First year living aboard in South America

We've lived onboard Velvet Lady for 17 years, all in Europe. This was our first year as liveaboards on the east coast of South America. Read on to see how we found it, or scroll to the end for our more practical tips.

A year already. That has passed in a flash.

Mid May last year we had just sailed across the Atlantic and were oh so close to arriving in Salvador, Brazil. It was warm and sunny but the wind gave up! Light winds on the nose and outgoing current made the last few miles painfully slow. We eventually dropped our anchor on South American soil for the first time at 00.30 Brazil time on 16 May.

Today, one year later we are in Piriapolis marina, Uruguay. Its very different to a year ago. Cold, 8 degrees, beautiful clear blue sky and gale force winds.

What a fantastic year it has been. I've been reminiscing, reading old blogs and my diary entries on No Foreignland. You can read them too. Velvet Lady Blog starting in May 2023 and Velvet Lady NFL below.

It has been like living the past year all over again.

We've sailed 2750nm to travel 1963 miles along the coast. Thats like sailing from the north of Scotland to the Canaries and we are only half way along the coast. It is nearly the same distance again to get to Chile!

We have met lots of people on the way and without fail they have been friendly and helpful.

We spent the first 6 months cruising the coast of Brazil. We spent only 21 nights in a marina and the rest of the time were at anchor in beautiful isolated bays or fishing villages. The colour of the sea and foliage never ceased to amaze me. So many shades, depths and textures of blue and green.

The weather was sunny and warm. Fortunately it was the middle of winter so we never had unbearable heat. Not many mosquitos either. We met lots of other yachts, Brazilian mainly but also Argentinian and Uruguayan but only 2 other European. Long John Silver heading south just in front of us and Lonna heading north.

In the isolated anchorages you get peace and quiet, it is a short dinghy ride to shore but often with limited or no supplies. We were glad we bought our Starlink, often there was no cellphone signal.

The bays near fishing villages and towns were busier and noisier, and often full of moorings. Watch out for fish farms too! We never had to pay to anchor.

Our tourist visas ran out after 180 days so we left Brazil for Punta del Este, Uruguay on the north side of the River Plate.

The River Plate stretches far inland, but becomes extremely shallow. It has a small tidal range, less than a metre, but changes in wind direction can effect the river height by up to plus or minus 3m. We realised that this was going to make finding suitable anchorages for our 2.5m draft more difficult so we settled on spending more time in marinas.

We were quite surprised to discover that there were no ladders at all in Piriapolis harbour so bought our own. We are quite happy for anyone to use it. We launch the dinghy and pull ourselves across. We have watched many people opt for tightrope walking across their bow lines and have seen at least 3 people fall in.

When we arrived in Uruguay it was December. Mid-summer, festive season and carnival time. We took advantage of the sunshine and calm weather to explore and relax after a year on the go. We left mainland Europe in January 2023 and sailed over 7000nm to reach Uruguay.

Once the festivities were over we used the nice weather to work on the boat. Richard finished his work revamping the teak deck, I serviced all the sails and got on with sewing projects, then we lifted the boat out for new antifoul and other underwater jobs.

Jobs complete and high season over we went across to Buenos Aires for 6 weeks. What a fabulous city. For the first time since arriving in South America we were tied alongside a solid pontoon and had easy access to the shore. We walked miles and caught many buses to explore this huge city.

We are now back in Uruguay and have met a few more European cruisers. Some were setting off south just as soon as we arrived last December, and others have left their boats here for the winter and flown back to Europe.

We choose to continue to liveaboard and plan to go back to Brazil for a few months before heading deep south next season...Looks like we will have some boat buddies for the trip.

Time to share What we learnt and hope it helps fellow cruisers

Formalities

Entry into all 3 countries was easy but the paperwork time consuming.

British passport holders arriving on a yacht are given a tourist visa for 90 days. As Brits ( not all nationalities can) renewing for another 90 days was easy but involved more time consuming paperwork. It is worth knowing some Portuguese and Spanish words/phrases. Some words can be used in both languages.

Entrada para embarcacíon estrangeiro- entry for foreign boat, Salida para embarcacíon estrangeiro- departure for foreign boat. Proroggar visto - to extend visa.

I cover more details here

https://velvetlady.wordpress.com/2023/08/23/entry-and-visa-extension-paperwork-brasil/

https://velvetlady.wordpress.com/2023/11/20/brazil-to-uruguay-the-paperwork/

https://velvetlady.wordpress.com/2024/02/05/uruguay-visas-paperwork-and-other-bureaucracy/

https://velvetlady.wordpress.com/2024/04/01/arriving-in-buenos-aires/

https://velvetlady.wordpress.com/2024/05/06/a-quick-trip-back-to-uruguay/

Methods of Payment.

Credit Cards are taken nearly everywhere in all 3 countries, you often need your passport!

Cash.

Brazil - the only bank we found that took foreign cards was Bradesco. Fortunately there are lots of them.

Uruguay - have 2 types of card network. Servired and Redbrau. I have only managed to get my card to work on Redbrau network.

Can take money out in US dollars or UYU Pesos. The machine does not add extra charges for transactions

Argentina - the cash machine charges £8 fee per transaction and will only give out about £10 a go. Thats a lot of fees, easier to use western union.

Language

Portuguese in Brazil. Spanish or more specifically Rioportense in Argentina and Uruguay. It took a while for me to realise that they pronounce double L as sh making a lot of words sound similar to Portuguese. There are a few English speakers around but more often my friend Google translate helps.

Costs

It is definitely not as cheap as we were led to believe. Inflation is soaring in Argentina. Uruguay is slightly less expensive, Brazil is the cheapest of the 3 countries.

Groceries.

There are things that are cheaper than Europe, especially fruit, veg and beef. Avocados are the size of grapefruits for 50p a go.

Regular dried goods are more expensive than Europe and any domestic use or cleaning product is about 3 times the price.

Speciality dried goods like Muesli are extortionate at £10 for 500g and a small sliced loaf £3 or £4. I use our breadmaker (£60 from Asda) regularly. The raw ingredients are less than £1.50 and the electricity is free. Either included in marina fees or from solar panels.

Personal care items are even higher. Don't expect speciality skin care dreams and be prepared to pay £10 for a can of shaving foam! We wish we had done a huge supermarket run at Lidl's in the Canaries and filled our bilges with everything from shampoo, shower gel and toothpaste to toilet cleaner, clothes soap and conditioner.

Watch out for sugar in everything. We became avid packet readers after we were caught out by a packet of ready made stroganoff sauce. The picture looked just like you would expect but to eat. Not good. Like having sugar put in your tea when you don't take it. We now read all packaging carefully. Its even in tinned tomatos.

Another thing I wish I brought more of was ground coffee.

The Brazilian coffee was great but in Uruguay/Argentina watch out for sugar being added to bulk the coffee and keep the cost down. It tells you on the packet. Also cheaper is cafe torrefacto, made from beans that were roasted in sugar first. It creates a strange flavour.themselves are roasted in sugar. Good old roasted ground coffee was £11 for a 250g bag last week. A bottle of Gordons Gin was only £9.

Local wine in Brazil was cheap but sweet, foreign wines were all expensive. Wine is more reasonable in Uruguay and Argentina.

Boat Running Costs

Anchoring was always free.

We took a buoy at Marina Porto Frade. 900 Brazilian Reais (£150) for 30 days.

Marina fees in Brazil and Uruguay are lower than Europe except for high season in Uruguay when they triple. (Mid December to end of February.) Argentina daily fees are much higher but the monthly discount is approx 25%

Good news, Diesel is way cheaper at approx £1.10 per litre for marine diesel but often has to be collected in cans. We did find floating diesel pontoons in Salvador, Angra dos Reis and Saco de Ribeira. There must be others

Water - OK to drink tap water in Uruguay and Argentina, not Brazil. We were really pleased to have our water maker.

Laundry - we did it all by hand in Brazil, here in Uruguay we use a service laundry, £5 per load for wash and dry.

Gas

Sandro Gas in Angra dos Reis and Rio Gas (Mr Gas) in Piriapolis were able to fill our foreign bottles.

Transport

Ubers are easy and inexpensive.

The fact that you don't have to explain where you are going and you pay by credit card makes dealing with the foreign language much easier.

We used buses a lot in Buenos Aires, about 50p a ride, but, according to the news today costs have just gone up again.

Communication

We are glad we bought our Starlink. It worked everywhere. Many isolated anchorages had no cell phone signal.

Just about everybody uses Whats App, I found this an easy way to deal with the foreign languages.

Sim cards.

Easy in Uruguay and Argentina. Buy a prepaid sim card from a kiosk on the street for £1 then follow the instructions to top it up to activate it. Costs are inexpensive. I used Antel in Uruguay and Movistar in Argentina.

Brazil is a lot harder. Most places require you to have CPF number to buy one. It depends where in Brazil you are. We went to the main Receita Federal office in Salvador to get ours but you can now get one in advance online. See here. We used Claro network.

Spare parts for the boat - carry as much as you can.

There are some chandlers but often it is difficult to find exactly what you want and it is expensive to buy.. I have been looking for sail needles and whipping twine and still not found any. Expect to pay at least 60% tax plus fees for anything imported.

Post System

Of the three countries Uruguay has the most western vibes, but we got caught out by the post system. We are in a marina we thought, we have an address, we can order online. The marina gave us the address but didn't warn us. Getting anything into the country costs 60% tax. If its value is more than $200 US, you also have to pay a customs agent to clear it for you. Our $213 parcel cost us an extra $370 and 6 weeks to import.

Its a new system, most locals don't know. Full document is linked below. See also Correos website

procedimiento_correoDownload

An American lady I met in the post office gave me advice. Make many trips 'home' and bring back what you need!

That was a hiccup, but fortunately only one parcel. Now we know and will check procedure more carefully in future.

A huge part of cruising is learning about how foreign countries work, sharing information and adjusting your expectations accordingly.

Now we are better informed we and are looking forward to the next few years and visiting more new countries as we continue on our South American Adventure.

In our previous blogs you can find more details on the above or if you have a question drop us a message in the comments here or on NFL.