Sucre day 1 - 23 July

SUNDAY 23rd arrive Sucre by bus

We checked into our hotel and then went out to a restaurant for breakfast as a group.

Nice food. Quite pricey.

Marisol then took us on an orientation walk.

Bolivia seems to have two of everything. Two capital cities and two national flags.

Sucre used to be THE capital until there was a bit of a ruckus from the folks in La Paz.

All the governmental power moved to La Paz however the judicial power remained in Sucre.  Therefore we were shown the high court building and a street where every second shingle said Abrogado (lawyer). If it wasn't for the judiciary and the university Sucre wouldn't be much.  The only industries are a cement works and tourism.

After lunch we went as a group to a Dinosaur Park. Lindsey and I weren't holding out much hope that we would have much interest in this but we went anyway.  We had to be there for a one o'clock tour to get up and close to a dinosaur footprint.  We were expecting some glassed in viewing to see a print.  How wrong we were.

It was absolutely amazing.  It is part of the cement works. When the company was removing limestone from the quarry they encountered an area where the limestone was mixed with magnesium and so stopped quarrying.  There is this huge near vertical wall that then revealed hundreds of clearly discernible footprints from four different dinosaur species.  It turns out that this cliff was originally flat ground and part of a swamp before the Nazca Plate pushed under the South American Plate causing this flat ground to now be near vertical.

Some tracks of prints run for about 200m diagonally across the face.

We walked down into the quarry, wearing hard hats, and walked along the cliff face within touching distance of the prints.  There were ones with three pointed toes, ones with three rounded toes, ones with four rounded toes and one that had big round feet like an elephant.

It was very hot in the quarry.

Back to the hotel for a siesta, then a wander around town and dinner at a cafe.  The manager of the cafe is Dutch and is a bit of a traveller.  He worked at Franz Joseph as a guide for more than two years.  The food was good and afterwards we walked to the town square to watch the world go by for nearly an hour.