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.

On the way home

I'm sitting in the Air Canada passenger lounge at Heathrow (thank you, Evan!) enjoying their free coffee and internet and catching up with a bit of Flickr picture uploading (we're all the way up to the second stop in Iceland - just wait for the Greenland pictures!). We left the ship Thursday morning, not without a sense of relief. Three weeks is just a bit long to be cooped up with a couple of loud Texan war veterans. We met some thoroughly enjoyable people, too, of course: Doug and Helen, Larry and Linda (thanks for the meditation sessions), but the others begin to oppress me after a couple of weeks.

We had three days in Amsterdam in a great little hotel Ron found just a block from the Rijksmuseum and the Concertgebouw. We didn't get any museums visited, but we had our share of concerts: a youth orchestra on Thursday and the Rosenberg Trio + friends (Stephane Grappelli / Django Reinhart style jazz) on Friday at the Concertgebouw, and a Bach recital on the magnificent organ of the Westerkirk Saturday afternoon, so we did get cultured up. Friday we tried to get to a cheese market in a small town to the north, but we missed it by half an hour. Never mind, it was a pretty train trip. We also nibbled on a hemp-seed chocolate bar we picked up at the flower market Saturday, but we didn't really enjoy the effects. I got even more sleepy and stupid than usual, and Ron turned bright red. So we're not tempted to add to our list of favourite intoxicants yet. But we like Amsterdam.

So we're heading home. I for one am looking forward to a bit of utter torpitude and some catching up with email, pictures, knitting and other good stuff. Stay tuned for a knitter's view of the North Atlantic and a couple of patterns I came up with while we were away.