Sucre

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

This morning we left the fake capital of Bolivia and flew to the real capital – Sucre. It was only a 45 minute flight but we didn’t really fancy the 16 hour bus ride that was the alternative. Bolivians aren’t the best drivers in the world, and the buses are quite small. We not only flew, but flew first class! The plane was full for days, with the only seats available being nice first class ones so we paid ten quid extra and had a comfy fast flight. We are mostly following the tourist route in Bolivia. Starting in La Paz and ending up at the salt flats, with Sucre and Potosi in between to break up the journey.

Sucre is a pretty little city with lots of nice white buildings, but the main attraction is the dinosaur footprints. Ten years ago or so, in a limestone quarry/cement factory the workers found some footprints which palaeontologists later identified as being over 5000 dinosaur prints. It was lucky that in that area of the quarry they had found magnesium so hadn’t excavated it and destroyed the footprints which are all the way along a one and half kilometre long wall.
To get to see them we took the Dino Truck, a glorified taxi with a plastic dinosaur on the front! It used to be the case that the truck drove you past the footprints, but nowadays there’s a visitor centre which keeps you a fair distance away in order to preserve them. The visitor centre, Cretaceous Park, was quite fun. We had a guide to tell us about all the different dinosaurs that used to live in the area and so left footprints. There were also some nice life sized fibreglass models.
It was quite cheesy, but fun to see the world’s largest collection of dinosaur footprints!