On my way home...

The trip to Araceibo was a success! I haven't had great access to Internet since we left the hotel, so I haven't had the chance to upload pictures, but I'll do that when I get home.

Right now, I'm at the airport, waiting for my flight to Chicago, via Ft. Lauderdale. Wish I had time to stop and see Debi!

So, I haven't written much recently; we had been busy back-filling, which is really physically exhausting. Also, I've decided to stay in Puerto Rico for an extra week.

Right now, I'm staying in Rio Piedras, a suburb of San Juan where the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) is located. I'm crashing with one of the other students I was digging with. Yesterday I got the chance to explore more of San Juan than I did on Saturday. I saw the other major fort--Castillo San Cristobal and the pier made famous in the movie "Captain Ron."

This afternoon I'm going to pick up a rental car so that we can drive to the Araceibo Observatory for another try tomorrow. Then, on Thursday, to El Yunque, the rainforest near San Juan. I'm going to try to do some horseback riding then, too!

I'll try to get some pics up of these trips and write some more about the excavations, but it's been hard to get wifi access since we left the hotel.

Much love to my readers! I miss you all and will see each of you soon--even if I have to fly to LA or London to do it! :)

Weekend Travels continued

Today we went to another ceremonial center, called Caguana. It has much larger petroglyphs (rock carvings) and more batey (ball courts), as well as what may be a larger plaza (though I'm not convinced).

Then we went to these amazing caverns at Rio Camuy. Instead of describing both of these places in words, I'm just showing the pictures--they're more effective and I'm exhausted! Plus, I need to get up in 8 hours to dig for 8 more hours tomorrow!


This is Iriri, who created women out of androgynous beings:



And here is some of our group, from left:
Angel (checking pictures), Proxy (texting his friends), Hector (who has requested to be called Lisa in this blog, for the sake of confusion), Daniel (I think... hiding behind Hector), Miguel (who never lets us take his picture), Antonio (hidden behind Miguel, Lisa (who we call Lisa Lisa, to distinguish her from the other two Lisas--The Lisa and Lisa the 3rd, and Lisa Hector), and Mayra (who you've seen before).

Here are Lisa Lisa and Carmen, in front of this beautiful seba tree. In Mayan lore, an enormous Seba tree holds up the entire world. I have a picture with it too, but it's on someone else's camera... I'll post it later.








And the caverns...

Weekend Travels

So, the picture above is as close as I got to seeing the Araceibo Observatory this weekend. It was the main project of the weekend--the one thing that I wanted to do. Now, why (one might ask) was this all I saw? The woman who was going to show us the observatory (after regular visiting hours) apparently went to the beach instead.

Then, as a second choice, we stopped in Lares (the town where the independencia movement originated), in part because I wanted to see it, but also because there is this ice cream place there that is famous throughout Puerto Rico. Three guesses if it was open...

I did get to take this picture, which was nice.


On the upside, we had a great drive through the hills of central Puerto Rico, which was fun... though I'm not sure my passengers made it through without getting a little car sick!

I went with Mayra and Isaias (who we all call Proxy, per his request). We had a pretty bad meal at a roadside restaurant (but it was real Puerto Rican food, which I liked). I ordered the food of the gods--my new favorite meal--the canoa. This is a sweet plantain, sliced down the center, like a banana split, filled with ground meat (better not to ask what kind), and topped with melted cheese. It's unbelievable. This one had clearly been sitting around for a while, but I've never been one to worry about food preservation! It had the right ingredients anyway (though the cheese on top looked suspiciously like Kraft...

Here's a picture of Mayra, Proxy and me at the restaurant.

Free time!

So I'm on my way to la playa on our first day off and I just saw an orchard of palm trees! So cool!

Last night we went out in Ponce. We had a really nice dinner at the restaurant at the Ramada (hotel restaurants in Puerto Rico are usually the best available). I had churrasco con chimichurry, which was very yummy. The picture to the right was the dusk sky--our view for dinner.

Then we went to the boardwalk and had some rum and did a little salsa dancing. Then we went back to Ponce and went to this street with three places close to each other--one with a live band, one with salsa music and the last with reggaeton. It was a good night!

Canepas and more

So that's the name of the little sour fruit... They make really great snacks in the middle of a hot afternoon...

I've been getting up every morning at 6 am and doing 15 minutes of yoga, with the sun rise, then making it to breakfast in time for 7 am. I'm loving the heat and humidity here, too much air conditioning is bothering me... I'm begining to wonder what happened to me on the plane that I became a completely different person... :)

We finally got to begin excavating our unit today. Yesterday was all about taking out backfill-- basically random dirt used to fill up a hole that was dug by us in the past. It took a long time, because someone didn't put the plastic down right. There are a couple new people to archaeology and this is my first time reopening a unit, so I said maybe it's a good thing that it was so difficult; now we all know exactly what not to do and why!

We've already uncovered a couple of areas that might be postholes, plus some shell (which I'm excited about, thanks to Prof. McInnis)! It's been painstaking, careful work and I have at least 4 blisters already, but I love it!

Yesterday we were working with a bunch of people, but mainly Hector, Ruhelio, Deb, and Gordon, with some help from Proxy. Today, Gordon got switched out with Maria.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow, as long as my legs will get me out of bed! I have to say, I'm looking forward to the weekend... 6 days in a row is jumping in feet first!

Much love to everyone reading... I miss you!

Arrival

So I've arrived in Puerto Rico! Got in yesterday afternoon and arrived in Ponce around 6 pm. Today we went to the site, Tibes (pronounced tee-bayss in Spanish, but tee-bay in Puerto Rico). :)
I got sick last night, so I've already been to la doctora and a pharmacy... I consider it a prime opportunity to practice a new Spanish vocabulary. Antonio and Lisa were so great-- making sure I was taken care of and felt better as quickly as possible.
After we got to the site, we unloaded all the supplies and got prepared to start digging tomorrow. We also took a tour of the park that the site is in. There was this enormous mango tree, but no mangoes on the ground for us to try. There was a yummy little sour fruit, that I think I had in Honduras, but I can't remembr it's name...
The site itself is really neat. One main, central plaza...
Time to go to dinner--I'll finish later!

Welcome to my blog!

Hello! Thanks for stopping by. I'll be trying to keep this site updated, so that any of my friends, family, co-workers, and frenemies can keep up-to-date on my activities!

The current title of the blog, "Puerto Rico Suave" is courtesy of Micah Ian Smith (thank you!) and refers to my current adventure... digging in Puerto Rico!

I will be doing fieldwork at the ancient ceremonial center of Tibes, which is located in south central Puerto Rico, just north of Ponce (the second largest city on the island), about 8 km inland. This site was occupied (we think) from about AD 300 - 1200, by pre-Taino people. Two cultures (probably composed of one group of people over time) were present at the site: the Cedrosan Saladoid (AD 300-600) and the Elenan Ostionoid (AD 600-1200).

That's all for now. I'll be leaving on Sunday morning, 12 July 2009!