• Dinosaur Footprints

    In the middle of a bunch of colourful hills  is a cement factory.

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    The cement factory mines limestone from the hills for the cement.

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    Big machines peel off layers of the limestone bit by bit.

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    But this section was high in manganese, which is no good for cement, so they stopped mining.

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    It had nothing to do with finding these:

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    Back in the cretaceous, the wall was flat, and covered in shallow mud.

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    Dinosaurs walked through the mud and left footprints.

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    All kinds of dinosaurs.

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    Tiny little theropods.

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    And bigger ornithopods.

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    And armoured anklosaurs.

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    And giant titanosaurs!

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    They all left their footprints together in this one muddy area.

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    And they hardened and dried.

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    And got filled in with more mud.

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    And eventually the tectonic plates shifted and the flat section of mud became a nearly vertical wall.

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    Which was found by the mining company, and then by us.

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    Titanosaurs are awesome.

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  • Sucre Parade

    There was a parade in the square in Sucre to commemorate the day Chile invaded Bolivia.

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    Every school had a marching band and the whole class parading behind.

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    Most of the marching bands were quite large.

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    But not terribly good.

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    Most of the schools had big standards that they carried in front.

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    This one involved a taxidermied bird. I wondered why Shep doesn’t get a taxidermied thunderbird to carry around.

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    The entire school marched along behind the bands. First the boys.

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    Then the girls. Most of the students looked like they didn’t really want to be there.

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    Because the students were marching from the square back to their schools, they all went different directions. This combined with the narrow streets made it a very crowded and confusing parade.

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  • Moon Valley

    The moon valley in La Paz is said to look just like the surface of the moon.

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    We assume the people that say this have never seen a picture of the moon.

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    It is a valley made of mudstone.

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    But instead of being wind eroded like the hoodoos in Alberta, it is primarily eroded by rain, so the structures are more vertical.

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    It is also in the middle of the city and being rapidly overtaken by houses.

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    The valley stretches off away from the city and is quite wide.

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    There are paths through the structures so that you can get a good look without damaging them.

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    Which makes it hard to play hide and seek.

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    Pink is also not the best colour for camouflage.

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    But there was a good view.

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  • Floating Islands

    After our homestay we visited some of the floating islands.

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    They are built of layers of reeds.

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    First they have the root layers then they cross the stalks until it is thick enough to move around on.

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    Everything is made of reeds including their houses

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    and boats.

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    They burn the reeds to cook their food in clay ovens.

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    They islands used to drift freely, but now the islands are anchored.

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    Originally they started just living in boats as crossing the lake took days, then they tied the boats together and added structures on the boats. Finally they just built large platforms on the lake.

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    The ground was very springy and if you dug down a few layers you could see where the reeds were wet. They raise the houses up on higher platforms so that when the reeds start to sink down their houses aren’t in the water.