MUNGO EATS Latin America

So last night we went to a Crepe restaurant.  They also had some pizzas and salads.  There was a great drink menu that included HOT CHOCOLATE with WHIPPED CREAM and CINNAMON!  This tasted very, very good.  If any of you have never tried Mexican hot chocolate before, it is one of the things that you have to try someday.  I was very surprised about the crepe menu.  You see, all the crepes I have ever had are sweet desert crepes filled with banana and hot chocolate fudge.  I have never had a bacon crepe, salmon crepe, pineapple crepe, or anything like that.  So you can see why I was surprised.

So in the end our meal was: 2 HOT CHOCOLATES with WHIPPED CREAM and CINNAMON, 2 lemonades(hand-made), 1 salad, 1 set of bacon crepes, 1 set of salmon crepes, 2 beers, 1 cream soda with fruit flavor, 1 pizza, 1 set of strawberries and cream crepes, and one set of caramel crepes.  It was a great meal and if you ever want to go it is in Ajijic, Mexico, and it is called The Creperie. 

When we finally left we stepped outside and noticed how much water there was on the roads.  It had been raining almost the entire time we had been eating and now all the water was flowing down the roads and more was coming from the sky.  Mum was the only one with a sweater and we all envied here.  Then she yelped when we were running back to the van.  She had her very slippery slipper things on and was always at risk of falling over.  Meanwhile we were dashing from store to store that had big awnings.  Eventually we got back to the van and took off all our clothes and one by one(except for Dad) hopped into the nice warm shower to warm up.  All that and we didn’t even get any pictures with our new 10.1 megapixal waterproof cameras(even better that what our stolen cameras were!)!

When we finally got to the beach after a few days of driving on small, bumpy roads.  We were all very hot and sweaty so we were very excited to just soak in the nice, warm water.  We were so excited that we didn’t even close the van door.  We just left it wide open for everyone to go look inside.  And, unfortunately, someone did.  They (almost) completely searched the van and stole most of the electronics and some money.  By almost I mean that they didn’t find the money storage place.  Dad has very sneakily hide the money under a cupboard.  He made a fake bottom and put the money under it.  Oh, thank God!  Here’s a list of what they stole: 2 iPods, 3 cameras, 1 set of binoculars, 2 pairs of headphones, and a little bit of money.  Here’s a list of what they didn’t steal: Mum and Dad’s credit cards, the GPS, our clothes, etc, etc.  But most of all, the van!!!! Yay!  Yahoo!  Without that, our trip would be lost and we would have no van to just have fun in!

So tomorrow we are going to probably go spend about 2,000 Canadian dollars on iPods and cameras.  Oh well, at least they didn’t take the van, too!   

Today we went to a Native Heritage site.  It is an UNESCO site.  It is even older than the ruins at the Petrified Forest Park.  It was inhabited from 700-1200.  Another difference is that, as the title says, the walls are all made of dried-up mud.  There are some things that are made of stone, like this thing. “This thing” is supposed to be a bird with no head.  If any of you can see the bird let me know and I will send you a special surprise.  If you could see it before I told you what it was, you have MAGICAL SIGHT POWERS.

Now the city looks a lot like a maze.  There’s a lot of pictures because it looks cool from all angles.                             

This is a picture of a cage that would have held scarlet macaws(there was a roof before).  That makes me laugh.

When we were walking I found a dead vinegaroon.        It makes me laugh, too.

The Natives are very good potters.      

All today we were exploring the Petrified Forest National Park on on nice, obvious paths.  I guess that doesn’t count as exploring but I’ll call it what I want.  It was really easy to tell that the petrified wood had been real wood a long time ago.   

Petrified wood isn’t the only thing in the Park!  The Pueblo Natives made lots of petroglyphs.  There are also the ruins of their houses. 

Petroglyphs are made by chiseling off the top layer on the rock.  The layer is softer than the other layers and is made of hard sand.  The wind blows the sand against the rock and over time, the sand hardens.  I’d tell you what the layer is is called but I forget because I mailed the paper that tells me to my class at home.  The petroglyphs usually talk about hunting, animals, children, and their gods.  One of the most famous ones is the stork bringing a baby.     In this picture the stork is at the center right.  I’m not really sure what the other pictures mean. 

The ruins are made of stone bricks.  They were lived in twice, once from 1100-1200 and once in the 1500’s.  They are made to keep the strong southeastern wind outside.  The Natives lived in the middle of the desert because there was a river not very far off.  But they couldn’t live right next to the river because in the spring when it rained a lot the river got a lot higher.  We think that they got flooded out a few times before they decided to build new homes further up.  The houses weren’t made like Machu Pichu, which is built by balancing rocks the right way.  Cement-like mud holds the bricks together.  Sadly, time can kill even the strongest things.  Now the walls are about half the height of my knee.

And now, some words for the wood.  The trees were actually alive 225 million years ago, in the Triassic period.  These trees lived in the time of dinosaurs!  The trees fall down and over time are covered in mud, silt, and volcanic ash.  This really slows down their decomposition.  Then silica-rich water washes over the logs.  Slowly it begins to harden(kind of like a stalagmite) and replace the wood cells with silica.  After a long time, the silica turns to quartz and becomes very colorful.

This is the tale of the Salt Monster, the monster of Great Salt Lake and area(Sara McLean version). 

We were walking along the mud flats by the Great Salt Lake.  Mungo stopped constantly to try to sneak a slurp of saltwater.  We always told him not to because if you drink too much saltwater you start to vomit.  He chased a lot American Avocets.  Then we heard a long, loud howl.  Mungo heard it too and he took off across the flats.  We called him back but the howl seemed to be calling him.  We decided to follow him to see what was making all the noise.  Eventually, we noticed the prints that we were following were way too big to be Mungo’s.  At least, some of them were.  The majority were Mungo-sized but every once and a while the print would be HUGE!  Here are some of the prints.

  Later we found the beast’s lair….        

                                   And it attacked!!!

It transformed back into a cute Mungo………

And fell asleep on the driver’s seat.