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I continue to tell you what different Latin American countries are cool for life and business
Last week’s series was about Argentina (you know where the link is), and today I will tell you about a country you are probably hearing about for the first time: Paraguay.
This is where and why do people go here? Imagine throwing a dart into the center of South America. The most accurate will hit Bolivia (but you don’t need to go there). The wise ones will have a little shake of the hand and the dart will land a little lower – just in Paraguay.
What’s Paraguay good for?
💰Lowest tax burden for individuals and businesses. 0% on foreign income. 10% rnds, 10% income tax. That said, if the words “tax residency in the Caribbean” causes the “offshore!” light bulb to go off in the regulator’s head, Paraguay is still an unpopular country that no one will have any associations about.
💵 Special trade zone with incentives and neighboring Brazil and Argentina: you’d be surprised how many business niches are untapped in Latam, and here’s a great entry point to the mainland.
🪪A nice bonus is the easy path to citizenship through investment (visa-free entry to Schengen!)
🏡 And finally, Paraguay is a quiet slow distant country, which in 2024 is a big plus. If some other shit happens in Eurasia, it’ll take a week for the news to even reach Paraguay. For 400$ here you can rent a great spacious apartment in a new one with a pool and security and wait out any apocalypse. It’s warm all year round. The local Yandex store runs like clockwork, a hipster introvert’s paradise.
And what associations do you have with the word Paraguay?
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What I love most about traveling are the beautiful roads
The most epic mountain serpentine is Los Carcaroles, on the border between Argentina and Chile.
There is also the longest border in Latam: border guards unload all the things from the car and with dogs look for illegal goods. A huge sheepdog sniffed the car and suddenly barked loudly and joyfully. You know what they took away from me? The worst offense I will never repeat in my life: two apples and a handful of raisins.
The explanation was that Chile is closed off from the rest of Latin America by the high Andes. So high that not a single fly could pass through. Chileans are terribly proud of this (the absence of flies and the Andes, too) and that is why they do not allow fruit from Argentina – what if they turn out to be rotten and insect-ridden?The three-hour wait was worth it – the road is magnificent, look!
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Each year is more interesting than the last, don’t you agree?
This year, my core value was powerfully revealed: the freedom to live where you want to live the way you want to live. Our main home is inside and always with us.
I am writing this post from the border of two beautiful countries (guess which ones?), I am sure that very soon there will be no borders in the world and we will all become citizens of one beautiful green planet Earth. But until it happens, I collect passports and new countries.
Where do you recommend to go this year?
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Imagine: night, desert, a cozy boutique hotel, the Milky Way…
Imagine: night, desert, a cozy boutique hotel, the Milky Way… Suddenly the bus brings a huge Indian family: thirty cheerful pensioners, with them two guides: a round German and an unassuming student. The pensioners are bored on the road and are making so much noise that all the alpacas have woken up: what are we going to do tomorrow? What’s for dinner? Where is my room? And my suitcase? What time do we leave in the morning? The guides stoically tell us everything, smiling and nodding. Suddenly, above the hum of voices, the German guide’s joyful, 100% exclamation: yes, madam, I’m absolutely sure you’ll have a fantastic funeral!
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So, what to tell about Peru?
🥘 The most delicious cuisine in all of Latam. Lots of fruits, seafood, finally soups! For those who want exotic – they cook alpacas and guinea pigs in the mountains. Delicious local coffee and chocolate.
🗿 Ancient culture and traditions. Almost all of Latin America is a melting pot of European migrants and locals from past wars. In Peru beyond the Andes, it’s different: the migrants also had a mining accident at 4500km altitude and no one just crawled into the sacred Inca valley. In the valley you can feel the energy and ancient history from every stone.
⛰️ Unique nature. Turquoise lagoons in the mountains, high snowy peaks, archaeological excavations in the valleys, Lake Titicaca, the ocean, mysterious lines in the Nazca Desert – there is something to see!
☕️ Do you miss the vibe of Krasnaya Polyana? You’re in Pisac: mountains, river, vegan speshalty cafes, hipsters with laptops, yoga and 40 minutes to all the infrastructure of Cusco.
🪪 And, of course, the traditional easy legalization of Latin America:
- 90 days visa-free with a Russian passport;
- Easy to make a residence permit;
- After 2 years of residence you can apply for citizenship. Of course, as in Argentina, you should not do it yourself – the case will hang for years;
- Citizenship is a gift for newborns.
Continuing to drive up the longest Pan-American highway.
What do you associate with Peru?
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Argentina: two years later
Nothing has changed globally, come and visit!
Still the same easy legalization, still the same strong passport – 11th strongest in the world, still the same ruthless slow-moving bureaucracy (don’t do it at home without professional stuntmen). Still the same friendly society, tolerant of all races, nations and other modes of expression. The unique nature has not gone anywhere! Mountains, volcanoes, glaciers, waterfalls – everything is still there. The whales have raised their calves and swam out into the big ocean, but they will be back by spring. The climate has not deteriorated, Buenos Aires is still as beautiful and pleases with exhibitions and music festivals.Yes, steaks are no longer the same: instead of $10 for a half kilo, they are now $20. Terrifying prices. And a babysitter/housekeeper/gardener is no longer $2 an hour, but $3, just brutal.
The only good things new are a fun extravagant president who makes out on stage with pro-actresses, takes selfies with Ilon Musk, and is about to turn the economy in the direction of capitalism.
The nice facts:
- My Argentine stock portfolio is up 53% in $ in six months (hello, skeptics)
- Banks have added settlement in dollars and crypto with no restrictions
- Contracts in any currency are allowed in the country, even in noncoins
- The national currency has strengthened, and inflation has slowed down significantly
We are waiting for customs duties to decrease, real estate prices to rise, and we are happy to see new memes every week.
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How to pass the border quickly by car
In a year of road-traveling around Latin America, I’ve learned the cardinal rule:
Never cross the border at a popular place. You will spend three hours in line, they will make you unload all your stuff from the car, take away your bananas (did you know that banana gnats travel only in four-wheel drive cars with air conditioning, and can’t fly across the border because your passport is the wrong color?), and will explain for a long time that you should have bought a special toilet paper with a printed questionnaire for a dollar in advance, and if you don’t have the paper – well, go look for it somewhere in the night yourself.
Change countries through villages in high mountains or impenetrable jungles. There will be a strong wind outside, so they won’t even look in the car, all customs officers and their dogs will take pictures with you, because ruso gringo turisto in such a hole is the main entertainment of the week, maybe even pour coffee. If you don’t get caught in the lunch break of the only migration officer, you will pass everything literally in 10 minutes.
What was the most epic thing that happened to you at the border?
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I am often asked: Max, how safe is it to drive in Latin America?
I tell you about my experience (Argentina/Paraguay/Uruguay/Brazil/Chile/Peru/Ecuador). During the year I was attacked only once by petty thieves: monkeys in the jungle got into my travel food bag and snatched chips. Be careful, though!
Basic rules:
🌃 Drive around the arc of tourist areas in big cities. Locals know there are gringo white tourists with money walking around. Of course, you can see us all from a kilometer away and the risk of your phone/wallet being stolen is quite high. In Brazil, it’s also dangerous in megacities.
🗻 It’s quiet in villages in the mountains: locals often don’t even close their doors. Fences are immediately low, there are no bars on the windows.
😎And the obvious: don’t talk on the phone on the street, don’t put valuables on the table in cafes, don’t drive into slums at night, check that your hotel has parking (for example, in Cusco, the streets are so narrow that even five-star hotels without parking, I was shocked😳), when renting a place for a long time – choose gated neighborhoods with security guards.
I feel like the danger of latam is exaggerated, the chances of something being stolen from you in London/Barcelona/San Fran are about the same.
What’s the security situation in your city?
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I was driving along the ocean yesterday and realized that one of my wheels is dead
I was driving along the ocean yesterday and realized that one of my wheels is dead. It’s Sunday, and usually everything is closed, but I’m lucky – there’s a garage with an auto mechanic near the highway.
While the master removes the tire and pulls out the nail, I chat with his ten-year-old son Danilo. Children are, of course, the best tutors for language. It never occurs to them that someone might not understand them, so they chatter at first space speed and of course with all the slang.
I divert the conversation from questions about how much my iPhone costs to school and geography: Danilo likes school, but he doesn’t know where the exotic country of Russia is.
“You’re going to Chile, do they have beaches and blue water there too?”– Yes
However, after about 10 minutes, the boy guesses something:
“You don’t understand everything in Spanish. Is your mother tongue Quechua?”Quechua in Peru is spoken by the indigenous population in the mountains, about 13 million speakers. I couldn’t explain what Russian or “another language” in general was😂
The older kids taught me how to say hello:
Nuha essence Max – my name is Max.And what new things did you learn from the children?
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I wonder what I can pass on to my children so that these skills will help them in the future
Obviously, it is not the gentleman’s set of “Soviet school”: academic hard-skills in all subjects at once. Who needs an encyclopedic knowledge of biology in the age of the internet in your pocket and AI?
What then?
I think the most important thing is the ability to negotiate with other people and create something together. Which means languages and lots and lots of practice communicating around non-obvious situations, psychology and business ethics. With a spice of finance, investment, management and programming. A little bit of law… Whoa.
So where do they teach this kind of quality?