Well, we're in Montevideo at the moment (the capital of Uruguay). Yawn.

Well, we're in Montevideo at the moment (the capital of Uruguay). Yawn.

I'm sure they're not kidding when they say it's the second-safest city in the world. At least as far as death by misadventure is concerned. Crawling with police and special tourist police to keep us safe from the homeless people - of which there are a few - but conspicuously lacking in cholesterol and fibre police to keep us safe from the exclusively beef and pastry diet we've been on for the last 7 days (that's not strictly true, there has been beer and ice-cream, and the occasional banana). Look for the sign saying Desayuno (Spanish for 'breakfast') and you can be sure to find the Oreo cookies and chocolate-coated cornflakes you were looking for. There are in excess of fifteen different brands of dulce de leche (that's basically a MARS bar in a 1/2 litre bucket - minus the chocolate and nougat which are on a different shelf but equally well represented) in the supermercado, but as yet no muesli, brown bread, wholewheat pasta etc to stave off the impending bowel cancer that's sure to be the death of most of the population...

Not that I'm not-liking the beef mind you - absolutely outstanding and a little cheaper than you'd get it in Australia. The butcher's scalpel of choice appears to be the chainsaw, sometimes the circular saw. Much like the eskimos and their famously snowflake-centric dialect, who knew there were 15 different latino expressions for 'this what we found when we backed up the train...'? The trouble is not in deciding how many cubic feet of beef you're after, but in convincing the locals that what you said, and what they said is in fact exactly the same thing. As the third party to many a frustrating conversation between K and the boss-of-the-BBQ-pit, it's still amazing to me that half way accross the globe, the most time-honoured spanish tradition of correcting one's aready correct pronunciation so as to be as condescending as possible, is the most well preserved legacy of the conquistadors of the 15th Century. A standard conversation (translated from Spanish) goes something like this:

K: Beef Sirloin, medium rare please.
BBBQ: Beef well done, what kind of beef girly?
K: Sirloin, but NOT well-done, medium rare (please)
BBBQ: You mean, Sirloin, well-done NOT Sirloin well-done, don't you? Blondie?
(Exasperated looks exchanged between K and me)
and so it goes on...

The only upside to the whle adventure through cattle-country (apart from the entertaining reading my cholesterol test will provide when I get home) is that we spend less time in the Hostel bathroom than we would back home - when you remember that in this part of the world, (toilet)paper doesn't go in the bowl, but in the suspiciously mottled flip-top bin beside the porcelain, you remember why you had all those vaccinations before you left home.


Trust you're all well - will be in touch individually when we end up in a place with a keyboard that doesn't require a run up to press the keys on the keyboard.

Morgs

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