I stopped and visited one of the ruins of the Jesuit missions here. The eighties film "The Mission" paints a bit of a utopian picture of them I think, but never the less, Im sure that they were one of the gentler attempts at "civilizing" that the world has seen... Especially given the era and the culture from which they started.
But, there is precious little of them left now, and although the "compound" at San Ignacio here is very large, I was mostly uninspired by the remnants....
...Everything is Temporary... When its passed, its passed, and its time to move on to something else.
And as I myself ride on on my little voyage, I find I am dodging lots of grass-hoppers...
... And they are really neat looking critters...
They seem to group up with one big one and a bunch of little ones (gender differentiated rather than age I assume but I dont know for sure). And then they proceed to "walk" across the dangerous highway (which is a very slow process I might add) rather than hop or fly... I dont know why she swallowed the fly...
And then there are other hoppers and bugs too... Im being absolutely pelted by them all as I ride along (Im quite sorry for all the ones that get killed by my passing through!)
There is one sort that when I first saw it I thought it was a small sparrow sized bird... But its a massive hopper! It is at leat 12-15cm long. This thing is like a "flying medecine ball"... I expect Id have to stop and recover/clean-up (assuming it didnt knock me off the bike in the first place) if one of these things lumbered into my path while it was flying....Very messy!
Thankfully they are not very common, and I only got a close look at one by seeing a "road kill" specimin laying there.
Tomorrow I expect Ill head over the boarder North to Bolivia... Who knows what new bugs Ill get to meet there?
