News at last 29.8.05

Apologies for the long silence, but it´s difficult finding an internet cafe at a moment when there´s time to use it. We hope you are well, anyway, and here´s an entry.

Hi from Montevideo, capital city of Uruguay. I (John) am editor for a month and will now update you on developments since arrival at BA. OJ got tidied up with the help of group members following its earlier ransacking during its journey. Over 500 pounds sterling worth of goods were stolen, similar to the value removed from Norman´s and Barbara´s RV. From our campsite outside Buenos Aires - (about which Janet will be writing separately, I gather) - to which taxi drivers feared to travel because it´s in a ´rough´area (we found everybody friendly, welcoming and decidedly unthreatening), Les and Margaret took Kontiki to an auto-electrician who fixed some of their electrical probelms. The man also fitted a Sony CD player we´d bought at Carrefour, BA to replace our nicked one. We had 24hrs non-stop rain and wind which highlighted water ingress leaks for some of us and which uprooted a tree which fell across a pitch occupied by OJ only the day before . Roads were deeply flooded due to absence of
drainage, and our area hit the local newspaper headlines!!

A BA highlight was the day we went in a privately hired minibus with courier and driver to visit local sights, ending with a great evening out at the famous Tortoni´s Restaurant, watching their tango dancers and singers performing.

Kontiki left Argentina a day later cos of electrical issues and arrived on the excellent and easily bookable Buquebus ferry at Colonia, joining the rest of the group at the Municipal campsite, where there was water, sog disposal, nearly unusable loo/shower block, and good barbeque fuelled by wood we gathered on site. Some of us had been stripped of our meat, fruit and veg on entering Uruguay by an official who looked well fed .

After 2 nights at Colonia we arrived yesterday 28/8/05 at Montevideo along a good motorway and its paeje, camping overnight by a naval base on the sea front. This morning, Maureen accompanied Olwyn and me in OJ to FLEG S.A. on Anzoni 1640, Montevideo, where they repaired our CB mag mount and cable which had failed, giving us a good SWR reading of 1.4 . They added to our antenna length because they said, we have a small ground plane. Our steel groundplane should be put on a square metre of aluminium to enable shorter antenna. Kontiki went there too, and we left them having their CB and a pump problem
addressed. Shortly we leave this internet cafe which is in a large shopping centre with Next etc in it - you could be in Brum! - and we return to the others to talk about whether we move on today or not. We all hope that it will not be long before we are really travelling on the road, after initial hiccoughs. It´s cold here, so it can only get warmer as we progress north.
Bye.