remember gouache?

i was planning on taking landscape painting through the fine art department this spring semester. got waivers and permissions all taken care of and everything, and it turned out to be the same day as digital painting so i had to choose. still love atmospheric perspective though, guess it'll just have to wait.
anyway i finally made use of searching the remote areas of the google earth landscape looking for uploaded photos to give me a sense of the landscapes architecture. i remembered these photos from a hiking trail down in Bolivia, near somewhere called the Refugio los Volcanes, and thought these would be good references for study. Since i can't seem to pull it together quick enough on location.
also dug out the gouache to see if it was still wet, i heard they have a tendency to dry out. So gouache, how to approach it? is it opaque or transparent? those words mean much more now than they did last semester, after semester of practice i should be capable of either.
i wish i had made up my mind on the first one, took all afternoon/evening too. i felt i was fighting the medium and the habits with the brushes. watercolor brushes but not watercolor, if you want?
felt i did better on the second one, less time and paint too. managed to save the white of the board for the lights on the orangey cliff faces in the center.