Part 3: The Meat of the Project
Day 5
Dont you just love it when you wake up naturally before your alarm? After just under 6 hours or so of fairly deep sleep I wake up for the journey back to AEP. I prepped everything the night before so it’s shower, dress, pack up the cables, hail the uber and down to the airport. The hotel Presidente was only slight better than sleeping rough, its’ stuck in a 1980 time warp, it isn't dirty but neither clean, all the furniture is old and the bed sheeting feels like something out of a New York bedsit, one of its most redeeming features is it has a roof. I suspect this place is kept going by the airlines and the only reason you’d stay here is because you've been booked into it. I feel particular scathing because I’m sure there are worse hotels but this is worse because with investment it could be very good. its located right in the downtown but it appears the hotel owners have no interest in modernising it. I suspect the profit margins made from the failures of Aerolinas and it’s Skyteam partners are the difference.
I head to the customer services desk at AEP and show my receipt for travel, it's stamped and signed and then told to go to the cashier. I walk down and begrudgingly I'm paid in pesos. I make a small protest but the cashier woman would make a lounge dragon quake so I'm resigned to spending it on breakfast. The majority of AEP food options is land-side, however when I arrive all of the interesting food options are still closed and all is on offer is the usual sandwiches that can be found at any kiosks, in the end I air on the side of caution and go through security and immigration, which I can imagine during the morning can be busy.
As soon as I’m though the very quiet security and immigration I suddenly remember that I didn't eat last night. The more I look the more I cant face a ham and cheese sandwich. Today is going to be a long day of meetings and attending some speeches so I revert to my old tried and test method of buying chocolate from duty free, water and some sprite from the kiosk and running on sugar for the rest of the morning, I choose a Milka with Oreo biscuit layer and begin to think of the day ahead.
Once again Aerolineas strike back, delaying my flight by 50 minutes and cancelling the later morning Montevideo flight (which I had been booked on originally but managed to get it moved) The feeling that I’ll never get to Montevideo takes over me and my soft spot for Aerolineas club economy seats has been ebbed away by their refusal to fly to Montevideo. I have only one option but to check the board with dread and pray to the aviation gods that they get this plane away as another long delay would really scuttle my schedule.
Aerolineas Argentinas AR2380
AEP-MVD
Club Economy Seat 2A
Departure 8:10 (scheduled) 8:58 (actual)
Flight time 0h 23m
My fears however never came to pass as soon as I saw the cabin crew mince into the departure area I knew we were going.
The bus transfer…. a premium passengers worst nightmare, no staggered flow of foot traffic that keeps an easy flow, but a stampede of the pack all trying to strain every sinew to walk faster without looking like they are, it defeats the object of seating at the front and one of the biggest benefits of paying premium. As it was an outbound transfer this isn't such a problem but there is still the mele towards the steps.
Where the previous Aerolineas flight had a mostly empty club cabin this, like the the rest of the plane was full, many of the faces I had seen causing the riot or ruckus in AEP the night before. turns out that 2A was the first seat and as an Embraer was a single row seat, again no seat companion to critique but just a cabin of suited Argentines surrounding me. the 1A/B/C seats is what I usual refer to as the ‘prat perch’ on short haul flights and I never choose it as I prefer a seat in front of me for the underneath storage.
The view from 2A aka the prat perch
Once again Aerolinas excellent seat gave me the more positive feelings towards this airline and we left ahead of schedule for the very short hop over the Rio de la Plata to Montevideo.The flight was about 25 minutes and my fears of a bus transfer came true. I can finally say goodbye to Aerolineas Argetinas, Their timekeeping and I suspect union issues has once again come back to haunt them but their short haul business class product is as good and anyones and they way they dealt with the cancelled flight would perhaps put BA to shame, whilst I cant commend it’s hotel choice it has done enough for me to fly again with them.
Into the shuttle bus and I gamble on the other side of the bus being the exit so positioned myself next to those doors, the hunch paid off and I was off early and only had a short wait at Passport control and walked through to the obligatory duty free area, perhaps with a smug face whilst the queues mount behind me.
Uruguay is a country I have been to once before and last time I was seduced by it’s undoubted charm and I imagined myself buying a holiday home here, thoughts of spending Christmas gorging on cuts of meat and wine and then renting it out to middle class Argentines through January and February. The reality I learned would be intertwined with some arbitrary property laws and it's lack of direct flight from the UK and flight time would grate more than you would imagine in time. I’m here to launch an move into Uruguay with a potential base for for future expansion within the continent. I’m been escorted by a Latin American consultant our company has hired to help with our moves here and I’m picked up from the airport and taken straight to Montevideo financial district.
The rest of the day in spent in various meetings with accountants, solicitors and other professional services industries. Uruguay is positing itself as the logistic hub of Latin America and it’s taking advantage of this by offering zero taxes and other tariff free benefits if you use the countries various free trade zones for distribution, storage etc and if products are sent and then ‘finished’ off in Uruguay, this can then earn them MECSOUR COO status which allows cheaper access to the highly protectionist but lucrative markets such as Argentina and Brazil. By the end of the day my head is full of information that needs computing and after a fantastic piece of beef I go to bed full of thoughts. One of the major highlights is being taken to the top of Montevideo's World Trade Centre for a breathtaking view of the city.
Thought I was John McClane in Die Hard
Day 6
I’ve been put up at the Hotel Dazzler in Montevideo by one of the law firms here I met in Uruguay and the saying beggars can't be choosey comes to mind. It’s quite modern in design, clean with a decent sized bathroom, an almost too big of a bed and a Chinese copy of an Eames chair. I wake up and head down to breakfast, it’s fairly basic with a section of sweet breads, ham, cheese and the most unappealing sausage Ive seen for some time, yet it has one of largest selection of yoghurts known to man. I’m picked up and taken on a tour into the interior of Uruguay to be shown one of the opportunities we’ve been offered. The landscape is a mix between Belgium, New Zealand and the USA with its Flanders style flat fields, fencing and trees, the green colour of New Zealand which then transforms into prairie style land akin to Iowa or eastern Nebraska.
It’s back to Montevideo and then out to a network evening organised by the chamber of commerce. Its’ regular event held by the chamber for visiting businesspersons. It’s a fairly low key affair and only about two hours long, plenty of small talk about everything from the national Football stadium in Montevideo to Scottish whiskey, but with a another long day ahead and a presentation as well I’m glad to be in bed earlier than usual.
Day 7
Another long day, the consultant we’ve hired has arranged a large chuck of meetings today and presentation to a local ‘buying group’ in the evening. The meetings don't go to plan at first, it’s more of the same old talk about the great advantages of the Uruguayan free trade zone. I'm already well aware of there advantages but it's a chicken/egg situation. I need some leads before I can consider such a venture. It reaches a point where I know the free trade zones speech off by heart now. (available for hire to explain it or all interested parties
) Then we start to gain to movement. After being made to wait 25 minutes in the waiting room of one company I had a very productive chat from it’s two owners and whilst waiting to meet them I get a very apologetic phone call from a previous potential client that we arranged a meeting with that was cancelled. He mentioned they have previously worked with a competitor of ours but wasn't as happy with there current partnership so he’s going to send over his proposal.
We head to the presentation and buoyed by the two positive reactions the presentation comes to me with relative ease. I don't feel now this presentation is the be all and end all and the audience asks the right questions at the end. I try to keep the slides very brief and use video aids as much as possible, It's been slightly modified by the office which at one point almost catches me out but I’ve done enough of this now to not need a script. The buying group are unlikely to come to us directly but I'm hoping it creates some buzz in the local industry and hope hearsay might bring out the right partners.
The questions run longer than I plan on so we’re not back into Montevideo until 9:45pm. I had plans to me a Uruguayan friend this evening and forgetting that 10pm isn't that late by their standards he meets me at my hotel and takes me to a authentic Parilla with about 10 seats only for some fantastic beef. we discuss Uruguayan politics and his work with Qantas which has lead him here with LATAM for now. The conversation flows and it’s not 1am before I’m back to my room.
Day 8
I underestimate the time it takes to pack and end up stoping the packing and going down to breakfast for a quick bite before retuning back to the room to finish the packing. I’ve acquired more papers than I expected and so had to do some creative Tetris packing to get it in. Later on I can go though some of this and get some of the irrelevant documents put in the bin. The Uruguayan national show has just started called the Expo Prado and our consultant has set us up in shop at the UK pavilion, companies exhibiting here in include Mini, JCB, and some other British brands and academic institutions. I get a brief talk with UK ambassador for Uruguay, he's a very nice guy who doing his job as the diplomat to the tee and spend the day walking around the show and meetings with various interested partners. One I click with immediately, we’re a similar age and whilst he is Uruguayan, his parents are British and he has lived and worked in various countries and he has the sort of Anglo Saxon style I like to work with. We exchange details and make arrangements to keep communication up. I feel I may have found a long term partner here if it continues as it started. I have my final talk with the consultant who has done a good job of creating the meetings and I head to the airport with a feeling that we've headed in the right direction.
The Expo Prado, everything from horses to savings accounts