Glaciers (Alaska and New Zealand's glaciers do not begin to compare); or the beauty of the Lakes Region of Chile and Argentina. (As an aside, we observe that New Zealand, which we consider to be one of the most consistently beautiful and outdoorsy countries, has nothing that matches the beauty of Iguasu, Calafate, and the Lakes Region.) The landscape of Rio is as beautiful as any city in the world, but most Americans will see San Francisco and think they've seen it all. The Galapagos Islands (and to a lesser extent Easter Island) are far away places that many Americans want to go to, but never do, opting instead for more expensive, less interesting, and further away places such as Tahiti and Bora Bora that travel agents push them to (never underestimate the power of exotic sounding name, which, when combined with a personal recommendation, becomes irresistible). To top it all off, South America is cheap, cheap, cheap--one of the most affordable places you can travel to. So go.

One question that intrigued us throughout our travels in South America is why North America has prospered while South America has not, given that both were settled in the 16th Century by European powers. The early advantage was to South America over North America as it had more developed indigenous cultures and was generally settled a bit earlier by the Spanish than was North America by other Europeans, primarily the English. So what went wrong?

We have identified three contributing factors. There are likely other factors we've missed and we will not attempt fully justify the ones we've identified, but in any event, here they are:

- Simply stated, the English were better colonialists than the Spanish were. While each kept colonies for economic gain, the English did more to develop the colonies and make them a better place to live in terms of education, infrastructure, and institution building. The Spanish invested little and took much. The best comparison we can think of is actually not in the Americas or even involving the English, but we think it illustrates the point well. The Philippines were a Spanish colony for roughly 400 years and later an American colony for roughly 40 years (the only colony the US has ever had). If you consider the American colonial period in the first half of the 20th Century a surrogate for how the English would have operated, you have a fair comparison of one nation under two different colonial rulers. The Spanish were there for 400 years, but today few people in the Philippines speak Spanish and there are no significant ties between Spain and the Philippines. The one legacy the Spanish left is Catholicism. The Americans in contrast built roads, established mass education, built democratic institutions, and voluntarily handed over power. Today, English is the unifying language of this island archipelago, even though it was not commonly spoken a century ago.

- The pervasiveness of the Catholic Church in Spanish colonial society and government was so great as to be a negative. It did not have a parallel in England, which broke with Rome in 1534, and in the US, which had a clear vision of separation of church and state based upon firsthand experience of religious persecution in Europe.

- The US had figures like George Washington as a role model. He and our other founding fathers generally put the countries' interests ahead of their own and designed a brilliant system of government that properly checked the natural bad tendencies of men in power. South America had a series of those bad men, unchecked, and in power. Instead of George Washington, they had caudillos like Juan Manuel de Rojas of Argentina who lusted after power for personal gain, not for the patriotic good, and did whatever it took to achieve it, crushing all opposition. Rojas ruled Argentina as a dictator for roughly the first 30 years of its founding and set the example for future generations of leaders.

On the last point, it's worth noting that there is a South American figure, Simon Bolivar, who is called the South American George Washington. Inspired by the American Revolution, Bolivar's vision was the confederation of Gran Columbia, consisting of present day Columbia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Bolivar and his right-hand man General Sucre (continuing the analogies to the American Revolution, perhaps Sucre could be called the Alexander Hamilton of South America) fought to achieve independence from the Spanish for these countries in the 1820s and then unified them. Gran Columbia collapsed in 1830, though, as leaders of the respective countries could not put aside personal differences and competing ambitions for the greater good. This failure is a stark reminder that it was never preordained that the US colonies would unite and form one great country instead of 13 minor countries that most people in the world would have trouble placing on the map. We forget that the colonies were not unified at the beginning--they were independent, competing, often squabbling, separate entities. We are so fortunate that the politicians of the 1770s and 1780s were able to reach compromise for the common good. Consider what the US and Gran Columbia each might have become had they taken the path of the other.

The Gran Columbian countries today have a population of nearly 120 million, but we suspect its size would be tens of millions higher had they remained united, as European and Central and South American immigrants would have been attracted to the most dominant Spanish-speaking country in the world. Who knows, maybe Mexican migration would have flowed south to the Gran Columbia juggernaut instead of north to the US. With a large domestic market and its language advantage over Portuguese-speaking Brazil, Gran Columbia would be the giant of South America instead of Brazil. Instead, "we are an insignificant country today," said our Ecuadorian tour guide Ruben, lamenting that the Gran Columbia Revolution did not share a common path with the American Revolution. "And you," he continued, "have become the most powerful country in the world."

2 feedbacks • Permalink

January 29, 2005

08:58:18 am Uruguay  

Montevideo, Uruguay
Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Capital and largest city in Uruguay
City population: 1.4 million in metropolitan area

Punta del Este, Uruguay
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - Saturday, January 22, 2005
Nicest beach resort destination in South America
City population: less than 50,000

Itinerary
TAM flight from Brasilia, Brazil to Porto Alegre, Brazil
Aerolineas Argentinas flight from Porto Alegre, Brazil to Montevideo
One night at Hotel Europa, Montevideo
Bus from Montevideo to Punta del Este (140 kilometers, 2 hours)
Three nights at Hotel Remanso, Punta del Este

Montevideo Activities
Walking around downtown
City tour
Visiting downtown museums: Museo Historico Nacional, Museo Torres Garcia, Casa de Gobierno Historico

Punte del Este Activities
Walking around town
Viewing real estate
Relaxing

Country Background:
Population: 3 million
Per capita GDP: $13,000
Size: slightly smaller than Washington state
Currency: peso, 25 per dollar
Independence: 1825 from Brazil
Language: Spanish

Uruguay has been called the Switzerland of South America because it is small, relatively prosperous, and welcoming to foreign investment with a pro-market government. Its economic policies give it the highest standard of living in South America. Like its neighbors Argentina and Brazil, it too had troubles in the 60s and 70s with the military in charge from 1973 until a democratically elected president took over in 1984.

The taxi ride from the airport to downtown Montevideo along the coast of the Rio de la Platte/Atlantic Ocean reminded us a bit of the California coast. That's not a great comparison as the cliffs of California were not present, but in a foreign place you come up with closest analogies that you can.

Arriving from Brasilia meant a language switch back to Spanish from Portuguese. Nick continued to have trouble mastering hello in a new country. After his arigato/abrigado confusion in Brasilia, a strange new derivation of hello/hola emanated from his mouth: "alo," as in "hello" spoken by someone from England with the "h" clipped off. He justified this malapropos to himself by observing that "alo" was simply "ola" (the phonetic pronounciation of "hola") with the "a" and the "o" reversed. A very understandable error, he reasoned to himself, not registering the utterly befuddled look on the face of everyone he spoke to with his new made-up greeting.

After a day seeing the sights in Montevideo, we took a bus to Punta del Este. We previously posted out of sequence on Punta del Este on January 20. The danger of writing on a place in the first 24 hours of arriving is that you have to correct much of what you wrote initially as you learn more. So here follows our Errata on Punta del Este.

Contrary, to our initial impression, Uruguay does not have its own proprietary network cable. While Nick was talking to an English-speaking real estate agent, he explained the difficulty described in our earlier post and asked if she knew how he could connect our notebook to the Internet. She explained the situation to a colleague, who said something in Spanish like, "what does this idiot mean?--it's a worldwide standard, of course!" He then invited Nick to try his network connection, which similar to Nick's earlier experience, did not fit securely in our PC (no click), but this time there was a good enough connection begin transferring bytes to the Internet. So that is how Nick found himself in the office of the manager of a local real estate firm, updating our web site, while the manager took phone calls in Spanish, his PC temporarily useless as Nick hogged his bandwidth. These situations happen abroad, with most foreigners very eager to help clueless Americans, even while their own productivity is idled. They think nothing of it, while if the situation was reversed, we would probably be hovering impatiently, wondering "are you done yet?!--I have work to do!"

Further, wireless networking has made its way this country. It was present both in this real estate office and ironically in our very own hotel lobby, although we are not sure whether it was provided by the hotel or a business or condo next door, unaware they were providing a conduit for padgetthome.com to update its image gallery.

As detailed in our earlier post, Deanna was wiped out on Thursday. After the first post, Nick returned to the pharmacy, this time procuring a mercury thermometer, the kind we all grew up with but which seem to be no longer available in the US, in favor of the digital kind which cost two or three times as much and work for about a year before the battery goes. Progress. Deanna checked in at an impressive 38.1 degrees Celsius, or 100.6 Fahrenheit on Thursday afternoon. But by Friday morning, her temperature was normal again.

Thus, she set out gingerly with Nick to view the real estate scene in Punta del Este. The prior afternoon, between stops at the pharmacy, Nick visited the office of Intermedio, a local real estate broker and property manager. Their handwritten "Yes we speak English" lured him into the office like a moth to a flame.

Inside he spent about an hour speaking with Jimena Rodriguez, the designated English speaker (see image gallery for an action photo of her closing a deal). In addition to solving Nick's Internet connection troubles, she agreed to show properties to him and Deanna the next day. With her multiple talents of technical troubleshooting, translation, and real estate brokerage, she should go far.

So on Friday, she graciously spent several hours with us showing us different condos. We had wanted to see some houses as well, but they were all currently occupied with renters, this being the high season for tourism, and thus not available for viewing. Still, we had no complaints, as we were happy to get to see anything. Our prior post on Punta del Este commented on the excellent value in prices available, and our excursion only reinforced this view.

Like everywhere, prices can vary widely depending on location and quality of the property. So we would amend our prior post only to say that we found some properties even less expensive than previously mentioned and other properties also more expensive. Houses a few blocks from the beach in a good location actually start around $100,000. We looked a high-end condos right on the water, priced above the range cited in our earlier post, but still a bargain by US standards. The first property was a 2200 square foot condo on the 17th floor of one of the best-located buildings in Punta del Este. See the pictures labeled "Tip of the Peninsula" and "Marina" in the image gallery for the views. While advertised as 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, this does not include the standard maid's quarters, with has another bedroom and full bath. If you didn't have a maid or otherwise need the bedroom, you could use the bedroom as a den or office. So, in US terms, this really was a 4-bedroom, 3.5-bath unit. While the décor was a bit dated, reflecting that the building was 25 years old, we felt that was adequately compensated for in the $320,000 asking price, which according to Jimena, could probably be reduced to $300,000 or less. Again, this is for one of the best-located buildings in the top beach resort on the continent of South America!

Another notable unit we looked at was in what was likely one of the nicest buildings in the city. It was a very high quality building by US standards, featuring floor to ceiling marble in the lobby, a private elevator to your unit, a gym, a theater room available for private use, indoor and outdoor pools, supervised children's activities, daily maid service, and more. A brand new 5-bedroom, 5.5 bath (this includes the maid's quarters), 2900-square foot unit, with incredible beachfront views (see pictures Punta del Este looking North and Punta del Este looking South in the image gallery) on the 17th floor could be had for $590,000. There are a few extra fees not included in the selling price of new units, so tack on 6% to make this comparable to a US price. Also take note that the agent's commission is split by the buyer and seller instead of being paid solely by the seller (obviously, relatively to the US, this works against you when buying, and for you when selling, a wash in the end). Still for less than $650,000, you could own one of the nicest units in the Trump Tower if you will of Punta del Este. Oh and did we mention that Uruguay has the enlightened policy of no capital gains tax and direct ownership of property by foreigners? Now you may be beginning to see why wealthy Argentines invest their money in Uruguay.

Nonetheless, the better investment opportunities are probably in Montevideo. Punta del Este is a vacation destination that peaks December to February. The Trump apartment just described might command as much as $1,000 per day in rent at the very peak time of the last week in December through the first half of January, but then it might also sit idle for nine months of the year. In contrast, Montevideo is a year-round town, which as the capital and largest city has a constant stream of diplomats and business people assigned to it for a few years at a time. Property there costs about the same, but could be rented year round, perhaps for several years at a time. And while not considered a vacation destination, Montevideo has the same weather as Punta del Este and some great beaches also. You won't get the peak rents that Punta offers, but you should have a steadier investment.

Finally, a few social observations. Punta del Este is a beautiful sunny place where sunscreen is readily available but apparently rarely used as the leather skin look is still in vogue here. So is smoking and it is allowed everywhere we have been so far in South America, except in airplanes. It is sometimes hard to remember that just 15 years ago you could still smoke on US flights. The first movement to ban smoking in some public places is occasional in the news in Buenos Aires, although it is considered something of a curious thing to want to do. It will be interesting to see if in two or three decades smoking becomes the anathema in other cultures that it has become in the US. We think it will--if the Irish can ban smoking in their pubs, which they just did, it can happen anywhere.

It is also fashionable in Punta del Este it seems to cover the back windshield of your vehicle with as many advertising and slogan stickers as possible (see image gallery). Apparently, the goal is to minimize completely the visibility you have out the back window. Cars from Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay all liberally decorated their rear windows.

Send feedback • Permalink

January 20, 2005

12:53:07 pm Punta del Este--Update on why no updates  

Punta del Este, Uruguary, January 20, 2005

We have pictures from our last three stops in our PC ready to upload, but alas in Uruguay the standard network cable is different from everywhere else in the world that we have been, and a wireless connection is uncommon here. So, the pictures are sitting on our PC, but we cannot connect our PC to the Internet in Uruguay! Hopefully, this problem is limited to this country, although our guess is that it is not. We had no problems in Argentina (wireless connection in our room) and Brazil (DSL connection in our room). It surprising that Uruguay would be different because it is a small country between Argentina and Brazil and actually more advanced than either of its two larger neighbors. Maybe we just got lucky in Argentina, and this problem will plague us as we travel through Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia. At a minimum we know that we will be able to connect our PC again wirelessly in Buenos Aires on Saturday, January 29.

We can obviously get to the Internet through an Internet cafe, which is what Nick is doing now. There are other challenges to that, such as all the special characters (!"·$% etc.) are not marked in their proper places on the keyboard--in other words, the keyboard is an American keyboard, but the symbols that appear on the screen do not correspond to what you type. Hit the key for @ and you get a " for example. Apparently, everyone here knows the code, but we do not! So this note will take measures to avoid punctuation--note the lack of contractions. It took Nick about 10 minutes of trial and error to find all of the special characters to enter the web site address to pay his credit card bill, but eventually he figured it out.

The incredibly witty and intelligent posts that you all love so much do take a long time to write and edit and that is best done on our PC rather than sitting in a cafe, so this post and any others from a cafe will be lighter on wit and shorter than normal (well maybe not so short). Later, when we can connect our PC, we will post on the places we have been to date--Buenos Aires, Brasilia, and Montevideo.

Punta del Este is a great place, the South (Miami) Beach of South America, but at half the price. It is the most civilized place we have found in South America, which makes it the vacation destination of choice for the continent. It is expensive enough (for South America) that it is not too run down or crowded, despite everyone telling us that everyone goes there.

While Nick has yet to accost real estate agents in person like in Costa Rico, the prices seem ridiculously cheap for a premier destination--much better than Tamarindo, Costa Rico (plus all of the first world infrastructure is in place, excect standard network connection cords!). Two bedroom oceanview condos start below $US100,000 and four bedroom condos can be had for $US200,000 - $US300,000. Houses 10 minutes from downtown, in a great location not far from the water, can be had for $US200,000 - $US500,000 (and up of course). A bit more than Macomb, but very reasonable for an ocean resort town, in our opinion. By the way, Nicks father informs him that farmland 15 miles north of Macomb recently fetched up to $5,800 an acre, nearly double the prices quoted in the Costa Rico posting. No doubt, Mr. Greenspan is concerned about the developing bubble in the west central Illinois farm economy.

Having lauded Punta del Este as the nicest place we have been, it is ironic that Deanna is sick today. We had the most expensive meal so far on the trip last night ($US63) and she has not made it out of the room so far today (3PM local time). Nothing to worry about, just the kind of thing that will happen to both of us several times on this trip. You cannot travel without it happening to you. Nick went on a mission to find Tums or Rolaids for Deanna and was quite pleased after an extended discussion with a pharmacist where neither person understood the other (English is not common here) to come back with Mylanta Plus. That is about as close as you get when you venture out to try and buy something. You never know exactly what you will find, but usually you can get something vaguely similar to what you want.

Punta del Este is a late night place, just like Buenos Aires and Spain. The earliest a bank opens here is 1PM, but some will be open until 8PM (others work a full four hour day!). Last night for dinner, we were hungry early, and we somehow found a place open at 7:15. This is like trying to get dinner in Macomb at 3 PM. When we left at 8:30, the restaurant was empty again, no one else having yet ventured out at such an unheard of hour. As we walked home, most restaurants were just setting up, still not open.

Send feedback • Permalink