Dinosaur footprints

I went on a short one-day trek to visit some incredible dinosaur footprints yesterday. There are literally thousands of footprints of several different types of dinosaur clearly visible on a vertical rock wall.

The footprints were exposed when the local cement factory chopped a huge chunk out of a hillside. Based on the geology in the area, the experts reckon there are likely to be thousands more footprints hidden in layers underneath. It's quite amazing really.

To view the footprints (from about 70m or so away), you go to a dinosaur museum. The museum is a hilarious farce. There are lifesized fibreglass models of various dinosaurs in a little park. To add to the experience, the curators have added sound effects of dinosaurs calling. Our guide kindly noted that the sound effects and the skin colour of the dinos were not 'real'. I know I was surprised.

After seeing the dinosaur footprints, the rest of the day was spent trekking through rural hills, purportedly to see 7 waterfalls. Unfortunately it's the dry season, and only one waterfall actually had water flowing over it.

But the waterfalls were really just incidental to the fun of walking through tiny villages, greeting the local dogs, and enjoying the views. Great day - photos to follow later.

(Update 25/09 - uploading photos from our camera to flickr is an incredibly slow chore with the upload speeds around these parts... I'm most likely to add photos once I'm back in Aus, if our camera doesn't get stolen in between times. Instead I have uploaded this photo of a woman and a pig, taken just hours after seeing dinosaur footprints. Their footprints could be just as archaelogically significant in a few million years, and you're seeing them NOW).

While I remember, there are a couple of bits and pieces I wanted to blog the shit out of just for Kirsten and I to remember some amusing stuff when we look back...

A middle-aged Englishman gave us the best cringe-laugh we've had in months. We were in a chocolate shop (delicious) along with this bumbling Brit and his travelling companions. As he was leaving, he decided to ask where the local market was. Speaking to the local Spanish-speaking staff, he asked loudly in English, with a pronounced southern accent "Market? Market? Stalls? Vegetables?" I can't imagine anyone who would know the word 'stalls' after not understanding the word 'market'. One of his buddies saved him by pulling the word 'mercado' out of nowhere.

Another thing that amused me greatly was a recent protest in Sucre. It was apparently a protest against racism, which of course is an honourable cause. What I particularly enjoyed was the frequent explosions of sticks of dynamite and burning of tyres in the street to make the point.

They seem to love a good protest here - we actually saw two unrelated protests bump into each other at an intersection. The police had to direct protests as if they were traffic.

At the same time, the roads into and out of La Paz are blocked indefinitely by striking miners.