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Comment by benologist | Hacker News Reader

Nicaragua, but all of Central America's a great place to live ridiculously cheap and hack away. Plus they're beautiful countries and latinas are so hot.

The internet's not fantastic (a crappy 1 megabit, and outages happen at least once a week), half of the TV is in Spanish, and you have to be careful sometimes since white guys are usually cashed up tourists and ripe for a mugging.

But when push comes to shove it beats trying to make $1000 rent + living expenses and trying to balance a startup around that.

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Thanks for the details. This is getting a bit off-topic, but can you describe how a foreigner should go about finding a place to live in Central America? Did you just fly there and look for "For Rent" signs or did you line something up beforehand?

They really aren't into things like Craigslist or real estate listing sites. Houses/apartments for rent is literally done by a sign on the place combined with word of mouth, and often purely word of mouth.

Probably your best bet would be going to a backpackers hostel and finding one while you stay there - they'll set you back as little as $10ish a night, have internet and interesting people to talk to, and the people working there might know of a place and/or you can walk around looking for somewhere.

Excellent. Are short-term (1-3 month) leases available? What precautions do you take to stay safe?

You'll probably forfeit your one month bond (aka $200 - $400) if you leave that soon.

Staying safe is pretty simple - be smart. An iPhone is a month's salary down here so don't wander around talking into it or wearing those pretty white earphones. Don't carry a satchel around that says Dell, and generally don't take more than you need when you hit the street ... if you're getting a carton of milk you don't need your wallet or the credit cards and $500 in it.

I constantly travel to Latin America, speaking at conferences and recruiting talent. I've lived/worked in Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Peru Colombia and traveled to Honduras and Guatemala.

If you want to go to central america let me know. I can introduce you to the tech/startup community there. They can hook you up with the best/safest placest to live, work areas, and the whole thing.

My personal experience is with Guatemala and Honduras, though I know top notch developers and entrepreneurs (all bilingual) throughout the whole region.

If I were you, I'd pick costa rica to live in if you want to live in Central America. Bigger expat community, great nearshoring tech talent. Though Chile will give you $40k to startup in Chile.

When I go live/work at a LATAM country my process is usually:

1. Stay in a hostal for two days, those two days I check out places to rent 2. In south america, you can find great stuff on craigslist, furnished rooms or studios from $200-$500/mo 3. Meet local entrepreneurs, and find coworking spaces/become an office guest.

If you need more tips/intros for living in LATAM, my email is in my profile, or @andresbarreto

If you ever decide to come to Mexico and need a safe place to stay give me a buzz as well. I'll hook you up.

Where in Mexico?

Mexico City. Forgot to be a little more specific, my bad :)

If you are instrested in coming to a country in Latin America im from Uruguay (little country between Argentina and Brazil) and I can help you to accommodate you here. We are one of the safest countries of the continente, we are a loooooot cheaper than US or Europe and the main advantage of Uruguay compared to the rest of LA is that most people speak English and you will find a lot of engineers, computer developers, desingers and more usefull people to hire to set up your new start up (the computer-related careers are very popular here)

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