Our South American Vacation Begins

After an exhausting twenty-four hours of travel by car, train,and plane (the highlight was a view of the Andes as we flew from Santiago to Montevideo), we were met at their airport by Mike and Jean Schramm who brought us to their house, where we will be staying for the first couple of days of our vacation.  It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, and the Schramm's treated us to a parilla, prepared in the barbecue area which, we were told, is a common  feature of Uruguayan homes.  I learned to make a chimichurri sauce, while Mike did the real work, slow-cooking a huge quantity of lamb as well as other goodies for us to eat.

Mike Schramm grilling

By the time Mike was done, the table was loaded with grilled lamb, chorizo, vegetables and cheese, and we dug in.

Jean and Mike Schramm with a tableful of grilled food

The clouds gathered as we picnicked; by the time we went for a walk through their Carrasco neighborhood, it was completely clouded over.  Carrasco is a middle class barrio where all the houses were surrounded by security fences.  We ended up at La Rambla, a walkway along the Rio de la Plata.

Nancy and Jean at La Rambla, Rio de la Plata behind

The river was so wide we could not see the other side, at least on a cloudy day.

We raw a street sign bearing the name of a good family friend back home, then headed back to the house, knowing that we would sleep well after such a long trip and day.

Avenida Dr. Gabriel Otero 

I am traveling with a tablet instead of a laptop on this vacation, and although it is working well for email and browsing, it is not working quite so well for uploading photos and interacting with the blogspot platform; so it may be awhile until the next vacation blog post (this is being done from a borrowed laptop).