4 degrees from the sun

11:03 pm

Hello there! It’s Monday evening here in Pereira; we just got back from Carlos and Martha’s house where we had some Colombian-Chinese take-out food from ‘Restaurant nuevo Kung Fu’ that was pretty much like American-Chinese food but with slightly different colors. It was a little less salty/heavy too and very delicious....I think that tomorrow some of the leftovers will be available for lunch in the field. Lunch is the main meal here and so even though we are working, we take a break and have a pretty good sized spread of things to choose from and create. Carlos is very good about introducing us to all sorts of wild and crazy fruits, flavors, and so on. He’s also a pretty good tour guide when driving around to different sites...

5:46 pm

Oy, I had to go to bed because I was exhausted!! We got a lot done today, 5 whole units, all finished up, bagged, tagged and counted. We are starting to get in to the groove of the excavation, I think, and are doing much better with keeping up with all our paperwork and lab work, so it doesn’t feel like we have all this unfinished business hanging over our heads, which is nice. Jen and Evie mostly excavated while I was their screening slave, meaning I sifted all of the soil they were removing for lithics and ceramics, aka a LOT. It was nice though, because I got in to a groove and just felt good getting so much done and making some good progress in the unit. So we are now done with all of the 30-40 cm units and tomorrow we will begin taking it down lower (to 50 cm) and in to perhaps the preceramic levels, but for now we’re still sort of just on the cusp of it. 

After the long day in the field, we headed over to the lab at UTP (Universidad Tecnologica Pereira) to count some of the perviously collected artifacts from various test pits on the site and were there for quite a while before heading out. It was a long and exhausting day. Jen and I walked back to the apartment since we’re really only 4 blocks from the university to shower and clean up to go over to Carlos and Martha’s for dinner and post-field beers. For those who are unaware of typical archaeologist habits, drinking is a favorite past time ; )

While we were there I was able to copy a few tracks on to my computer from some of the CD’s that we were listening to of traditional Colombian music and am excited to have some new music in my library. It cooled off quite a bit today after some light rain which made for a nice, cool evening.

Sanctuario

It occurs to me that I never finished my entry the other day about our trip to Sanctuaria but, instead, caught up on the preceding day’s events. So, I shall fill in some blanks here....

Down here the work days vary for us but we work 6 days on and 1 day off, Sundays being our day off. Yesterday was a treat because it was Martha’s father, Joaquin’s, 70-somethingth birthday and so we all went to her parent’s farm in Sanctuario which is located a bit northeast of Pereira, about an hour- hour and a half away. Tony went ahead on the bus with Martha and the kids while Jen, Evie, and I went along with Carlos who explained a lot of the landscape, architecture, history, and so forth on the way. The roads there are extremely tight, winding, and dangerous at times, but it makes for an exciting ride. Sanctuario and Pereira are on sort of adjacent ranges of mountains and so you cross over a bit of savannah on the way as well. Many of the roads past the Cauca Valley that are up in the mountains where Sanctuario is are subject to landslides and there were a few points where the road narrowed due to part of it having crumbled off the outward side and down in to the valley. The good thing about the soil over in this region, however, is that it is very rocky and densely filled with sheetrock type material that helps keep things together a bit. Plants have to put their roots down through these rocks in order to gain the nutrients they need, but despite this, many coffee, sugar cane, banana, and plantain plants grow nicely in this area. 

The town of Sanctuario is quite small with very steep hills and streets at times, but is very quaint as well. Martha’s parents live down the mountain from the main part of town on a farm where they grow coffee, bananas, and plantains, among other things. I think that they may only sell the coffee and that any other plants they have are just for personal use, but alas, my memory hardly serves me well during the same day, let alone a day later so I cannot say for sure.

Her family was very welcoming and nice; they have a quaint house with a big wrap around porch and many many gorgeous flowers and plants that only add to the lovely scenery. Martha’s father, Joaquin, gave us a short tour of the land and facilities. We saw many coffee plants on their way to ripening (not just yet) but Tony showed us a neat trick of opening an almost ripe pod and sucking on the bean and its coating which has this sweet, nutty flavor that is quite good. He was also kind enough to show us where they wash and dry all of the beans and how to harvest yucca root....mmm yucca is so good!! Carlos explained to us that most of the coffee growers in the area export their beans while they are still green because roasting is expensive and beside a lot of places take pride now in roasting their beans in their own particular way once they get to wherever they’re going.

We didn’t stay for dinner or anything but had a nice little lunch and got to take in some awesome views, eat freshly picked bananas and play with some cute dogs so all in all it was a good trip. In Carlos and Martha’s car, only five passengers can be in it at a time, so I volunteered to walk back to town and take a bus back to Pereira with Carlos. Suffice it to say that the incline didn’t seem so bad in the car on the way down, albeit quite steep; we definitely got a workout on our walk back up at a pretty much constant 45 degree angle. Phew!

The bus ride back to Pereira was nice because the seats were a bit bigger and much better than being squashed three in a seat. Also Carlos was my personal tour guide explaining more about the landscape, Colombian lifestyle, and such which was really nice. He is such a warm person and loves to explain things and talk about Colombian architecture, agriculture, archaeology, and so on....all the a’s haha, but really he knows a lot about the area so he is the perfect person to know here.

The trip back was pretty quick (the minibus driver went much faster than Carlos, which made him a little uncomfortable and he mentioned it a couple times....reasonably so, though, because buses have gone off the roads of these mountains occasionally). Carlos and Martha gave us a ride to the La Catorce 14 or LA 14, a store not that far from our apartment actually. There we picked up some things to make pasta, rice, eggs, beans, various vegetables, a variety of hot sauces, of course, and some essential first aid type- field things to make life easier, but I of course forgot a few things because I kept forgetting to make a list.....damn brain. Anyway LA 14 is bizarre, things are not organized in aisles very well like bug spray was with the raid....anyway it’s like an all-purpose store with food, clothes, book supplies, and tons of more stuff. 

Unfortunately, the jar of jalapenos broke as we were bringing the groceries home because I tripped going up the stairs....guess I should have listened better when my mom said to pick up my feet when I walk. Anyway, that pretty much wraps up Sunday. After getting back to the apartment, Jen and I watched another episode of Boardwalk Empire, of which we have the first season, and called it a night.

KunFu Panda II

Hohhhhhhhlahhhhh. Today has been a surprisingly long day, given that it was our day off. I am exhausted and somewhat delirious, but am trying to recall yesterday’s activities so as to catch up here after skipping a day. We went out to the field as normal for the morning. The day started with a slight headache from the aloe vera licour, but nothing terrible. We managed to start and finish up three sections of the balk that had been left untouched, which felt good. We haven’t finished counting the assemblages or the paperwork for the units, but it was nice to accomplish something. We cleaned up the rest of the unit and rigged up gridlines for some photos, cleared away brush and bamboo from the edges and pretty much called it a day. Things have been a bit slow going so far, between a lack of communication and uncertainty of tasks, but I am hopeful that this will improve with the days we are here.

We had a chance to check out this jazz festival that the Technological University of Pereira was hosting. After eating a large and delicious lunch across the street, Jen, Evie, Nico (Carlos and Martha’s 15 yr old son) and I headed downtown to see the bands. Unfortunately, they were still setting up the stage and doing soundchecks when we got there even though we had arrived a bit after the start time listed on the flyer, but we did hear a couple of interesting groups warming up before we decided to bail. It was also starting to rain, and although it didn’t end up doing much, there was a bit of a constant drizzle so we opted to go to the local mall about 4 or 5 blocks away. The mall was interesting, they had some cool stores, but I couldn’t help noticing that a lot of them looked almost identical and merely had a different name, so I guess what I’m saying is there wasn’t too much diversity in the shop choices. In any case, we looked around for a bit before heading up to the top level to the Cinema Victoria. We had some time to kill and thought it might be enjoyable to go to a movie, however the only two films with English subtitles were X-Men and Sin Limites, both of which weren’t playing for a while as well. Instead we decided to see Kung Fu Panda II.....in SPANISH!! This turned out to be a pretty brilliant idea despite the fact that Jen and I are not exactly fluent or even very coherent of Spanish....gotta love cartoons;  but no it was really funny, probably funnier than I would have thought had I seen it in English, plus I understood a decent amount of the Spanish, of which I was proud.

After the movie, the four of us headed down to the plaza to check out a tented marketplace there. There were typical sort of goods of wooden jewelry, keychains, leather products, bags and things, but I didn’t buy anything. There were some interesting foods there as well; we got this stuff that sort of tasted like caramel-y ricotta cheese which was surprisingly tasty. We took a taxi back to Pereira to Carlos and Martha’s house and visited for a while (about two beers time haha) although by the time we had arrived, Pat and Tony seemed as if they had had quite a bit of rum.....each of the three bottles on the table were getting down to the dregs. Nico, meanwhile, was busy watching the rest of the football game in the other room of which the National team won. Carlos and Martha’s eldest son, David, whom we met today seemed to have celebrated a little too hard, but it was a really close and exciting game that came down to penalty shots and everything, so I can see why people were so excited over the victory in general.

So many sherds, so little time

Today was a sort of jimble jamble. We started out to the field around 8 and finished taking our units down the  arbitrary 10 cm which we will be doing for each level until we start getting in to the prehistoric stuff, the goods, at which point we will slow down and take more precautions. So far as we have been updated by Tony, they still have yet to find any charcoal samples or usable artifacts in their test pits, going down 2+ meters with the auger, which basically tunnels down in to the earth and results a core which is subsequently screened for such things. Oh, and for rocks, lithics. The soil down there is verrrrrrry clay-y though and seems to be pretty sterile, so it may be that we don’t do much more at this site than take down our main unit all the way and then start work on another site in order to get that earlier date we are after. 

Excavation was enjoyable today. We had good weather for most of the day, a bit cloudy but sunny as well and not too hot. I still managed to get a bit pink in the cheeks though! I keep thinking that the local Colombian archaeologists, botanists, etc must think we are crazy due to the wild banter that comes out of our units. Partly dehydration at times and partly just awesome, crazy personalities, Jen, Evie, and I tend to come up with some interesting jokes, comments, and songs; there are loads of obscure references and shenanigans. Good ol’ fashioned diggin in the dirt fun!

By the time we had finished up our respective units and gotten 30 cm below surface, we were ready to pack up and call it a day in the field. We stopped back at the apartment and headed to the lab to start paperwork and grabbed our laptops so we could check in with the rest of the world while we were at it. Counting the ceramic sherds from a 10 cm slice of soil might not sound that taxing, however, my unit had 699 and Jen’s section had 799!! 

After working in the lab for a bit we grabbed some grub at a delicious little food shack on campus, followed by frozen coffee drinks made with some sort of Colombian Nesquick equivalent, caramel-condensed milk, and of course, coffee. Sounds maybe weird, but was soooo yummy! Called it quits at the lab around 5ish and turned around to head over to Santa Rosa to meet up with some friends doing work there. It was too dark to really take in the sites as we made our way over the mountains to the north, Rio Altun, and over to Santa Rosa, but it was worth it. Although Pereira is nice, Santa Rosa is a really cute town with lots of activity in the main Plaza and is easy to walk around in as well. Our friend Nico has told us that many of the cities in this area have plazas dedicated to Simon Bolivar; going along with this is the Plaza de Bolivar in our own town of Pereira featuring an unclothed and seemingly fleshless Bolivar riding horseback. In Santa Rosa, the statue in the Plaza is a bit more conservative and what one would typically imagine of him on horseback raising a sword in the air. 

We met up with our friends and colleagues for a little rum and beer to start off the evening and then continued on to check out some of the well-known chorizo of the area. Aparrently we had just missed the Festival de Chorizo, so I can only imagine how delicious that must be, but the restaurant we went to was pretty good too. Had my first Colombian beer at dinner tonight, there are a few labels all of which are similar to a Pilsner, but the one I tried was Club Colombia which was quite delicious indeed.

After dinner we stopped over at Nico’s place for some more drinks before heading back to Pereira. Michael, the German archaeologist working in Santa Rosa, treated us all to his homemade aloe vera and honey licour which was interesting....not altogether terrible but had enough of a bite to begin with; it’s sort of dry stuff with a slightly sweet aftertaste that grows on you, but is most certainly an acquired taste. So far Colombia has been all about experiencing new and unexpected flavors; some bad, some realllllll good!! I am finding, though, that they seem to eat a lot of pastries here, cheesy, sweet, or otherwise, so we shall see just how much I weigh by the end of the trip lol : P

Met a lot of cool people at dinner, students working with Nico from another university here in Colombia; Andreas and Susanna. Michael, as I mentioned before, and Fransisco, this very talkative and interesting Spanish archaeologist; Nico and Susanna were telling a funny story about how Colombians have a hard time understanding Fransisco’s spanish and that, while he was trying to ask for directions to Pereira after first arriving here, people had confused his inquiry as a question to join him in his travels. So, while he thought he was simply asking for directions, people kept brushing him of saying ‘no, no thank you’ and promptly turning away from him. 

The night finally came to an end and Michael dropped the three of us back in Pereira. It’s about midnight here, but tomorrow’s another day of work so I think I’ll turn in for bed and catch up with y’all later.