Elder and Sister Dibb's Mission Blog

This is the chapel in Constitucion where we taught English to the missionaries this past week.  It is the stake center.

We finally got to see the Botanical Gardens.  Notice the bride and groom in the background.  Elder Dibb is sitting in front of the cactus garden.

Looking down through the gardens.  Some of the trees look like palm trees, but it sure isn't Hawaii weather.

These eucalyptus trees are from Australia.  This one is huge and is probably over 100 feet high.  These trees are plentiful in La Paz and throughout the Altiplano.  Thousands were brought from Australia back in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds.

The gardens had 2 beautiful shields all made out of plants and flowers.  The other one was in the shadows and didn't show up.  But it is quite impressive.

Flowers along the walls.

Coming back from Miraflores and the gardens we saw this family who had "camped" on the side hill.  Notice the clothes that have been washed.  They are drying on the bushes.  The mother is washing her hair.  This picture is taken from the bridge that goes across the canyon from Sopocachi to Miraflores.

We went back to Valle de la Luna so we could spend some time going through the canyon.  It is a lot like Bryce canyon, except all the formations are made of clay with some rocks in them.  Many of the crevices are very deep.

This is an interesting plant.  You can see the orange flower and right next to it is a "ball of fluff" that looks like a dandelion.

This was part of the trail.  There are holes all through this area - the beginning of erosion and more pinacles.

A picture looking up toward La Paz.  The city is on the hillsides.

This statue is called "The Spirit of the Andes".  It is interesting because it is made of sandstone and the rest of the formations are clay.

We were trying to figure out how this huge rock could sit on top of this clay tower.  It had to weigh a few tons and it is just hard clay underneath.

We walked down to the little town of Mallasa.  This is the church - much different than the ones we have in La Paz.

Along the street were "ovens" with chickens roasting.

The zoo is in Mallasa, so we decided to check it out and see if we could see more animals than we did the first time we were there.  We did see more animals and this monkey had it's baby on it's back.  She was climbing around and around the cage.

We took a taxi to Valle de la Luna.  It cost us 40 Bs. or about $6.00.  But when we came out of the zoo, there were no taxis to be found.  So we got on this bus - our first experience with the bus transportation system.  It cost us 4 Bs. or about $.70.  The trip is about 12 miles up and down hills.  It took about 20 minutes to get there and coming back on the bus, it was about 40 minutes - because the stop and let people on if they stand on the side of the road and wave.  This shawl had sequins and beads all over it.  Of course, there were not enough seats and people had to stand.

This bus is much nicer than the buses Elder Dibb road in when he was here, but the ceiling was still too short and he had to bend over to walk back to our seats.