t is finally a nice, sunny day here (for now) and it is our day off on top which makes it doubly nice! For the dry season, it sure does rain a lot....it usually rains just about every day, though lightly, except it has really been storming this past week. Martha says it’s more like the really, really rainy season and the less rainy season because of this. Good to know! It also gets surprisingly chilly here in the evenings, especially after a rain has cooled things off, so I am glad I decided to bring my hoodie and sweatpants after all.
Work at the site has slowed down the last few days. There are really some curious anomalies in our unit that don’t really appear in the small pits being dug around the site. There is a LOT of bioturbation making it difficult to interpret things and we have several light and dark soil stains that we are unsure of- one larger dark soil stain in the very center of the unit is where we keep finding big tools and flakes; just yesterday we found a large mano, or grinding stone, the size of a brick! It is quite interesting...
It rained a bit again yesterday morning which slowed work a bit, but we didn’t work a full day anyhow. After getting home and cleaning up, Jen and I went downtown with Carmen to look around and find some cheap artisanal crafts. The city of Pereira is actually quite nice, with three large plazas and lots of shopping. The main plaza, Plaza de Bolivar, is equipped with a large statue of Simon Bolivar riding a horse, naked. The second one we checked out further west had this enormous system of fountains and water that took up most of the square. These areas are nice because they are lined with palms or some other type of tree which brightens up the city.
We checked out an old church where some archaeology had been done recently in which they found the original foundation of the original church from the 16th century, along with burials and other structures. The inside of the building that stands today is really quite stunning as they have left the roof/rafters open through reconstruction and rehabilitation to the structure and all of the arcing wood beams are visible.
Most of the shops and storefronts in the area are more commercial but there are a few artisanal places, though, we found the best stuff was from the indigenous people that sell hand crafts from little stands along the wide pedestrian walkways between the shops. Even still, things are either quite pricey or not very well made, so we didn’t make many purchases.
Carmen was a very good guide of the city even though she is from Manizales and hasn’t spent much time in Pereira, herself. Between her broken english and my broken spanish we were able to communicate pretty well; she is such a cute and funny person, so we all had a good time. After we had worn ourselves out from walking all over the place, we rested our legs at a juice bar for a fresh pitcher of pina en aqua and super empanadas! The empanadas were probably the second best I’ve had, the first being this roadside place in southwest Costa Rica somewhere along the road from Montezuma toward the rest of civilization to the north, and the juice was nice and fresh, though, I’m a sucker for mango or maracuya (passionfruit).
We headed back toward the bus terminal so that Carmen could get on her way back home and Jen and I continued back to the apartment. The traffic here is a little nuts and stop signs are really more of a suggestion than anything else, so it was like a game of frogger getting around town, the whole time Carmen saying, “quickly with careful!!” We had a little siesta after getting back to the apartment and then went to check out this little eatery down the street that we had seen a few days earlier on a walk down to La Catorce, the major shopping area. The food was tasty and the atmosphere was cute, but the music was in stiff competition with the street traffic and the bar next door that was playing Aerosmith’s entire discography. All in all a pretty enjoyable afternoon and evening : )
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