Montevideo, Uruguay: Beautiful… But Confusing? (First Impressions)

Montevideo, Uruguay is often described as one of the safest and most livable cities in Latin America. But when we arrived, we discovered a city full of surprises and contradictions. After the energy and chaos of Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo felt calm, quiet, and very different. But as we explored the city, we found ourselves asking an unexpected question: Are we missing something? In this video, we share our first impressions of Montevideo, including: • Cost of living • Safety and neighborhoods • Weather and livability • Walkability and transportation • Food culture • The famous Rambla • Visas and expat friendliness • Overall vibe and feel This video is part of our series evaluating the best places to retire abroad, with the goal of creating rotating home bases around the world. While Montevideo checks many boxes for expats and retirees, we also discovered some surprising tradeoffs — and a few things that left us puzzled. This is our preliminary assessment. In our next video, we'll score Montevideo across our full framework and reveal whether it could work as one of our rotating home bases. If you're considering retiring abroad or looking for livable cities in Latin America, this series is designed to help you evaluate destinations using a structured framework, with the specific idea of staying in locations for around 90 days at a time - a concept we're calling "Rotating Home Bases." Subscribe to follow our journey as we search for the best places to live abroad, trying to find three home bases we can return to year after year, using them as regional jumping off points to visit other locations around the world. 00:00 Introduction 00:39 Initial Thoughts on Montevideo and its History 01:30 Weather 03:00 Overall Safety 04:30 Safety Statistics 05:04 Cost of Living 06:17 Our Costs in Montevideo 09:36 Healthcare 10:26 Overall Vibe 11:00 Neighborhoods for Expats 13:02 Walkability and Transit 14:00 Montevideo to Colonia del Sacramento by Bus 14:54 Uruguay Religion & Religious Freedom 15:31 Food Culture 16:30 Food Availability in Montevideo 17:58 Uruguay Visas 18:49 Final Thoughts 19:10 The Rambla 21:04 Blooper Reel If you want to book a tour in Montevideo with Javier, here is how we found him: https://www.viator.com/tours/Montevid... If you're new to Viator, consider using Rakuten as a portal for accessing it. We often get at least 10x Amex points for every booking (and have gotten as much as 22x), which brings the effective cost of our tours down 25-40%. If you want to see the AirBnb we rented in the Pocitos neighborhood, you can find it here: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/12587541... We loved the building and the apartment; we just weren't in love with the neighborhood, but we know many people love it, and we think this would be a great place to stay if you want to be in that area. #MontevideoUruguay #RetireAbroad #LivingAbroad