An absolutely brilliant day! Probably the best day of all so far. Montevideo has been a delightful surprise and our visit to La Rabida estancia was just so special, we shall always remember it.

Firstly, Montevideo, on the River Plate, or Rio del Plata as it is called here is a lovely city of about 2 million people. When you realise that in the whole country of Uruguay there are only about 3.5 million people, which is less than London, you get an idea that there is a lot of space. The city is quite modern but with an "old town" core and laid out in a style reminiscent in parts of Paris. It's very green with many of the avenues lined with trees that form an arch along the whole street. And did I mention that every street has free wireless. It's everywhere and on the buses too.

We are going to explore the city tomorrow on foot but today we had a trip out into the countryside, about one hour's drive from Montevideo to an estancia, a cattle farm, called La Rabida. This is such a special place. Family owned for 5 generations and with 4 generations of the family still in residence. 3650 acres of grassland given over to dairy cows, most of them Herefords but with some Jerseys in there too. The farm also raises Arabian horses, and grows soya and maize. It is a very natural environment. They don't open for many groups and not even every week or every month, but they are the estancia used by the government to entertain foreign dignitaries and heads of state and give them a taste of Uraguayan life and today we were lucky to be amongst the 80 or so able to visit.

We were given a warm welcome from the family and some of the gauchos and told some of the history of the place. Many of the early settlers in Uruguay were Basques and this is very visible in the culture still. The Uruguayan gauchos wear berets and belted trousers in a Basque style. The local grape is from that area of Spain/France and produces an excellent red wine, quite tannic. I liked it.

We were taken on a tour of the estate in a variety of vehicles: vintage car; hay wagons; horse and carriage….. Just lovely rolling acres of grassland with plenty of trees. An interesting fact is that when Uruguay was discovered by the Europeans back in the 1500s, there were no trees at all, just pampas. Every tree has been planted in the last few hundred years. Anyway, all of the trees on the estancia were planted about 40 years ago and they have grown very large, giving lots of shade at field boundaries and around the houses. The estate runs down to bluffs above the River Plate and is edged in a fantastic long beach which we walked down to for paddling. The river is muddy at this point being so near the sea but is not polluted and it was warm. It's like the sea - Argentina is on the other bank but that's 100 miles away. A river that's far wider than the English Channel. Amazing.

Anyway, after our tour we went back to the main farm area where they had prepared a massive traditional bbq of local meats for us, and local wines of course. Fantastic. The sausages were stupendous and we also had steak (of course), chicken and suckling pig. There was a huge woodburning oven and they'd made roast pumpkin, baked potatoes and roast vegetables in there. We ate in the barn sitting on straw bales.

After lunch we were able to take part in a range of farm activities: I milked a cow!!!! Very successfully too LOL. We were shown the aquafer giving water to the house from a natural source which is under most of Uruguay. Horses - beautiful horses and foals. They offered an interesting diversion which was to sit on a bull skin attached by straps to a horse and then the gaucho galloped around the field dragging you behind. Bob did it and said it was fun. All too soon it was time to leave. Honestly we were so sorry to go and would have loved to stay there (they don't take overnight guests anyway). An absolute paradise really.

I have to say that we were disappointed to have two days here instead of two days in Rio, but now, we are delighted. Tonight we have a special gaucho show coming on board - they have just finished carnival here which sounds stupendous but I'm not going to sit in the front row. Tomorrow we are exploring including the salvaged parts of the battleship Graff Spee from the Battle of the River Plate.