Argentine soaps, exercise, pets, spectator sport, culture, whale-less whale spotting, sky aerobics...

[More:]

We started on Friday evening by watching a whole 90 minutes of an Argentine soap on TV - this was with a view to improving our Spanish. Great fun - we got the general gist. I was a bit saddened by it all because there didn't seem to be a single couple that was happy - everyone was in love with someone else, yet they were lying through their teeth to the one they were with ('Sorry, dear, not tonight, it's my migraine' and 'Oh, that was just the wholesaler on the phone') but my husband reckoned that if they'd all been sorted into their proper couples there wouldn't be a soap and our Spanish would be at a standstill.

On Saturday morning there was a rugby match between a visiting South African team and the local 'Old Christians' team. My husband went (while I walked the dog to get her claws trimmed - a service which costs all of £1.00 here - then went to the local street market), and when he came home at lunch time, told me it had been an exciting match, but it had had to be stopped because a South African player was badly injured - he thought it may be a broken neck.

He was taken off on a stretcher and an ambulance rushed him to the British Hospital, where he was immediately operated - and by the afternoon, when we met up again with the visiting South Africans to watch the final (sorry guys, there's the African connection, the Southern Hemisphere connection...), it seemed it was only soft tissue that had been damaged, and he could feel his legs, though not his hands. His mum is on the way from South Africa. At least he's out of danger.

The match, as you know, was tight, but that's the way a final is going to be - everyone playing safe...and the South African visitors were delighted with the results.

Then off we went to the centre of Montevideo - there are a stack of film festivals at the moment - and again the idea was one of improving both our language skills and our knowlegde of history - so we went to see 'Trelew', a documentary. It's about an incident in 1972 when about a hundred prisoners in a jail down in bleakest Patagonia planned an escape - twenty-six actually got out, seven escaped, and nineteen were massacred. It marked the beginning of a fierce dictatorship.

Anyway, the cinema was one which must have been very grand in the fifties - seating about 700 people - but no-one has done any refurbsihing since, so it's rather run down and tacky. The sound system was dreadful, and we thought it was pretty poorly made - they had just a series of interviews with the survivors and a few other people, strung together with a few images of the prison that kept being repeated. Pity, since the story is an exciting and could have made a 'Great escape' type movie. We gave up shortly before the end. I will try and write up the Trelew story in my blog.

Sunday started with our regular visit to the pool and a good half-hour of lengths. Then the idea was to go to Casapueblo at Punta Ballena, a 60-mile drive east - we'd read in the paper that whales had been seen there. Gorgeous day, lovely drive listening to Joni Mitchell and Dusty Springfield and Snow Patrol.

But apparently the whales had moved on the previous day. No problem, we saw some amazing birds, like marshbirds and cormorants...and we had a great lunch at our favourite restaurant, the Medio y Medio, a simple place that hosts lots of jazz musicians. Food in Uruguay is cheap, but we thought this meal was quite pricy at £10.00 each (a starter of baby squid, then fresh fish and salad, with a glass of wine and coffee).

Just as we were reaching home I received a text message about the Air Show on the Rambla – see my earlier post.

Wow, what a weekend! Leaves very little time for blogging, and there are about five potential stories in there! I must go and catch up on some of your blogs now…