Searching for Telmatobius around Sucre

After Carnaval in Oruro, I joined up with the frog team in Sucre, the only-in-name capitol of Bolivia. I had the impression that Sucre is everyone's favorite Bolivian city, and it lived up to it´s reputation as a beautiful, colonial town, unspoiled by uncontrolled development. I arrived at the airport on the Tuesday of Carnaval, and the town was completely dead, except for roaming bands, each consisting of a couple wet children armed with water guns and a couple band members playing some apparently random assortment of brass instruments. These roaming groups appeared to be at war with each other. Arturo and Eleonore picked me up at the airport, and we tried to pick up Arturo´s neice on the way back to his house, but it turned out she was one of these wet children, and she refused to come home with us. Loro, the parrot named parrot, but in Spanish. We had a barbeque in honor of Carnaval with Arturo´s family, followed by a water balloon fight (also in honor of Carnaval), that ended in each of the participant´s getting thrown in the pool. Their parrot ¨Loro¨ contributed by screaming and laughing, giving the impression that at least three more people were involved in our fight. I tried often to get Loro to stand on my shoulder, but he was more interested in gnawing on my finger, which he did whenever he got the chance. We didn´t end up leaving Sucre for another day, giving us the chance to tour the town a bit. Cemetary of Sucre. Supposedly contains the grave of the only prince of Bolivia. This beautiful colonial building hosts a delicious salteneria: delicious empanada-like pastries that Bolivians (and I) enjoy as a mid-morning snack. Eventually we were joined by Marina and we set off for the mountains surrounding Sucre to look for frogs! We ended up camping in a really beautiful and isolated spot, that also happened to host a playground. Hooray! Our convenient cooking shelter. Marina enjoying our tire swing. Since the frogs we were looking for are nocturnal, we spent most of the day for the next two days eating and playing cards. At around 6:30 each night, we pulled on our boots and walked down to the river, and the four of us surveyed about two kilometers in either direction, though we did not find too many frogs. Surveying till after midnight was exhausting, and tired missteps were disastrous, since they often resulted in a boot being filled with icy water. Still, I managed to enjoy myself hopping from rock to rock, and the stars the second night were truly amazing. We headed back to Sucre the next day, where we spent a day resupplying before heading to higher altitudes around Potosi. We could not cross here! We ended up going to another stream since the bridge across this one was out. Again, we looked for frogs at night, and were more succesful than before and managed to catch some Telmatobius tadpoles for the captive breeding project in Cochabamba. We continued our drive and our survey the next day, stopping at streams that seemed like good frog habitats. We were low on containers for the frogs we were catching, and so had to use creative solutions such as pant pockets for dozens of tadpoles, along with a couple adult frogs for good measure. View during the drive from Potosi. Our campsite for one night was in the middle of someone´s llama pasture. Unfortunately, I didn´t take a picture of it when it was filled with llamas, but please try to imagine! More stone llama pastures. Did you know llamas poop in piles? Another stream to survey. Eventually we drove back to Cochabamba, the truck filled with various water and soda bottles filled with frogs for the aquariums I had helped to build the week before. Success!