How we ended up in Uruguay




“what about Belize?” An innocent question that started the ball rolling. It was late morning in March of 2007. A rare clear day with light wind and no rain for a pleasant change. We would try to take a walk down the road each day, but weather didn’t always permit.

Its funny how one question can change so many things. Rather than give me an irritated “are you out of your mind?” look, she smiled and nodded. We talked some more on the way down the road, then turned around and headed back home.

Once we arrived we sat in the office and started looking at Belize. “What about Panama” said Brook.....

We ended up passing on Belize because it looked a little third world. Panama was more interesting. It was easy to get a visa, it had certain tax advantages for foreigners who wanted to live there, and more for people who wanted to build a house there. It had beaches and an equatorial climate. It had first world infrastructure and was a fairly short trip to the US. Brook and I booked tickets to visit and see the place. We contacted an immigration lawyer and got ready to visit.

Some part of this move had to do with the previous bitterly cold winter in Friday Harbor Washington. We started the winter by having more rainfall than any other October in recorded history. Over 20 inches in October alone. This was followed by more rain and three significant snow storms that closed the island down for as much as a week. The land was so saturated with water that when it kept raining, Bailer Hill road, a major road on the south end of the island ended up being under 3 feet of water. A picture in a local online paper showed someone rowing a boat passed a mail box on Bailer hill road.

Another part of it was Brook’s stroke the October before. At the time we owned a pilates business that Brook ran, and a deli and bakery that I ran. I had come home from work in the afternoon and started talking to Brook. Everything seemed fine at first but she never said any words. After a short time I asked her to say something, but she was only able to nod and say “hmmm”. This led to an emergency trip to the doctor, followed by a flight to Harbor View Hospital in Seattle where we spent a few days. I watched as test after test was performed on her. A few days later Mimi arrived and took over the vigil at the hospital so I could go back and take care of the kids.

After the stroke, we felt that we should do what made us happy, and it led us to consider lots of things in a different way.

So while we waited for our travel date to hit, we thought about Argentina. I had heard people talk it up as a great place so we started to look at it. There where some things that made it more compelling, like Donald Trump wasn’t building anything there! Buenos Aires had a lot to offer, and they had recently outlawed smoking in bars and restaurants. We changed our reservations and headed down to Buenos Aires for Easter. This time it was just Brook and I as Toni was taking care of the kids.

We really liked Buenos Aires, but it had 2 major strikes. It is a huge city, of 15 million people, and it had the added issue of having school issues – the schools we liked had waiting lists. In some cases when siblings had been counted, the classes had –6 spaces. There was another school that we found, but that was a long way from where we wanted to live.

On our flight back, we met and chatted with an oil executive who had been to Buenos Aires on Business. We told him our plan and he asked if we had looked at Uruguay. We thought nothing of it at the time. Later, when we thought of the size of the city and the lack of beaches, we started looking at Uruguay.


Posted: Mon - October 15, 2007 at 02:02 PM      

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