Parque Tematico

Friday morning, Carmen and I woke up early and headed in to downtown Pereira so she could check in with her supervisor for another archaeological project she is working on. She has a lot going on right now in addition to the work at La Mikela. I don’t know how she does it all. I’m starting to really get my bearings around town from walking around with her so much. Her boss’ office is in a building next to the artisan row in town where we went shopping several days ago. 

After checking in with him, we walked to the Megabus station-stop and took a bus out to the Cuba exchange terminal where we grabbed a connecting bus out to the site, which is on the way to ComFamiliar. We exited the bus at a small wooden sign that read, ‘Parque Tematico,’ and continued walking along a long dirt road until we reached a small wooden building. It is the old farmhouse of the property converted in to equipment storage, office space, with rooms still for those who live and work there. Juan David had biked there and met us at the house. We grabbed some shovels and hard hats and continued on our way. The site has bulldozers working and so the hard hats are required on the site, however once we got to where we were digging we ditched them because the bulldozers were on the other side of a hill from us with a river running between us; I don’t think we were at harm there haha.

It was another long walk out to where we met up with Don Diego and another fellow that Carmen works with; they were taking topographical measurements of the area. They walked us over towards the main work area and showed Carmen some anomaly and then we parted ways and Carmen, Juan David, and I walked back toward the main dirt road and then through a large field, down over the Consota River and up a hill to where we were working for the day. We didn’t find much, or anything for that matter; just dug two 50 cm by 50 cm pits, went down 50 cm, photographed them and then filled them right on back up. Really thrilling stuff!! It was a good experience, but I am looking forward to getting back to work at La Mikela in the morning. We have lots to do before the season ends and I would like to get it done!

One thing I have realized so far about archaeologists is that they tend to underestimate the time it will take to finish certain projects, don’t necessarily take in to account interruptions like poor weather, and are overambitious in their plans for the season; all of which almost always leads to being disappointed in accomplishing less than planned. I have a feeling that this project is no exception, unfortunately. So it goes!

arte arte arte

At this point, Carmen has given me so many nicknames I can’t even keep track. It’s hard enough that I have to pay attention to both english and spanish, and respond to any of the following: Thundercat, Flash, Speedy Gonzalez (what can I say, I dig with purpose, like a pro haha), speedy cat, chica picante or spice girl (referring to the fact that I put hot sauce, salsa, peppers on everything- might be my current favorite), jeffa, and on and on....oh, and that I speak Spanish with an Italian accent, but better that than a German one ha!!

Thursday night, Carmen, Luz Marina and I went downtown for an art festival that they have in Pereira the first Thursday of every month. It was pretty interesting to see the work of local people and it’s a cool event because it’s organized by this group of artists themselves. We ran in to Carolina there where she and this other guy were selling little postcard-sized pictures of the region.

We checked out a few of the ‘galleries....’ spaces transformed for the event and then grabbed a slice at the Pizza Factory. We have been to a couple different places here that have surprisingly good eats, the pizza place being one of them. For Jen’s last night we went to this Arabic restaurant for falafel, hummus, and all that good stuff....including a tasty Argentinean malbec; the owner was this cute old man who waited on the tables himself and he was so pleased that we (Americans) had stopped in.

After pizza, we walked around some more and stopped in to some local craft shops, there were different people set up with tables selling jewelry and other things as well. I was beat since we had worked in the day and I had been up since 6, but we stuck around for the traditional Colombian music performance. This crazy violinist in leather pants and a cape went to town, dancing and just going crazy playing that thing. He was really good, though, and it was a fun, theatrical performance that everyone seemed to enjoy. We left after a couple songs, because the three of us were practically falling asleep standing up, said goodbye to Carolina, and grabbed a taxi home.