Friday, January 02, 2009

A Bit of Serious Paleontology

"How can I put this?"

Our trip leader, Paul, hesitated.

It's a little... cheesy."

That's it. I'm going. I'm going to see the dinosaur footprints at Parque Cretacico. Bring on the cheese.

Four other tourists on my small group expedition—there are 8 passengers and a leader—and I piled into a single taxi ("Mega-sore-ass" quipped the sweet young Aussie man) and off we went to see the dinosaur footprints.

The taxi driver was a reasonable adult, and he didn't sneer at our giggling over stuffing four into the back seat. But he did look puzzled when he pulled up to a concrete factory and we wouldn't get out.

"That's not a dinosaur park. That's a concrete factory."

"He's taken us to the wrong place."

I got out and spoke to a concrete factory security guard who waved up a hill.

"Si, si, Parque Cretacico."

Hmmm.

"Apparently this is the right place."

But look, would you have believed it?



The security guard dropped the chain over the driveway and we drove up the hill to the dinosaur park.

Oh, cheese!

Plastic dinosaurs galore! I was in heaven.

"But they aren't roaring. The guidebook promised roaring."

On cue, the dinosaurs started roaring loudly. I quickly switched my camera to video mode. Give me time.

At the top was a viewpoint over a quarry of dinosaur footprints. It was across a ditch—you couldn't go up to them. Nevertheless, how cool to stand over dinosaur footprints.

More photos here.

2 comments:

Linda said...

Oh good! Now I don't feel bad that we didn't have time to stop at Dinosaur Land on the day after Christmas.

/Mom

Larry Hama said...

His arms are on backwards.