Quarantined in Montevideo

Well, we got onto the M.S. Amsterdam just fine and had a lovely smooth departure from Buenos Aires. I would hate to have to navigate along the Rio de la Plata. It's essentially a river delta just waiting to happen. At some points, we were told, there were only a few meters between our ship and the bottom - and with this being a huge drought year, the situation can only get worse. The water is sort of a liquid mud soup, so come back in a few hundred years and Buenos Aires will be landlocked.

We sailed overnight to Montevideo. And during the night Ron's stomach bug came back along with a severe back spasm, which he went to the health centre for. They were more interested in the stomach thing. He got some pills for that and was told to stay in his cabin until 24 hours after the last symptoms. Yippee. I'm not quarantined like that, but things aren't as interesting without my best friend so I've been spending an awful lot of time there, too - and living off room service.

I did get out to see a little of downtown Montevideo. A very smart leather shop ran shuttles from the boat to their store in the old town, so I took advantage of that and fell for a rather lovely soft fur-lined hooded waterproof lambskin coat - just the thing for the Falklands and Antarctica (and also Canmore in February). Also walked around downtown, of course, although my hip is being stupid this trip and literally puts a cramp in such activities. What I saw was very nice of its sort. It's another Izmir-type city - cement buildings, palm trees and crumbling sidewalks. There's a lovely cathedral, simple and modest inside (Uruguay didn't have a lot of gold to start with, and what there was ended up in Spain and not on the reredos). The town square had an open-air antique market going on, and it's always fascinating looking at other cultures' antiques. In Montevideo they're not all that different from ours, actually, except for a few more mate tea mugs and straws.

So now we're somewhere off in the South Atlantic heading for the Falklands (oops, sorry: Malvinas). Today and tomorrow we're at sea, then we get some cool weather and some penguins.