We received a wake-up call at 8:30. I took a nice, warm shower and then went down for breakfast. The overheating problem on the bus turned out to be due to a broken radiator hose which the drivers were working on. We were on our way by 11:00 but needed to stop to gas up. Then we pulled off at a roadside barbecue to eat lunch. It looked poisonous and for some it was.

Todd, being a vegetarian, ordered a plato vegetariano. When the meals came, the woman asked who ordered the duck? We finally figured out that she thought that Todd said pato (duck) instead of plato (plate). Even though it must have been a vegetarian duck, Todd did not want to eat it, so Charlie had it instead.

The transition to this, arid, treeless environment is rather remarkable given the dense vegetation on the other side of the mountain range to the east of the city. A large bajada skirts the base of the range and development is climbing the slope. We began our climb out of the valley through Neogene fan, fluvial, and lake strata and soon progressed into older strata just below 10,000'. The bus overheated so we stopped to let it cool. We pushed on a few more km but had to stop again. Our impromptu stopping place had a beautiful view down a long quebrada. In the distance we could see remnants of the San Juan de Oro surface.

Marydale and I took advantage of the stop and went to look at the rhythmically bedded sandstones in the road-cut. I explained that they were probably related to Milankovitch cycles. To test this we counted the number of thin sands between two thicker sands which should mark the conflation of the 3 cycles. To my amazement, there were 15 or 16, the number there should be.

In steps, we progressed a few more kilometers. The vegetarian duck was taking its toll on Charlie and we needed to make a couple of stops for him in quick order. It became obvious that we would not make La Paz so we told the drivers to take us back to Cochabamba. The ride back took about an hour. Todd called ahead to get a reservation at the Hotel Canada. We arrived about 7:00 and got our same rooms. At 8:00 we convened in the lobby and split into two dinner groups. One group went down to the Prado. I went with Mike, Callie, Amy, Rion, Keri, and Chris to La Estancia in La Recoleta, a very nice pedestrian mall. I had an excellent filete de lomo. The service was superb. Callie and I shared a bottle of good Bolivian Malbec. We took cabs back to the hotel, arriving a few minutes before the other group.

I was in the fourth floor lobby when Charlie appeared. He had been very ill after eating the salad and vegetarian duck at lunch but now looked much better. He had discovered that the bottle of Cinglani that he bought in Santa Cruz was leaking in his luggage so he donated it to the student cause. With that Adam, Marydale, Jessica, Callie, and I went to Marydale and Jessica's room. The four students played spades. I watched until the bottle was empty and then went to my room where I found Strom writing in his journal. It was after midnight so I went to bed.