Cretassic Park

I believe it was Saint Francis of Assisi, (later covered by The Byrds) who said 'To everything there is a season', and quite right he was too. A time for war, a time for peace, (turn turn turn) a time for menu del dia, a time for McDonalds; a time to blend in, and a time to put on a global hypercolour T-shirt and a bumbag and get on a truck with a papier mache dinosaur head on the front and go to Cretassic Park.

It's not called Cretassic Park, of course. It is called something similar though, and promised, in addition to the largest collection of dinosaur 'printfoots' (sic) in the world, 'a collection of lifesize dinosaur models created with the greatest cientific (sic) rigour'. Naturally I would have paid any price in the world to see this and had been clamouring for a ride on the dinotruck since our arrival in Sucre.

Sucre had been slightly disappointing up to that point. I am suspicious of towns in general which have more lawyers than restaurants. It is all very pretty, but it also all designed to part the tourist from his money and even at rock bottom Bolivian prices this attitude does not endear a place to me. But Cretassic Park promised to be so mind boggling underwhelming and rubbish, after the hype in the guidebooks, that i couldn't wait to get there.

I wasn't disappointed. The DinoTruck (TM) bounced and jounced its way out to a quarry out of down and deposited us at the gates under the large plastic head of a T-rex. We were given an hour, or four. Not wanting to miss a precious moment I grabbed a ticket and scrambled through the turnstile.

The dinosaur footprints were not on the floor. They were on the quarry wall at a distance of three hundred metres away, which gave the impression of beetle tracks. I wasnt even sure I could see them until we went to the gift shop and looked at a poster which had them coloured in. Chris took a picture and we went back aagin. There, on the ridge. That indistinct splat was definitely either a sauropod footprint preserved in cement, or a tuft of grass. Who cares? The expression on Chris's face when he realised we had paid real life money for this was beyond priceless. I spent a few minutes wondering why the footprints were on a vertical surface (suction cups seemed the most entertaining answer), reluctant to find out the truth from the worlds tiniest and dullest on site museum. So I turned my attention instead to the real life cientifically rigorous dinosaur models. They were awful- huge, but awful. There was also a cretassic rat and a cretassic platypus lurking in a pond, for no reaosn. The whole site must have covered 200 square metres. The 'mirador' was the roof of the restaurant. It was so stunningly bad that it was brilliant. When they turned the sound effects on while I was passing under the belly of the (female) titanosaur I nearly cried with joy.

There came a point ten minutes later where there was nothign left to do except watch the BBC walking with dinosaurs DVD that someone had thoughtfully purchased and put on in a cool room. Then we realised that if we didn't hurry, the return dinotruck would leave and strand us there for another three hours. So we ran for it.

Waste of money? Certainly. But to everything there is a season- including plastic dinosaurs.