Hardcore buses and dinosaurs

October 25th we hopped on the 7:30 pm bus (that predictably left at 8:30). We are only mentioning this bus ride because we think it has and will be the most intense 3rd world bus we will EVER experience. Within 25 min of leaving the station (a zoo of speeding buses and milling people), we stopped, or actually the bus driver stopped, for a 30 min dinner that only he enjoyed while everyone was too fearful to dine themselves (in fear of being left behind). Once we were back on track Ivan was able to talk to a local coca farmer about his business, which was super fascinating. Apparantly there are 4 cosechas per year, and a 50 pound bag will earn the farmer 1,000 bolivianos, or $2.85 per pound (pretty good money for a small time farmer). Even more interesting, was that his crop wasn't for chewing or tea, but rather the popular cocaina. Bolivia is actually the biggest producer of the leaves, which all make there way to Colombia to get processed (CNN and Reagan drilled the rest of the story into common knowledge). As a shameless aside: going for drugs at the "source" is not only expensive, impossible, and unethical, but so futilely American...

Anyways, the bus bounced on, and the humidity and accompanying BO kicked to dizzying levels, but we tried to get some hard to reach z's anyways. This was basically impossible, since the bus route was on an off-road track, and we found ourselves involuntarily headbanging and bouncing in our seats. Fortunate for Kristin, the evil bus deity found it necissary to keep her on her toes and flung a heavy bag onto her stomach right when she fell asleep... It didn't help that it was Ivan's bag... An hour later that SAME bag flung one seat farther and smacked Ivan square in the face. awesome...

To make the bus ride even more memorable, Ivan had the ONLY seat that couldnt recline, and was broken, so it constantly tried to spill him out into the isle. Not too easy to sleep under such back bending circumstances... Though every seat was taken by adults, there were about 10 kids who were passed out in different contortions on the dirty bus isle (along with a dog and small lamby). Ivan wasnt able to stretch out his feet, unless he wanted to plant his shoe on a poor childs face. (Kristin didnt even have the option with a fully reclined seat in front of her, and had a teenager snoring and sliding into her seat. The sly Bolivian cuddle technique...

At 6:00 am the bus suddenly stopped, and everyone was allowed to go out and relieve themselves for a quick 2 min. Ivan ventured out, and saw a very desperate urinating melee, with men, women, and children using their appropriate biological urinating endowments with fury... It was a mess, but what a relief!!



At 7:30 am we arrived in Sucre, stumbled into a taxi, and then into our squeaky taco shaped bed. When we awoke, we started to tour the beautiful (and very colonial) city of Sucre. The main plaza is really great, and the city has a productive and safe feel to it.




Today we went to the worlds largest collection of dinosaur (bird and reptile) footprints. We learned we were witnessing tracks from the Cretaceous Period over 70 million years ago, when the herbivores and carnivores roamed the chalky CaCO3 lands. There were 5,000 footprints from over 150 different animals on this surface. The largest footprints were guessed to be from a dino that was 35 m long and 19 m tall. YIKES! The footprints were on a vertical surface due to the continental uplift that happened millions of years ago from the Nazca Plate in the Pacific. This upward movement and folding is also why we have the Andes Mountains

Ohh so fierce!!

Prints from mama and baby carnivore

Ivan dodging some Dino-doody

The dino prints were discovered by the enormous cement factory on site 25 years ago. The minerals that they were excavating changed and weren't ideal, so the company moved to another part of the mountain. As a consequence of this, the prints were preserved and were slowly revealed to the amazed workers who were excavating nearby. Today there is a fairly large exhibit and looks upon the varied prints that criss-cross the adjacent hillside.

It was an incredible feeling witnessing these large tracks from millions of years ago. Even though couldn't get close to the wall of footprints we daydreamed the size of these animals as the marched, ran, ambled and fought across the lands swinging their tails.