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.