Bye Sucre!

Well I am now in Mendoza, Argentina! Took a solid 3 days of non-stop travel to get here... wasn't so bad though, I slept really well on the train the first night and on the bus the second night.

Anyways, before I left Sucre I saw this really cool fountain show that they do every week just down the street from my house. They had live music too but I couldn't get any pics because it was pretty dark. The pictures don't really do this justice because part of what was so cool was how the water moved.... anyways...







Last weekend I went on a 2 day hike. The first day we hiked to a small town called Managua that was built inside a crater that was formed by a volcanic explosion.

We started at this old church.


And then just past the church there is an old trail from the Spanish that was built in the 1500's that we hiked down. The trail goes down into this valley.




There was some cool stuff along the way. Some rivers and a lot of old farm houses.


The people at this farm really liked us I think... one gentleman even threw a rock at us to show how much he liked us (thanks Evo).


Yeah, I guess it isn't very safe hiking through the "campo" here because the Bolivian president has created some tension between the farmers and the city people. We had a good guide that spoke Quechua so I think we were fairly safe... he told us when to hurry past a pueblo and when to be quite and sneaky so that the people wouldn't hear that we were around (lol).

This is the CITY of Managua and a pic of the hostel we stayed at. The hostel was insanely nice but even though it was all set up for electricity the power line hadn't been run to the town yet so we just had candles. The town was supposed to have a bunch of artisan crafts that you could buy but the town was still celebrating a holiday so they were all drunk (and no, i'm not exaggerating... they really were ALL drunk).







Me drinking the chicha... I had to try it...... I think I paid for it this last week. That's what I get for drinking out of a huge rusted barrel that smelled (and tasted) like cow piss.



Later that evening we hiked up to an old graveyard on top of a plateau. Most of the graves were fairly new though... I think the old ones didn't have any time markers. They did however seem to have moved some bodies because there were TONS of human bones all over the ground.




Another view of the valley we stayed in the first night... this is taken from up at the graveyard.


Ugh, getting tired of doing this... just going to post the rest of my pics. On the second day we got to see dinosaur footprints which were absolutely awesome. These ones are raptor tracks... there were also some bigger ones but they weren't as clear as these so I just decided to post the better pics. These are from the second day:







This is just taken from the car on the way back to town. There was a market just on the outside of town.


Anyways, like I said, I am now in Mendoza. I took a 9 hour bus ride Friday morning, an 8 hour train ride Friday night into Saturday, a 7 hour bus ride Saturday day, and an 18 hour bus ride Saturday night into Sunday. It wasn't as bad as it sounds really... I slept both nights really well and managed to have the seat open next to me most of the trip. Going to stay here in Mendoza for about a week I think and then head to Santiago.