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.

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!