[R-sig-Geo] Very basic map making plea

[Andy Bunn]

Hello geo folk.

It has been a long time since I last looked into making a pretty map with
R. And since I last tried map making in R it looks like there has been a
proliferation of packages for mapping.Wow. Folks have been very busy. It's
amazing but I confess to being a bit lost. Can somebody advise me on how
to do the following:

1. Make a map of the political boundary of Russia in an Albers equal-area
conic projection. Color it light grey.
2. Color the oceans and large water bodies light blue
3. Add a graticule around all four edges of the map giving lat/long labels
every 20 degrees
4. Add a grid giving lat/long labels every 20 degrees
5. Add some points from SpatialPointsDataFrame

If somebody can advise which is the best package to get going on and a
sketch of that I can get learning again!

Many thanks, Andy