Largisimo, thank you for responding. I will look forward to hearing about your trip to Uruguay! I get most of my "in country" info from an e-letter I receive from International Living and personal blogs. My concerns about Ecuador are that the country is actually a "police" state and they use the US dollar as currency. What happens if/when the US dollars tanks or China recalls the debt? I lived in Japan for 3 years. The yen was 360 to the dollar when I arrived and 270 to the dollar when I left. I lived on the economy, nearly went broke.