As Arthur continues his unscheduled tour of Africa and Brazil we set out to fill our time in Montevideo.

The Río de la Plata or River Plate is romantically described as a tapering intrusion of the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of South America between Uruguay and Argentina. But is it a river ? At its mouth it is some 132 miles wide. Some geographers regard it as a gulf or a marginal sea, and others consider it to be a river or an estuary. But whatever you want to call it, it is blooming big. We found this out when we went on a coach trip to Punta Del Este right down at the formal point between river and ocean.

The day started out a bit cloudy, but after 4 days of having a storm sit over us (not us personally) the winds lifted, the sky cleared and the sun popped out. On the way we drove through Piriápolis founded in 1890 by Francisco Piria, an early entrepreneur, who turned the town into a very popular holiday destination, the Brighton of Uruguay. From 1920 to 1930 he constructed the Argentino hotel, one of the biggest hotels of its time in the whole of South America . It looks a bit sad now.

The next stop was Casapueblo the home of artist Carlos Paez. Well home, museum and hotel. It is a weird looking place reminding one of the work of Gaudi. Like a battle with the straight line it is curved, round, wavy and undulating with not a straight line in sight. In a famous quote he apologised to architecture and I am not surprised. Building it took him over 30 years starting in 1958. He travelled all over the world visiting local people to get inspiration for his equally weird and very colourful Picasso/Dali looking paintings and sculpture. He was a great humanitarian and was well loved and admired all over the world. He died last year. His son was one of the 16 survivors of the Andes plane crash.

Finally we got to Punta Del Este, an exclusive holiday resort with many multi-million dollar homes. Apparently David Beckham and Zidane own properties there and Donald Trump is building another Trump Tower. Clearly then not much there for us, but nice and sunny. We did find a shop with a giant scalextric track where you could race cars, much more our style! Obviously we had to have a go and Peter managed to upset some local kids by winning! They had quicker laps but kept crashing. Wise old head winning in the end!

An interesting experience was the wavy La Barra Bridge created by the engineer Leonel Viera, after a night on the town I think, to expand the area of Punta Del Este. His design pioneered the construction sequence now typical for concrete segment bridges, so the book says. After placement of the principal cables, precast concrete tiles were placed forming the initial structure. The cables were then prestressed by loading sandbags upon the tiles, followed by final concretisation of the gaps between tiles. Removal of the sandbags then compressively stressed the concrete structure, enhancing its stiffness and durability under load. Well that makes sense!

Our third trip was to Colonia Del Sacramiento an old Portuguese settlement founded in 1698.The Spanish where not happy with this and settled on the opposite bank of the river at Buenos Aires. They got control of it but lost it just as quick in 1681. They had another go in 1705 and after a siege of five months got it, but gave it back. They had another go in 1735. It kept changing hands from crown to crown for many more years. Now I know why I never studied history. Nobody seems to be able to make up their mind what they want. Well the result is an old settlement with Portuguese and Spanish colonial buildings.

On the way we stopped at a farm on the outskirts of the city where the owner had a bit of an obsessive collecting disorder. That can be the only explanation for a man who since 1956 has collected Pencils, keyrings and ashtrays. The man a Mr. Emilio Arenas Florinhas holds several Guinness records including the world's largest pencil collection (as of 2013) consisting of 16,260 pencils from 72 countries.

Before reaching the old town we drove past a derelict bullring, the Plaza de Toros Real de San Carlos. Built in 1910, it only hosted 8 bullfights before it closed. Uruguayans like their cows and were not impressed. The public uproar resulted in the government actually banning it. Good for them.

One of the most interesting and rather unexpected sights at the old city was a room with dinosaur remains including a very impressive Glyptodont. Imagine coming across a dinosaur like an armadillo crossed with an anteater the size, weight, and general shape of a Volkswagen Beetle car. Well that’s a Glyptodont; impressive no? They evolved in South America, when it was an island continent around 7 million years ago and only became extinct about 10,000 years ago. Their tortoise-like shell is made from bone segments and makes them armour plated.

Arthurs delay has now been prolonged by a port strike in Sao Paulo and another unscheduled stop. What is this ship doing? Contacting the shipping company achieves little as our contact seems to know less about the Grande Africa’s route than we do. This latest delay means we had to find another apartment and more things to do in Montevideo and that’s not easy.

A visit to the Uruguay automobile club museum filled one afternoon. The museum is on the 6th floor and we couldn’t see how they got the cars up there. They had about 30 old cars including a very immaculate Ford Model A. A very old photo showed cars on the left-hand side of the road and we found out that until 1945 the Argentinian, Paraguayans and Uruguayans drove on the left. The change was so that cars would be on the same side of the road on the Pan American highway which runs the full length of S America.

Hopefully Arthur will arrive soon!