If you live in the departmento of Maldonado in Uruguay and you have not applied for residency yet, you are allowed a 90 day extension to the 90 day tourist visa you are given when you enter the country. Actually, you are allowed one extension whichever departmento you live in, but I live in Maldonado, so this post is about the Maldonado office.

I had to share this excellent video about Uruguay. Thanks to Brad and Lisa at UR MOVING WHERE?!?! for finding it!
I really love how it brings in so many aspects of life here in Uruguay. I guess it's just a video to bring in more residents, but even so, it's well done and quite interesting.

Enjoy!

Some days ago this article was brought to my attention: Five Things You Need To Know About Uruguay . While the writer assures the reader that he "loves" Uruguay, he's still pretty snarky in his comments about this great country. I took the time to write down some facts whereas he took the time to make some assumptions.

For our 9th anniversary, about a month after we arrived in Uruguay, we decided to venture out to find the restaurant La Huella (it means, a "print" - footprint, fingerprint, etc.) as featured in the Uruguay episode of "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations - Collection Four" .

We had seen lots of pictures of Casapueblo and read about it on the Internet, but it was quite a feeling to actually BE there ourselves. It was so great! Casapueblo looks like a giant house made of mashmallow creme, hugging the rocks on the side of Punta Ballena.

This is one of the outside gates and part of the wall.

It was kind of a cloudy, windy day when we decided to drive the rental car to the ocean. Sure we can walk to the ocean from our house, but there are so many different beaches. Sometimes it's just nicer to drive along the Rambla and check out the different beaches.

Here you can see the grey, stormy sea. Even on dreary days it's beautiful!

That's the peninsula of Punta del Este in the distance. The waves were crashing and making white foam.

After we got our rental car we had only a map, but we managed to make a bee line to Tienda Inglesa, the large super mercado chain here in Uruguay. I have to give Punta del Este props for being quite easy to navigate for newcomers. There are a handful of "main" roads and if you can find your way to one of those, you can always get to where you're headed.

We didn't realize just how important a car would be to us once we got here. We knew of people using public transportation in Montevideo, but that isn't very true of Punta del Este. There are buses, of course, but they are a mystery no man can solve. There are no routes posted in the bus stops and even locals seem more than a little confused at times. Add to that our lack of useable Spanish when we arrived and we were in a tight spot!

It was quite an adjustment to go from life in Nebraska to a new life in a new country...on a new continent...in a new hemisphere! I love the variety of flora here in Uruguay. Here's a big cactus not far from our house. It's growing in sand and surrounded by a stand of pine trees.

This is a common type of palm around here. They grow all over the place and come in many different sizes.

Waking up the next morning to greet our first day in Uruguay was quite an experience. The weather was perfect for exploring around our new home. We decided to take a walk and see what we could find.

In Punta del Este (perhaps in all of Uruguay, I'm not sure) houses have names. Our house is Te de Nube which means Cloud Tea. We love that tradition here. We can't wait to have our own house to name. The house name is really part of the address, too, so it's not just for looks. ;)