Weather

The last several days have been insanely hot. Working in a swamp like forest makes it even worse by raising the humidity. It has been about 90-95 degrees with nearly 100% humidity. The day of rain we got a week or so ago was the last time it rained here. The farm house next to where we work ran out of water today and was digging holes hoping to find more. This is very unusual for this time of year where daily rains are common. It is sad to see people running out of clean water; it is something I have never seen firsthand. Maybe there will be rain fall tonight, but it seems like it is going to be another hot night. The image of the farmer and his sons and daughters walking around with shovels in hand digging holes to no avail is an image that will stick in my mind for a very long time.

Update:
Still no rain. We have started rationing our water. We now take showers in the ocean and only flush toilets when we have to. We have been bringing the farm family 5 gallons of drinking water for the last two days. 5 gallons for their whole house is nowhere near enough, but it is all me can spare. The weather today looks like there will be some rain in it. It needs to rain for about a week straight for water levels to come back near normal.

Excavation update

Excavations have been underway here for about 2 weeks now. We have uncovered several ceramic pieces, some ceramic adornments (mostly animal in appearance), and a few lithics (stone tools and fragments). No bones have yet to be uncovered. At this rate it doesn’t look like we will uncover any tombs or graves. I spend most of the time excavating the units and sifting through the dirt we remove. The dirt is a very dense clay which make sifting through it very difficult and usually ends up with us doing it all by hand. I wish I had more exciting new to report but it has been a pretty boring and uneventful dig up to this point. I am hopeful that that will change, but I don’t know how realistic that hope is.

More stuff coming!

Sorry there have not been a lot of posts to this. I am backlogged with my writings. I promise to upload several more next weekend that will better describe what I have been up to in the field and the archaeology we have been uncovering. I finally got the photos uploaded to Facebook so enjoy some of those.

Third World Living

Bocas del Toro offers you a unique insight into third world living. The contradiction between the tourist hotels and the homes where the workers live is profound. Things we take for granted are rare commodities here. Things like electricity and water are costly. For example, we have to take military style showers. That means, turn water on (only cold water as there is no water heater), get wet, turn water off, soap up, turn water on, rinse off, turn water off. We have to do this because the amount of water we have is dependent upon the amount of rain we receive. There is one water line that runs from town to the other end of the island where we are. Our house is equipped with a large water tank to help minimize the effect a prolonged dry spell would have. As for electricity, we have none. There is a gasoline generator that we turn on after dark for about 4 hours. During this time we will charge our equipment, our cameras, and our computers. We take turns charging personal items as there are a very limited number of plugs. This generator also can power some bright overhead lights in the lab so we can do lab work in the evening. There is a small solar panel the charges two batteries that power the water pump, allowing us to have running water through the day. However, this is unreliable as there are days where it will be raining for multiple days and thus no sun. When that happens we must use the generator to run the pump and charge the batteries.
Bocas town has more resources then we do on this side of the island. There are several bars and hotels that provide for an ever growing tourism industry. There are two internet cafes in town; both have a limited number of old computers making it difficult to work on them. There is one place with wireless internet and it is the stereotypical American hangout bar (one of the few places where English is readily spoken).
Living here really points out the difference between necessity and luxury. I can see the appeal of living here. This detachment from reality is very inviting. I do miss the luxuries back home, but life here isn’t bad (I am typing this on my laptop while sitting on the private beach (aka the backyard) while drinking a beer).

Rain!

Holy crap it can rain here. It has yet to really rain since I have been here. In fact it hasn’t rained in several weeks here, which is very in usual. That all changed last night. A storm has blown in and it brought with it a ton of rain. I was outside fixing some screens we use for sifting the dirt when it started to rain. Within a few minutes it was raining so hard and loud that I could no longer hear the generator that powers the house. I don’t think I have ever seen so much water fall from the sky. That storm continued into the morning. Thankfully, the rain made the night cool and I actually wasn’t sweating in my sleep. It’s nice not to wake up all sweaty for a change.

First days

Arrived at Bocas del Toro this afternoon. I flew over with three other people from the program. One I knew, the other two I didn’t. The flight from the mainland took an hour. Tom and Mike met us at the airport once we arrived. We all got into a van and drove towards our house. We drove through Bocas town. There were a couple of restaurants and tourist things, not much else. We stopped at a store to purchase rubber knee-high boots (we will be wearing those everywhere for mud and to protect from snakes). Once we got out of town the road became a mix of dirt and some half-paved, potholed remains of a road. The trip was about 45 minutes or so. The house where we are staying is owned by one of the local families. It is a stilted house with a few rooms, small kitchen, and two bathrooms. The other students had arrived in the morning and were already settled in. Once we settled in we headed to the restaurant, owned by the same family as the house, for dinner. This is where we will be eating 3 meals a day. The food is amazing! Jauni is a great cook. She makes a lot of locally grown tropical fruits, fresh fish (caught by her husband in the morning), and these French fry- type things made from bananas. After dinner we headed to the house where Tom was staying for a fireworks show, this being the 4^th of July and all. Tom did not just buy fireworks, he bought huge rockets! Seriously, think road runner and coyote style ACME rockets. It ended up being one hell of a show. No injuries to report and no structure fires, though it did seem like they were trying for one of those two. It was hard to sleep that night, the heat and humidity really don’t subside after dark.

The following day after breakfast we headed out on a nature hike to Starfish Cove. This hike took us along the beach and through the mangrove swamp. Bocas has a very interesting and incredibly complex ecosystem that keeps everything growing and living in harmony. Along the way we encountered countless crabs, beautiful birds, and a plethora of brightly colored bugs. Once we got to Starfish Cove we were given a couple of hours to explore. We all headed out to the reef to look at the huge starfish for which this cove is named. I have never seen so many starfish! They averaged about a foot in with and were an orangeish-yellow. I also encountered many fish on the reef including tangs and snappers. That afternoon we went on another hike, this time into the jungle. The jungle is absolutely amazing. Everything is alive. We saw trails of leafcutter ants hauling their loads back to their nests, played with a poison dart frog, heard howler monkeys and saw more beautiful birds. That night were all relaxed and watched a movie together. Everyone here is very cool and we all get along well. Sadly one student was suffering from dehydration and was recovering most of the night. She is quite a large girl and the hike through the forest was too much for here. The temperature is around 85 degrees with about 90-95% humidity. I have been drinking several liters of water a day and it’s barely enough, but I am doing ok with the weather. I slept better that night.

Tuesday morning we headed out to Sitio Drago, the primary archaeological site located on this island. It happens to be across the street from our house, about 50m on the other side of the road. Tom showed us where he has been working for the last 6 years and where the human remains that I have been working on came from. We will not be working at this site this year as there is a new law in place that effects land titling and the owners of the land have asked that we do not dig on their land until the politics have settled down. We headed back to the restaurant for lunch and afterwards we stayed to watch the world cup semifinal game between the Netherlands and Uruguay. After the game we had the afternoon off to do as we pleased. Most of us headed back to the house, put on our bathing suits and jumped in the water. It was a perfect day so snorkeling. I saw a ton of fish on the reef. On the walk back a vine snake crossed the road in front of me. I went back to get Tom and together we caught the snake. It was about 1 meter long, thin and brown in color. It looks just like a vine, hence its name. Sadly, I did not have my camera on me when we caught it so I don’t have a picture. That night we all relaxed back at the house.

Wednesday we set up the field lab in the morning. Got supplies ready for when we begin excavations on Thursday. After lunch and the soccer match, we went out to Sitio Teca, another known archaeological site located in a teak plantation in the interior of the island. We hiked all throughout the teak forest visiting several sites and located a few large bolder mano and mattates (large flat stones used for grinding and food preparation). The hike through the forest was very hot and humid and by the end of the day we were all exhausted. There is so much archaeology everywhere in this plantation. It is sad that this plantation had to clear a lot of the natural forest in order to provide teak to the upper classes in foreign countries. Almost nothing other than the teak grows in the forest here as the leaves from the teak tree are highly acidic and when they fall turn the soil acidic. Few plants can grow in this acidic soil. Almost no animal are here except for the cattle that are raised by the nearby farm. Occasionally you will see a vulture or a hawk flying overhead. While in the field we were shown where we will be digging this year. There are several different locations in the teak forest, most near the west end, but some a few kilometers east. That night we stayed late at the restaurant and had a small lecture by Tom before returning home. We all sat in the living area and had a few beers while talking for a bit before heading to bed.

Estoy en Panama

So I made it to Panama City today. Flights weren't too bad at all. Had a delay in Mexico City for about an hour, we were just sitting on the plane at the gate. I didn't sleep much at all. Got a little bit of reading done. Once I arrived at the airport in Panama, I was picked up by a driver and taken to the hostel I am currently at. It is hot here! The humidity really takes a toll on you right away. Taxi drivers in this country are crazy. The roads have lanes, but they don't mean anything, just guidelines I guess. I don't know the plan for tomorrow. I fly to the island where I will be working for the next five weeks in the afternoon. We will see what awaits me there.

The night before

I think everything is finally done. I have finished packing; hope I didn't forget anything. I will be leaving LAX at 6:45AM tomorrow, July 3. I will be landing in Panama City, Panama at 6:50PM (local time). I will be staying the night in a hostel near the airport. I leave Panama City, Panama the following day in the late afternoon. I will arrive on Bocas del Toro one hour later. I will try to keep this blog up to date as much as possible with stories and pictures for you all to enjoy. See you all in a month!