The Crater of Maragua

Maragua used to be a Peace Corps site, the kind now extinct because they realized if they ever need to evacuate the country it is not very convenient to have a volunteer in a place that requires a 4-hour hike and crossing a river nicknamed "the Killer of Maraguans" before hitchiking into the city on a cattle truck. The trip there isn´t quite as bad, except when we ask to be let off on the road to Maragua the driver asks, "Which Maragua?" There are 3. Ohh, good.

You cross the river at Chaunaca (of which there is only 1, luckily). It´s dry season, and the river is only knee-deep. Next you hike 4 or 5 hours rolling upward until the lush green patches over red rock fade away on the rim of the crater of Maragua. The town sits on the bottom of the huge bowl; only the cementery is high on a small plateau rising from the floor of the crater, where the dead of Maragua have an enviable view. Inside the crater the rock and wheatfields are dramatic burgundy and gold, dotted with stone and dust houses. It is deserted, silent except for the wind. As instructed by Mike, the last volunteer that lived here, we look for the house with an Entel sign in the window and ask for Don Basilio, who can guide us to the dinosaur footprints. He is a small man with a sharpish face dominated by a huge bola of coca in his cheek. The next day he leads us briskly up the crater, like most campesinos 1/2 our size but faster than the wind as we clamber awkwardly after him.

It is almost 3 hours up the crater walls, winding through the surrounding mountains and cutting across fields, where Don Basilio stops to chat with whoever´s land we´re on. At the edge of a field, rising abruptly up from a ravine is a large slab of smooth gray stone. I climb onto it looking for strange looking obscure little marks and trip into a large, 3-toed dino track. The different tracks criss-cross the slab everywhere with incredible clarity. I am sure we are not supposed to be walking all over them like this but as Chris points out cheerfully, this is why we´re in Bolivia. A cholita herding sheep appears with a little guest book to sign and collects 10 Bs. from each of us as we stretch out on the warm stone in the sun next to the tracks and doze. It's unreal and incredible. I love Bolivia, that I get to do things like this. We spend the rest of of the day hiking to a waterfall next to a fanged cave called the Devil's Mouth, then up to the cementery. Russ has his binoculars and sees a woman baking bread in her domed earthen oven otuside. He hikes down to buy some for dinner, still steaming hot. Water gets collected from a "spring", a tiny burbling hole at the side of the muddy trickle of water that passes for a stream, liberally sprinkled with goat poop. We boil it a long time and tell ourselves the floaty things are dead.

We get up early the third day to hike out to the road because buses and trucks only pass by for a few hours in the morning. There is not much traffic at all, we get passed by 2 buses and a truck, jammed full. Finally another cattle truck, also full of people and animals and cargo, pulls up and looks at us doubtfully. Before they change their minds we scramble into the back. Everyone is able to climb up the inside sides of the truck bed and get some fresh air, but Kate and I are stuck in the human soup in the back bottom. She is between a fat boy and an old man sitting on rice bags who keeps kicking her legs, I am between some sheep and a cholita seated on flour sacks using me as her back rest. I think I have the better situation until the ram at my knees starts biting. I squeal and try to move but it's impossible. Ram bites. I squeal. The campesinos find this hilarious but trust me, it is not. I decide to fight the sheep. The next time he bites, I manage to land a kick. The sheep pauses, then begins to head butt at my knees. Hard. I kick. Sheep butts. This is stupid. I make a roaring noise and punch him. Sheep is stunned. I win! Sheep pees on me. Sheep wins. I hate Bolivia. Thus pass another 3 hours rattling down a dusty road drowning in odors of unwashed bodies and livestock feces. This is the price you pay for walking in dinosaur tracks.