(Day 52) Welcome Back, Stranger

I drifted in and out of consciousness, flapping my eyes lazily at the bunk above me. My eyebrows knotted in confusion as that fact registered. There was a bunk... floating above me. I wrestled with this for awhile, trying to keep afloat long enough to tell if this was a dream thought, but I slipped back to sleep, my face uncreasing as I went.

I snapped back to the sound of a slip-thump, the noise of Robert vaulting off the top bunk next to mine. My mind geared back up, reluctantly, reminding me that I was in Lima, that I spent the early morning on an overnight bus, that I had not brushed my teeth since I left Huaraz. Yecchh, I thought, and rolled over, making a face at the black taste in my mouth. A rustling sound came from behind my head, and I could tell Robert was rifling through his things. “Is it time for breakfast?” I asked, pawing numbly at my computer’s latch to get the time. “Yeah,” he answered, “I mean, we have a half-hour until the girls’ll be ready, but almost.” I smacked my lips, and rolled off my bed into my sandals, which lay warmly on the carpet. After a quick session with my toothbrush, which reminded my gums that I haven’t flossed since I left the States, I ducked back onto my bunk, and jotted a note to cover the last few weeks.

I was just wrapping up when Robert vaulted down again, and tossed his guidebook back up on his cover. Caro’s head poked around the corner of our door, her dark wet hair hanging limply across the doorjamb. “Ready for Lima?” she asked, eyebrows raised. I nodded, and slipped my computer back into its case. With a soft noise, like toothpicks snapping, the tumbler clicked, and we slipped off into the late Lima morning.

*

When Robinson Crusoe (and his man Friday, and his parrot) were finally picked up by Spanish traders, what do you suppose he asked for? Fine Madiera port wine? A silk shirt? A hot bath? He had been out of touch for almost longer than he could stand, but I wonder if his sudden re-introduction to everything a pound could buy was startling; could coming home be stranger than leaving?

We certainly weren’t stranded on the Gold Coast, but we were a bit out of touch. We’d gotten used to cold showers and scrounging for toilet paper without much complaint -- we were, after all, on a sort of vacation. And with funding, at that. Still, the sharp snap between Chavin and Lima was impossible to ignore. It was a breakfast when we started to [dare I say the phrase?] culture shock.

*

Stephanie, our lovely grad student and temporary shepherd, had been in Lima before. Not much of a shock, seeing as she’s dug in Peru more times than I’ve flown on a plane. Bantam and famished, she led our group of gawking gringos up the concrete-studded strip to her favorite breakfast joint. We craned our necks about; the road was spangled with things we tied so strongly to home. What are McDonalds, and traffic lights, and Porsches doing here? Across from a gas station (which, by the way, sold Shell fuel) was the San Antonio restaurant.

Already mildly confused, we were sunk even deeper by the restaurant. The elegantly stuccoed building held a tight cluster of stylish wicker and steel chairs at the entrance, strewn across a marble patio. In clusters of three, smart-looking businessmen and -women leaned over double-foam half-caff machiattos, laughing and waving their jewelry expressively. Cell phones twittered quietly from Coach and Vuitton purses. After two months of being the de facto rural royalty, we were outclassed. And worse: underdressed.

We slid into a table a bit conspicuously, sneaking looks at the tables around us. The café was definitely upscale, and the clientele all probably worked day-jobs at their own desks. Every lady was zipped into something leather or linen, and the men all wore tailored suits. Their faces were pale enough to pass for white, and if you let the popping chatter wash against your ears, it could be English, spoken in a rush. Home away from home.

A waiter (a real waiter!) stepped snappily to our table, pen ready. We placed orders in Spanish, out of habit, but he spoke English just as fluidly. Though I ached all over for a milkshake, I kept myself in-budget, and got an empanada and an alfajore. The food came on porcelain, chased in gilt, and the silverware had the authoritative girth and edge of pure steel. We giggled embarrassingly over our printed (printed!) receipt, and, for one of the first times, left a tip.

*

After breakfast we had another walk about Miraflores (our neighborhood). Our destination, according to Stephanie, was some mall by the seaside cliffs, Larcomar, but we could have walked anywhere and been just as happy. The wide streets were well-paved, and bordered in familiar checker-board sidewalks. Churches stood in the noon sun, framed by gently waving palms. People walked dogs in studded collars along the road, yapping into cell phones and tugging at leashes. Parks bloomed between high-rises, and municipality information-givers and money-changers stood helpfully on every corner.

The west-coasters in the group greeted the Pacific like a long-lost friend, gibbering excitedly about the long foggy coast. Each talked about the last time they had been to their beaches, and Becca clutched at the rail, caught up with this shadow of her Big Sur. As we looked down from the park on whose cliff we stood, we saw a long coastal highway snaking off up the coast, threaded with cars and taxis. Across the road and on the beach, you could just make out a game of soccer being played on a concrete court, pitched on the rough, black-pebbled beach.

The mall was another five minutes along the cliff, an outdoor behemoth that cut into the top of cliff. What else can we say? There were escalators, glass store-fronts, fast food, and a movie theater. There were steakhouses and KFCs and Billabong sweatshirts and it was as though we never left California. People paid in dollars for overpriced trinkets, clutching at their Starbucks. That Starbucks, by the way, had only one change to the menu -- the addition of the manjar blanco frappuccino.

*

We made plans to meet our old amigos, the Peruvian students, for lunch. After an astonishingly cheap taxi ride clear across Lima (and, by the way, the U.S. could do well with 50¢ taxis), we were dumped at an imposing gate that read, in all caps, “PONTIFICA UNIVERSIDAD CATOLICA DE LIMA.” Our lack of student I.D.s kept us from exploring the grounds, so we squatted at the entrance, waiting for our friends to come.

What ensued was the best people watching you can do (outside of an American theme park). As lunch hour broke over the campus, the entire student body traipsed out the gate to get lunch. We must have watched three thousand people come through the gate, three or four at a time. Though we were a hemisphere from home, these were our people; you knew from their walk and the swoop in their voices where they stood. There were stoners and slackers and curve-breakers and nerds and punk girls and jock dudes and outcasts and loners and everyone was so deliciously identifiable, deliciously knowable, that I couldn’t help but smile.



After a joyful reunion, full of hugging, and smiles, and rapid updates on how little work we had actually done in Chavín, we piled into cabs for lunch. With Marcela and Richie’s Peruvian Spanish riding shotgun, the drivers took us to a ceviche restaurant, tucked away down a back street. Ceviche, it turned out, is like Peruvian sushi: raw fish with interesting (or unspeakable) things done to it, to make it palatable. We chowed down on slices of I-don’t-ever-want-to-know-what, which usually tasted more like limes than slices of recently deceased wet thing. Most of the Americans ended up fishing some rice from Stephanie’s plate.

*

We left the afternoon in the Peruvian students’ capable hands. As strangers in a strange land, we hadn’t the slightest idea (aside from the dubious suggestions of our guidebooks) what to do for fun. Marcela, ever the eager archaeologist, suggested we visit a site in Lima (almost downtown) she had worked at for a summer. After multiple confirmations that the pyramid, Huaca, was actually in the city somewhere, we began a long walk to its gate.

I once went to Chichen Itza, in Valladolid, Mexico. Truthfully, I’ve been there twice. Both times, the sheer craftsmanship and magnitude of the construction put it easily in the same class as similar buildings in Giza; that is: pyramid. The pictures you take at both places can ill-compare to the scope of the structures, and are always unforgiving in your photo albums later. The only way I can describe Huaca, then, is that the pictures I took were overly generous. The place was an ancient, boring, dump.



I mean, it was sort of impressive as a technical feat. The mound (and that’s generous, too) is composed of baked clay bricks, stacked upon each other in seven large layers, and is now presided over by cranky quasi-English speaking tour guides. While they showcase the squalid splendor that is Huaca, noisy American tourists jostle to hear. One morbidly overweight girl, in a salmon shirt that wasn’t kind to her porky, pale features -- tapped me on the shoulder. I spun, surprised that she had broken the unspoken don’t-talk-to-strangers-overseas rule. “Speak English?” she demanded, popping her gum after the question mark. In as a disgruntled voice as I could muster, I said, “Mmm... yes.” “Great,” she said, popping her gum and thrusting a camera into my chest, “take our picture.”

She smiled and flounced back to her group of similarly-built McDonalds munchers, who linked flabby arms and squeezed out a smile for my [intentionally] mis-timed shot. The girl rolled over to seize her camera and returned to the safety of her fellow Americans. “I gotta tell you, Beth,” one of the mother hens said, in a thick country drawl, “you are doing so well” (she spent several seconds on ‘well’) “with this bein’ your first time outta Montana. I mean, your first air-plane (said as two syllables), and now talking to the foreigners...” she said, tilting her chins wobbily at me and beaming unabashedly. The girl from Montana blossomed under the praise.

*

We took a cab to Richie’s place. Students don’t live on his campus, he shares an apartment with his Dad downtown. With his Dad on a business trip, we had the run of the place, and shared a pizza and some pisco. At some point, Marcela corralled us all into a taxi to take us to a dance club. Incredibly tired by our long day (we hadn’t really slept since Huaraz), and not a little affected by libation, Robert and I broke off dancing early to lounge at a table. Above, on the wall, a poster some 3 yards long, thumbnail cut-out of pop culture icons teemed colorfully. We made a game of it -- good old I-Spy, played with Marilyn Monroe and Mr. Miyaki and the Millenium Falcon.

Around us, the young people of Lima, drunk off their asses, writhed in one familiar motion, bumping and grinding and sweating and thumping and throwing their heads back and screaming the words to an American song. “Twenty-twenty, twenty-four hours to go...” the Uggs and the polos yelled to the ceiling, “I want to be sedated. Nothing to see, nowhere to go... I want to be sedated.” We tried to sing along, but they knew our words better than we did.

The Last Note (almost)

In looking over the notes I've been able to squeeze out of my fingers, I am a little guilty. For the first month, I'm covered pretty well. If a day doesn't have a note, it's for an excellent reason; otherwise, I’ve left a pretty sweet paper trail. For the second half of my little adventure, however, there is nothing. Bupkiss. Nada, as they say here.

So what can I say about a month's worth of excavations? Jesus, when I let my mind reel that all back, it's as though I'm going over a year's worth of memories. Each day was cut from the same colorful cloth, woven from the same characters, and snipped promptly around 10 P.M. Still, though, they were different as all of our days are. A lot of it is on the shadowy edge of my mind, about to tip over into “lost” forever.

I never told you, for instance, that the Rocas crew found gold underground. Technically, we weren't supposed to tell anyone (the natives might get restless), but I trust you. It wasn’t much, maybe $40 in beaten bits, but it certainly threw the canal into the limelight. That popularity continued as more interesting things stumbled over themselves in their rush to get out. Chavín-era pottery, more gold bits, a whole skull... it all appeared in that next week, the first of August. The North Atrium, the hill just north of the Circular Plaza, was gradually edged out of consciousness.

That’s not to say we weren’t busy ourselves. As we scampered over our side of the Atrium, Beth and I worried at the hill mercilessly, until [literally] tons of dirt were carried away in rusty, cracked buckets. We had help: Becca, Robert, Aimee, Juliet (before she left), Marcela, and the workers. Together, we stacked up a hip-high pile of camelid bones, coarse pottery sherds, and informal hammer-stones. We uncovered a maze of walls, which intersected at demented angles in coarse courses of stone. We didn’t come down on a house, or even an ancient outhouse. Instead, it appeared to be some sort of water-control terracing system. Whoopee.
As time went on, the West Atrium (our side) did develop a bit of an inferiority complex. Dr. John stopped visiting, and focused mainly on Rocas. We weren’t featured in dinner announcements anymore. And, perhaps worst of all, Rosa replaced Stephanie as supervisor, and though she meant well, her unrelenting and uncompromising overview was... stifling. We really labored, and came to tire of the achy backs, knees, hands -- all of our bits that spent eight hours a day moving ancient garbage (quite literally).

There was drama, of course. Caro and Marcus got together, after a lot of whispering. The Peruvian students left, to a lot of fanfare and loud music. One of the kittens died. I rebooked my travel plans, and, at a bit of personal cost, am going to Macchu Picchu. We had a bonfire in a random field, climbed on roofs, attended a freaky travelling circus (stories to follow), and one of us (Bodie) had to escape from a graveyard [after being locked in]. More and more, we began to talk about northern things -- American football, cable T.V., continuous hot water, and, most of all, Stanford. When class registration opened, talk kept burbling about that other place with red tile roofs, where are friends would be... so soon, but so far. Most of us got cabin fever thousands of miles from home.

That’s not to say we didn’t love it all. Though we didn’t get to do it, we did watch Rocas pull skeleton after skeleton from the entrance to Rocas. John kept rhapsodizing about what we were finding, inventing new theories every day at dinner. Was the Atrium the slum-town after Chavin? That would explain the poor building structure... Was Rocas used as a ceremonial flush-toilet; carrying away smashed drinking vessels? What did the burials mean? As time went on, there was a sense of growing purpose -- a well-oiled digging machine was crunching away. We could rub a bit of dirt with a thumb and tell if it had pottery, burnt clay, bone, slate, granite tools, or nothing at all. We grew a great sixth sense for lithics, and came to enjoy our nights together in the lab. Store owners called us by name, we adopted stray dogs, and had favorite meals the señora would fix for us. Home, unexpectedly, found us.

*
I may have mentioned that we were supposed to keep field notebooks. I wish these notes counted, but I kept one all the same. We noted oddities of the excavation, thoughts on material, or just lists of favorite things. We hand them over to John at the end, as little scrapbooks to help him stitch together the season back at school. They also serve as miniature soapboxes, and let him know what we’re thinking. I spent my last page on a small list of my own: Things I Loved / Things I Didn’t.

So what did I enjoy in Chavín, now that it’s over? The people were great, the town was safe, my bed was warm. All of my expenses, or at least most, were covered by Stanford. My Spanish improved [marginally]. I learned to count to ten in Quechua. I got a pretty decent primer in archaeology, lithics, and stratigraphy. I can use a theodolite. Oh, and I got to clean a skull with Q-tips, and note the cause of death. Yoric, much?

What could have been better? The dig wasn’t really well run... I mean, I don’t have much of a handle on how they usually go, but I did do Scouts. You sort of wince a bit when a leader over-compensates, and comes down hard with a series of orders (without explanation). Supervision wavered hugely, and sensitivity was a tad scarce. We were often told to ignore something and continue because “this unit isn’t that important,” or that we just had to “really just get this coarse pottery out of here.” Stephanie buckled a bit under the pressure of her PhD advisor’s stare; John kept hounding her to do better. There were a few awkward power struggles as Rosa took over the West Atrium. Oh well, that’s all done now.

*



We said goodbye on Wednesday, August 20th. We had been in Chavin for fifty-one days, or just over seven weeks. We took picture after picture with the cooks, the señora, and the Ricks. Everything we had was swept into bulging suitcases, and stood dustily in the courtyard, awaiting a colectivo. We waited idly, tracing loose circles on the flagstones with our toes. Leaving was not as hard as we expected; two months had dulled the sharp pain of a split. It was time.

A van pulled up, and as we began to pile in, haggling over the price, rain fell from the clear blue sky. We pressed our palms against the fogging glass as we pulled away, and mouthed “Adios” to friends on the street and in the plaza. They waved back as we bounced away, craning their necks to say goodbye to the latest batch of gringos.

Did I leave anything behind? Yes. I gave my kneepads to Pablo, the kindest worker. I gave a squishy toy to the toddler who plays in the gutter outside our hotel, and likes to say “Hola!” when we go to the site. May he not choke on it. I gave a Connect Four game to the girl who sometimes runs the corner store when she gets home from elementary school. The buttons are in English.

In the room, I left: one pencil eraser, still wrapped, two mechanical pencils, a 10¢ centimo coin, and somewhere on the right side of the room, the remote that controls my computer. None of this mattered; I was going home.

*
I’m going to make a few pit-stops, before I go. I booked a flight to Cuzco, home of Macchu Picchu and all that jazz. All in all, my tour around the rest of Peru should take only a week, and will be ridiculously speedy compared to my vegetation in the highlands. Don’t worry about me, if you’re prone to that sort of thing -- I’m now on the broad and safe tourist path.

Speaking of me, I am, right now, sitting on an overstuffed mattress in Lima. We just checked into our hostal after an all-night bus ride. Robert says we need to bounce -- it’s nearly breakfast time. He’s right, of course. The last adventure begins today.

*
One last thing -- I’ll write when I can. So this may be the last note. Who knows when wireless will appear?

(Day 33, 34) Huaraz, Ho!

It is hard to hide from the world, I think. Every foggy corner I visit always has some smiling local who will gladly relieve me of my savings in exchange for 110 volts and a fuzzy phone line through which you can faintly hear the next conversation over. Even though our motley crew filtered into Peru on an archaeological mission, concerned primarily with things burnished, not beeping, we've found ourselves drawn irresistibly toward the cities. I do not blame us; where else can you find broadband, movies, and peanut butter?

It will come as little surprise, then, that our 33rd day in Peru (time flies, huh?) found us wedging ourselves in the little white colectivo station wagon. We wiggled uncomfortably into place, trusting to iPod earbuds to keep us distracted long enough from noticing the seats smelled of unwashed old person and chickens. Well -- that was the case for most people. I sat shotgun.

The landscape to Huaraz has become familiar-ish. We've driven there twice, and hiked the length once. The checkered quilt of farmland faded into a wide veldt of green and gold grasses, a high steppe slit only by the long ribbon of road. To cross the peaks, we ducked into a tunnel, and switchbacked down long furrows watching political signs painted into the hillside flash by in lurid colors. Funny thing: even though its all very breathtaking, even though I would be crazy to ignore it, it's become sort of commonplace. We almost live here, in these high plains. No one bothered to take pictures.

As we neared Huaraz, we crossed a bridge which was clearly marked “Under Construction, Don't Use.” Unfazed, our driver picked his way over the rotten boards. I only really realized we were in danger when the car seized and bucked as a board behind us gave way. With grinding, grasping sounds, the tires pulled us over the gap and on to terra firma. The car behind us was not so lucky.

It was filled with the other batch of gringos, and the driver had no time to react. As he surged forward in our tracks, the front of the colectivo dropped into the gap, and swung dangerously over the river. There was a splintering noise as the car clawed backwards in reverse. It was to no avail. The car was stuck some thirty feet over the river, with six or so of our friends looking out alarmedly from the windows.

As the drivers of both cars got out, and began to maneuver a jack under the wheels, a crowd began to gather. From both directions, vans and cars piled up, and disgorged brightly dressed natives, who formed a polite press at the end of the bridge. Suggestions were yelled in Spanish and Quechua alike. Some cars began to tire of the jam, and decided to take manners in their own hands. A few trucks slewed around the bridge to a shallow bit in the river. In a snarling mess of pebbles and engine noises, they charged across. I was a bit shocked; I haven't seen a river fording since Oregon Trail.

One old Ford (the irony is killer, here) didn't quite make it out of the shallows. It wallowed in the deepest cleft of the river, rocking back and forth with a muffled watery sound like a nylon strap tightening. The driver slung his arm out the window, laying it along the deeply pitted door, and looked back at the line forming behind him. Two tractor trailers sat on the bank, glowering, and in front of him, a few colectivo drivers were sounding their horns mournfully.
Back on the bridge, a few well placed jacks and heaves from bystanders got our friends onto the next section of bridge safely. With a smooth purr, we motored off, each driver as serene as if they did this all the time. And who knows? They might.

*
This time, we knew just where to direct the cabs. We zipped straight to our hostal and slipped inside. The señora, whose kindly bulk filled the white wrought-iron doorway, informed us she had room only for the girls. The menfolk would have to stay down the road a bit with a friend of hers. Sketchy? We thought so, too.

It turned out to be more than fine. Our room was big enough to swing a cat in, if you're into that sort of thing, and featured four beds for the three of us: Bodie, Robert, and me. Also, the price was right, so to speak, at twelve soles per night. We handed over the leathery bills, they tossed us the keys, and we swooped out the front door. We had a date to keep with the six lovely ladies, and the renowned burger at La Brasa Roja.

If you remember the last time I was in Huaraz (that’s probably asking a bit much, actually...) we had our evening tucker at the aforementioned Peruvian rotisserie -- La Brasa Roja. I enjoyed, solo, an embarrassingly replete burger. I think I called it something like “an improbable confection,” and with good reason. Each meal is probably responsible for the death of several farm animals, and packs enough calories for a year’s hibernation. I talked of it shamelessly after my first encounter, and swayed a good chunk of our group to put it in their plans for the future. So, as you would expect, we took great pleasure in placing the same order, “El Brasa Roja, por favor” some fifteen times over. It was greasy smiles all around.

Our dinner bone was connected to our dessert bone, so as soon as we rolled ourselves from our chairs and right into the streets, eyes scanning for signs that declared sweets. How many stops did we make to sate everyone’s little cravings? I can’t remember. There was manjar blanco ice cream (the ingredients of which, I think, are only milk and sugar... literally), alfahores from a street vendor, and a sinful treat called “el pañuelo” -- a thin pastry coating on a puddle of the caramel-y manjar blanco.



*
It’s after gastronomical adventures like that that I feel for coma patients. After we dragged ourselves back to the hostal, the full caloric load hit our systems, and voluntary control of our muscles was gone faster than our appetizers. As our bodies grumbled and sorted through the carnage of the early evening, we moaned and palmed our distended stomachs. Eventually, for lack of something to do, I popped my computer open and searched the word “game.” That was how I discovered I owned a computerized Chess game.

It comes complete with verbal command support, like most Mac things. Nearly passed out, a meter away, I issued commands to “Dexter,” though a quick fiddle with a setting let me call it more interesting things. “Hey, Robert, pawn F2 to F3!” or, once Robert suggested it, various cursewords. That was amusing.

Robert watched me fumble my way through half of a game (I am no Napoleon), saying nothing as I moved ever closer to ‘check.’ When I quietly ordered Dexter (my computer’s proper name) to cut my losses and start a new game, Robert wanted in. And so it came to pass (who am I, Moses?) that Robert and I played verbal chess.

In the awkward, stilted syntax that Dexter demands, we slid our pieces around the board. Now and again, he would mishear, and send our bishop to A2, not E2... putting us in a very awkward situation. There was always a certain triumph in commanding Dexter to assassinate an unguarded piece. Languorous though we were, our voices were shot through with rampant glee when we ordered things like “Dexter, pawn F6 takes queen G7!” Not a few times did I think our Stanford was showing.

*
We started the party circuit around nine, I think. X-treme Bar, that perennial den of haggard backpackers and expats, was already thumping away down the street. With a communal sigh, we slipped inside. At the far end of the polished wood bar, two Europeans with accents as bedraggled as their hair talked in some language that required more grunting than I thought fun to listen to. The barman, a stoic man who slicked his hair straight back, cleaned some glasses absently with a rag. Though the samba music was blasting loud enough that we had to lean in to place our orders, the whole scene would have fit in fine at a stamp convention, old folks’ home, or RV fair. It was that exciting.

Beth and I treated ourselves to “Coco Locos” -- my excellent choice, by the way. They tasted a lot like coconut / mango juice, and did not taste anything like alcohol. This led to more Coco Locos, until Beth and I were leaning into each other and screaming things we usually would not in a deserted bar. Well, me not so much... but Beth was really off her rocker at drink number two.

We passed the time with awkward confessions, darts, and giant Jenga. I still remain unconvinced that darts is a fun thing to do with your time, unless of course, you are drunk. If you’re a bit sozzled, you’re just constantly pleasantly surprised that your hand and brain are still getting along well enough to send the dart to its addressee. Giant Jenga, of course, is the best party game I’ve ever seen. Especially for Stanford students. Everyone remembers they used to like Legos, and becomes a temporary architect. Maybe because we had fuzzy fingers; maybe because we’ve never actually taken engineering classes -- either way, the buildings eventually teetered and fell. As they did, everyone’s hands would shoot up from the couches, and reddened faces would yell “Jengaaaaaaa!” It was most embarrassing when the offender was sober.

*
Somebody floated the notion that we were bored. This seemed to stick with a lot of us, and we had a[n unsteady] look around. The party was just us, and showed no signs of picking up -- even from the two grumbling Teutonics in the corner. Guidebooks suggested that if we were going to blow the joint, there were only a few places to go. By some referendum, we picked “Tambo,” and corralled the troops into the long walk to the club.

It was cold outside, but we did not feel it much. Alcohol does that. With Bodie forging ahead, a mite unsteadily, we navigated the unsure seas across Huaraz. A dozen or so cross-streets later, we wobbled in front of what appeared to be a recently remodeled Mayan Temple. The concrete was distressed fetchingly so that the walls looked ancient, and a deity of unknown origin glowered down, huge and menacing, from over the doorway. We climbed a long, vomit-yellow stair to reach the club floor.

All of Huaraz was there. Everywhere, Western clothes, haircuts, and cell phones. It was almost a warp back to the States. Of course, it was still Peruvian -- most people looked distinctly Incan, and judging from the pleasantly puzzled looks of the dancers, the music was too loud and Latin to make sense to anyone. There was more overpaying for fermented liquids, and we took to the dance floor. As a conspicuously large island of white, we got our awkward on for a solid thirty minutes. At one point, a bit laughably, Bodie & Robert went to go ask some muchachas to dance; they had heard anyone with an American passport is never rejected. Turns out, they heard wrong.

*
When we finally broke camp, we were convinced (it wasn’t difficult at this point) to visit Vagamundo. Bodie swore up and down that his guidebook recommended its quiet atmosphere over anything else in Huaraz. It was supposed to serve food and liquor, and though I was not interested in imbibing anything else, spaghetti sounded like a fantastic idea. When we got to the dilapidated establishment, an unsteady looking red building in a strange back alley, we brushed the plastic gate aside and sank gratefully into the thick leather chairs in the lobby.
A mysterious man with too much cologne set down free drinks on the table before us, nearly shouting “despiertense!” (“wake up!”). We cast hazy eyes about, and polled the group. People who hadn’t succumbed to sleep in the leather depths were jonesing for their hostal in a big way. After a series of smiles to the overly scented man, we took our leave, trooping out into the late, late night. We walked the girls home, then retired ourselves. Sleep came quickly.

~*~=~*~
We had a lovely brunch at the California Cafe the next day. As the name promised, it fairly reeked of West Coast, and was owned by a man who dressed only in sunglasses and black. Proper pancakes, omelettes, and crepes were on the menu -- in English!!! We enjoyed the taste of home immensely, and lounged on the couches in a homesick stupor for a couple hours, content to browse the library on the other wall and take advantage of the free broadband. Facebook, normal Gmail, YouTube -- suddenly as available as if we never left. I checked the stats on my blog. Harrumph -- I’m still a lone voice in the wilderness.

I took the rest of the morning to call my airline, and arrange for a later flight home. Endless wooing b my roommate had gotten me to cave in. I am, as of now, going to join him for a trip to Macchu Picchu. After an intricate “...press ‘1’ if you’re a human being...” sort of system, I got a man named Raul to change my ticket, for the low, low price of $500. This Macchu Picchu thing better be worth it.

*
After a quick lunch at a pizza place, we got word that bus tickets back to Chavin were sold out. To make it back, we’d have to take taxis. Everyone wore their grumpy face; this meant more soles disappearing from our pockets. A good deal more.

At the taxi depot, we packed ourselves into three colectivos, and were all set to go when the driver started making conditions. As the two other cars sped off into the sunset, we had a long argument with the driver about whether we should allow his uncle to come along on our laps. In the end, we had no choice, and Becca got to share the trunk with a wizened fellow who smelled distinctly of green onions.

Robert stole my iPod for the ride back, so I was left reading Good Poems, by Garrison Keillor. As we descended into Chavin, I read John Updike’s moving tribute to his car-clipped dog -- “Good Dog.” It was at about at that time that the car in front of us hit a stray. The dog rolled under the carriage of the car, then popped out the back undamaged. Everyone in the car breathed a sigh of relief.

Good dog.

(Day 25) Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones

It was a tense scene over strawberry jam. While we chased the crumbs in the corner of our mouths, John stood, and, after a lengthy pause, began a reluctant lecture. "First," he said, looking as though the worst was coming, "I do want to thank you guys for the excellent work you've been putting in. Really," and he made eye-contact with each of us, "you are doing my research for me, and I can't stress how much that helps me. But," he continued, holding his tongue hidden against his teeth, "Stephanie has found a few things in the data that... need fixing. I know," he said, shaking his head ruefully, "that things haven't been quite so organized on the leadership front," and he gestured at the adult table, "but the forms we've been seeing are really sub-standard."

Stephanie stood quietly at John's shoulder, and when he finished the reproach in Spanish, she took up a systematic breakdown of what was awry with our data. In the ensuing twenty minutes, everyone shrunk a bit in their chairs as they recognized their forms being quoted. The now-cold tea brought little comfort.

At the site, we were individually upbraided by a reluctant Stephanie. For my part: I am, apparently, no longer allowed to use the word "impregnated" to describe something permeating a layer; also, as I have been told since the third grade, I willplease write my name at the top right-hand corner of my papers. Well-chastized, then, we all sat around Stephanie and took notes on proper note-taking. Rather ironic, I think.

*

When we got back to our individual sand-boxes, things became decidedly less depressing. The smooth, globular stone I saw at the end of yesterday turned out to be much larger than expected. As we worked around it, our trowel points rasping runes in its grey flanks, it grew into an ovoid that could have been a dinosaur egg. By the time we eased it from the earth, Dr. Rick had appeared out of the ether at our elbows. "Mmm" he said, like he was savoring dessert, "a mola. Grinding stone," he said, by way of explanation, and hefted the stone so its longest crescent edge faced the dark soil. He rocked it back and forth on an invisible table, and you could see that the small pits, mostly smoothed on the bottom, were the result of years and years home-grown milling.

The hits kept coming: before lunch our silvery blades turned over iron paint bits, a bright ochre-red in the shade; painted pottery, faded but visible in Javier's hand; charcoal, smelling of barbecues and burgers; and the scattered remains of a two-thousand year old deer, folded around fallen rock. That rock, by the way, was of unknown origin, so it was our solemn duty to whisk around it, practically Hoover-ing the soil from the cracks between. Most irritating.

As he flits about, John amuses himself by making Yoda-like statements, responding to his "knights of the old trowel"'s questions with a glib "use the force." Ignacio, his middle-age Peruvian grad student, fiddling with the theodolite, dissolved into heavily-accented chuckles.

*

On the way back to lunch, we began to see small children, in definite uniform, running away from us, down the street. As we got closer, they began to run in groups, and clotted together to block the street. A tall, tan man with a combover and a three-piece suit stalked up the street toward us, tapping a silver-handled cane as he came. As he passed loose lines of schoolgirls and boys, he tapped the foot of the cane in time to some far-off drumbeat. The children eyed him, though they looked straight ahead, and hopped and shuffled until their legs popped high with every whump and tap. By the time the hostal was in view, we could not walk in the street; it was filled shoulder-to-shoulder with children, mostly around ten or so, marching in place. Creepy as all hell.

We could not get into the hostel. The gated entryway was blocked by a dull-faced man with a purple backpack. He stood on the small ledge, gazing into the plaza over the heads of a crowd, and refused to move, even when asked politely. We had no choice but to join the sidewalk throng and watch the spectacle, dumbfounded.

The streets on all sides of the plaza were thick with people, who were watching the children of Chavín goose-step in high style. On a platform in the plaza proper, the mayor had invited perhaps a dozen white people (tourists?) to review the troops. The gringos, delighted, were gesturing from under sun visors and let off flash after digital flash.

Under the watch of the silver tapping-cane man, a block of children would screw their faces to frowns, and depart from the alley in a squad twenty-deep. In strict time, their legs would swing high with the drumbeats, jackbooted feet making leathery thumps on the cobbled streets. Colorful pennants waved from above the honor guard lining the street as girls, then boys, then girls paraded army-style for the better part of an hour. And on every Peruvian face, the approving, blissful faces of parents at a birthday party.



The north americans among us were a bit mortified. When did all these third-graders learn to goose-step? Why were they marching in the town square? And why did none of the Peruvian students not understand when we whispered Hitler, Red Army, or Korea to each other? They said that this was how it is -- in school you learn to march. It was a vestige of when these children used to actually be drafted to fight guerilla wars against northern neighbors. "This is what happens," Marcela said, "after a military government."

The last group of children to march couldn't have been older than twelve. They wore army-fatigue pants, and rambo-style holsters across their bare, ribbed chests. Each was daubed with warpaint across the face, shoulders, and back, so that they smiled shyly from under skulls, crosses, and multi-colored bruises. Extra cheering rang out as they crossed in front of the mayor's platform, and some chose to break their grim scowls and wave their fake machine guns in happy hello to their families.

The strangest thing about the whole thing, as we shouldered past the purple-backpacked man, is how seductive it was. Yes, it sounds silly -- it was only a march of minors, after all, and mostly a festive thing... but still. The rhythmic thump of boots, the double-time of the drum, the mayor waving from on-high... there was something proud about it. There was something sinister about it. Ghosting behind the smiles of the gun-toting youth, there was something deeply unsettling, but also familiar. We talked about how easy it would be; how fun it would be -- to watch our military march as darker ones do, waving their machine guns in happy hello.

*

The afternoon excavations were the same as always. I will not dwell on them for long. More bones showed their yellowed heads through the loam, the plaza gringos paraded past on tour, a Chihuahua in tow, and I hit my head more times than I can count on the atrium roof. John visited again and exclaimed that we could have found an ancient house. So it goes.

*

After work, we unwound a little with a friendly game of soccer. The local school, which looked like nothing so much as a blocky exhibition of the possibilities of concrete, had a convenient court for us to play on. Above and behind its parade ground, the small asphalt surface was just longer than a tennis court, and had no goals, other than crude gates marked by piled, broken bricks. We picked school-yard style: rock-paper-scissors for first pick, the girls twirling their ankles until the last. Our team, as if you knew them: Rónald, Caro, Juliet, Becca, myself, and a small Chavíno kid dressed like Green Day.

I was reminded how easy it is to rest on your laurels. I used to play, that's true, but whatever I had in the way of footwork and stamina (not much for starters) has faded into blurry memories and photographs. I lurched about in the twilight air, heaving and snapping my foot now and again at the ratty ball. Everyone gasped after a play was run -- the altitude robbing us of breath -- but couldn't have been happier. We called to each other in English or Spanish, whichever bubbled up first, and shuttled back and forth, shooting again and again at our narrow gates. Though we were wrung-out by the end, and I twisted my ankle in a poorly done fake, we had a blast. When the time came to count the ground-shot goals, our team came out ahead by a healthy margin. We strutted down off the platform, water bottles in hand, exhilarated in the falling dark.

*

Evening was quiet. They often are. We ate, got pastries, returned to loll about in the lab. A little lithic work was done, though arguably we gave more attention to the playing iPod. I looked forward to a night of typing (this takes time, you know) but there was a claim made on my computer. The Peruvians wanted to screen Wall-E, but had no computer to play it on. Marcus asked for it during lithics, and I gave it over with the greatest reluctance.

Silly? Maybe. I am usually over-protective of my things... but the Mac is new (like, brand new), and there would be no recourse if they spilled beer or cigarette ash on it. Still, I did not want to appear Scrooge-ish, so I let them borrow it, and fretted for the better part of the night, to the amusement of Robert. I did not disguise my relief well when it was returned it its red case, never the worse for wear. So it goes.

(Day 24) – Eureka! Or, “Servants!”

If you've taken a class in World History in the last couple centuries, you've probably heard a mantra something like this: "White people are bad. They've often made darker people do their work." It is hard to disprove this, I think. We were offered so many examples, from Africa to Australia, of the imperialistic imposition of a pale rule. This relatively new-found collective consciousness on the behalf of Europeans makes the employ of natives a dicey subject. That same little voice that shakes its head at slavery can't help but pipe up when a labor-force is decidedly monochrome. That was how Thursday bumbled in the door.

Dr. Rick, as if you hadn't already guessed, hired workers to "help out" at the site. By the time we stumbled under the roof, bleary-eyed, these bantam men of Chavín were already sitting on the old rock wall, examining us with rheumy eyes. Stephanie and Rosa seemed to know what to ask, and soon the workers were sifting, sorting, carrying, digging, moving, and dumping. Some carried out special tasks, but every unit was assigned at least one, to help as we saw fit. And oh, how our insides squirmed at the thought of such help.

Our helper was named Javier, and as we dug, he would appear and disappear like a phantom, taking buckets with him almost invisibly. Large rocks would move, as if by themselves, and we were freed entirely from the busy-work of sifting through our backdirt. We were free to lounge in our units and poke the ground and yell excitedly when something bellied up through the dirt. Periodically, Javier would appear at our shoulder, and before he whisked away our buckets, would solemnly offer his latest find -- an obsidian arrrowhead, a bone tool, painted pottery. He left only after we had bagged the artifact and laid it to rest with our initials on it in gleaming ballpoint. Squirm, squirm, squirm.

*

We did have lighter thoughts: the unit across from us, for example, was captained by Juliet, the quasi-cheerleader, and Marcela, the tomboy Peruvian born in Brooklyn. Between Juliet's Valley-Girl exclamations and Marcela's sharp wit, served in her smoker's voice, we had a show to last all day. Their helper, Sossimo, spoke Quechua or Spanish, whichever one you didn't, and liked, I think, to impress Juliet with his pick skills. Paco, an elderly visiting conservation expert, worked with Sossimo, and smelled rather distinctly of too-old burritos. Beth and I commented on all of this in hushed English whispers, smothering laughter as we dug.

*

In the afternoon, John asked us to abandon I26-NW in favor of adjacent, untilled terrain. In short order, we shaved and scraped I26-NE, I27NE, and I27-SE. More roots, more clods, more of Javier, doing our work for us. It was a well-oiled machine, and soon we hit the same level in all of our open units -- a hard floor called a "capa" that signaled some event compressed the earth. Or not.

Rosa went on vacation, starting this afternoon, so the air under the roof flowed much easier. Chatter was louder, laughter stronger, and Beth and I took to calling Stephanie on our walkie-talkie (issued because of our distance) in different pet names: "mama bear, Captain Courageous, Señorita Sexí"... all very classy, you understand. Eventually, she came up and sat down in our unit, and we dug together, looking like nothing so much as kindergartners who'd gotten away with extending recess.

*

At dinner, my appetite reached a new high. Though, apparently, the altitude can make some individuals (see: Rob Ryan) hungrier than usual, I had never asked for more than seconds. This wonderful Thursday, I went for thirds of ahí de gallina, tempted by the chicken shreds and their chipotle sauce. We finished off our palates with a field trip to our new favorite pastelería, and placed an order for more sweet alfahores. She had just ran out, and practically stumbled as she ran into the back to make more. Squirm, squirm, squirm.

(Day 23) Getting Down and Dirty

Have you ever seen the first Indiana Jones movie? The one with the Ark of the Covenant, the Nazis with insane lisps[ssss], and that saucy dame from Kathmandu? I thought so. (If you have not seen this movie, take a two-hour break, and come back. It's worth it. Really). Recall, then, the scene in which Indiana scoops his Prussian Pals with a cagey sighting to a hill overlooking the Egyptian archaeological operation. Before his whoop of joy, we see (saw?) teams of sweaty, laboring men in towering headdresses, chanting as they toil. This was not far divorced from our first day of digging. Except for the turbans.

Everything was a rush come Wednesday morning. The whole rusty machinery of the expedition was being forced into the field, squeaking all the way. After a hurried session with the breakfast bread basket, we scurried about picking up thing after thing after critical thing, until our backpacks bulged at the cheeks. By eight, we filed out swiftly to the site, casting worried glances at our watches. What happens if you are late to an archaeological dig?

We clambered across the mounds on a beaten grass trail. (Thank you, llamas). Our destination, shadowy in morning twilight, was the North Atrium (el Átrio Norte), the little armpit north of the Circular Plaza. Word on the scholarly street was that this little ledge, overlooking the heart of the Chavín machinery, is either the remains of ancient post-Chavin squatters... or the trash of an old expedition. Either way, it was a landfill John salivated over, and we were all too eager to dig in.

A roof, made from reed thatch that carefully conceals a tarp, stretches across the entire North Atrium. Its fifty (or so) meters shade the hillocks of dirt and stone from the strong eye of the sun. At its far end, where it opens to the llama path, we squatted on the remains of some antique stone wall, listening to Stephanie Bautista, the Bay Area Ph.D. student, pontificate.

She reminded us about what goes where when, who gets this there, and the other sundries that drive a world-class dig. I don't remember much of that, other than her giggly admission that we would, by the end of the day, be wearing what she called "dirt braces": a line of dirt on our pearlies that serves as dental proof of our hard work.

We continued to sit on our hands as the grown-ups tossed stakes and string to each other like exacting cats, pawing the twine into loops that came to form tidy squares. It was almost too good: everything was exactly as I imagined, down to the screens that lazed in the sun outside the roof. We were called, by pairs, over to units. I asked Beth if she would like to be my partner. She agreed. This would later turn out to be a very excellent decision. We were introduced to our units, their hopes, their dreams. Officially, Beth and I presided over Unit Q23-SE, but this did not last long; by the time our trowels broke ground, we called him Ralph.

Ralph was, if you'll excuse my jargon, a bitch to dig. The Andes have driven the local grasses to merciless perfection, with roots so intricate that llamas cannot root them out. Ralph was full with them -- he had a wild head of hair impossible to tame with a 4" trowel. Nevertheless, we tried. I filled out the form for Ralph's superficie (the form's Spanish word for "surface") and we sawed away at the top of Q23-SE for the better part of the morning. When a rock would crop up, we would toss it into a growing pile, and when we filled a bucket with the light-brown dirt, we would head to the screens.

Every five-year-old envies us. The giant screens we have (also, zarandas) make finding our oddities a thousand times easier, and would make any afternoon in a sandbox a long session of blissful reunions with lost binkies and band-aids. We dump a small bucket across the flag-sized screen, grab it at both ends, and rock it back and forth. Dirt cascades from the underside in a fine spray that settles on the neighboring tourists. Between the splintering boards, bits of treasure jump and roll like caught fish, flashing more often as the sea drains away.

Grinning like fools, we tag and bag dozens of pottery shards, lithic flakes, and things-that-don't-look-like-much-but-could-be-important-so-let's-play-it-safe-OK? John and Rosa cruise past with guarded eyes. We continued to clean, clean, clean the surface layer, until Ralph's naked skull is cooling in the shade -- a hardpacked layer of the same light-brown dirt now sandwiched between our lips. Rosa passes again, almost absurd in her safari-style hat, carrying something that glows in the sun. As she ducks under our roof, she unfurls it proudly: a front page article in the Peruvian El Corriente on John that refers to him as the gran arquelogico del Stanford -- the great Stanfordian archaeologist. We all nodded appreciatively -- it was, after all, quite the thing -- and readied ourselves to leave. As we gathered our things at 11:50, Rosa gave us hard stares, and reminded us that we leave at 11:55. We reminded her that John asked us to be back by noon, and lunch was across town. For our pains, we received more blank stares, punctuated with slow, even, blinks.

*

After lunch, we capitalized on a recent discovery. Two streets down from our hostel, a cheery-eyed lady in a blue-checked apron makes pastries at all hours. Lush, buttery, and wholly sinful, these cheap treats are often decadent constructions centered around a thick slice of manjar blanco. I do not know what this manjar blanco is, though I'm sure it can be Googled. Or Ebay-ed. It is a blush thinner than molasses, and tastes mostly like caramel, though perhaps a tad less sweet and a bit more milky. Whatever it is, it's delicious, and most native treats are flashy shells for its cavity-inducing delights. At a sol a pop, we buy several at a time, and stash them, squirrel-like, around our rooms [for winter]. I made away with one of her alfahores and one of her milhojas; respectively, a cookie sandwich of manjar blanco and a squarish croissant filled with manjar blanco. It made the walk back to the site a tad... sweeter?

*

In the afternoon, I come to my own hypothesis. It goes something like this: Archaeologists are stupid. Though the chain of reasoning that leads me here is too complicated to relate in this space (i.e. -- can't remember it), that is its irrevocable conclusion. I said this because the work does not seem to be methodologically complicated (it can, for instance, be taught to teenagers in a morning lecture). The conclusions are not particularly insightful -- often something along the lines of: "Pottery was found. They either traded for it or made it." I begin to worry that I have not uncovered a larger truth -- maybe all professionals are over-trained machines with fancy diplomas and good sound-bytes. Maybe this is what an academic does -- stand on a soapbox in an obscure corner of scholarship. Then, to my absurd delight, I find a piece of painted pottery, and reject my hypothesis out of hand.

*

Beth and I discover that we were each Girl Scouts / Boy Scouts. Immediately, we begin to pass the time in Ralph by singing Scout-ish songs, in hopes of finding a few shared ones. By late afternoon, we have a short list, though most are warped to our ears. Hers are cast in a strange dialect, and often omit mentions of God / War / Manliness. I can only assume my version is the proper one.

Scouts got another cameo that afternoon, when someone called me from the floor of the Circular Plaza. An elaborate trestle is taking shape over the entrance to Rocas Canal, in the hope of helping buckets on their way out of the dark pit. Cesar, the Han Solo of our expedition, calls me closer after I vault the wall. After he tries multiple strings of heavily accented Spanish, I finally understand what he wants. The rope that's dangling from the lashing holding the tripod together needs to have a sturdy loop. Apparently, word got around that Scouts are prone to knowing knots and things.

I made a decent attempt, I think. I tied a clove hitch around each pole to keep the knot tight, then a simple bowline loop to hold the pulley. It looked ramshackle, amateur. Still, though, I didn't know a perfect knot for the job... so that would have to do. As I climbed up to the Atrium again, I pondered the two things I had learned looking at the trellis. The first was that the Spanish word for knot is nuga, or something like that. The second was that Cesar had already tied a perfect Scout-style tripod lashing on the trestle. Seven to eight wraps, two fraps, two clove hitches -- regulation perfection. Cesar knew what he was doing better than me.

Later, when this picture (below) was taken, someone had attached cross-bars with perfect (again) diagonal lashings. Someone also re-did my poor attempt with a much tighter bowline directly from the tripod. I made my best attempt to pretend I did not notice. At least I was consulted.



*

As the day comes to a close, we are congratulated on our excellent work with Ralph -- he is as bald as possibly could be. As a prize, we are moved to another unit, one much farther up the hill. With grim faces, we say goodbye to Q23-SE, and troop the thirty meters to I-26 NW. Still smarting from our recent divorce from Ralph, Beth and I do not give I-26 a name.

We have a list of problems with I26-NW, should you care to know them. Firstly, I26 is a large mound of backfill dirt wedged against the roof, with scarcely enough room between to park a large-sized head. Second, we are informed I26 is not likely important -- it probably just fell off the neighboring mound in a landslide. Third, the only way we can weasel our trowels under the roof requires that we stand on a water pipe that was apparently made of water-bottle plastic and hope.

To solve the last problem, we lay a board over the flimsy pipe, and pretend we don't notice that the board flexes more often than it should. To solve the first, we take huge chunks from the surface, and increase the head-room in our new unit. We do not solve the second problem; instead, we scowl as we scrape away and resolve to take long showers, later. Full of importance.

*

When the time actually comes to slough off the first day's dirt, it feels heavenly. The showers are hot enough to scald, and we dance under the unexpected heat, spinning the "Cold" knobs furiously. A balance is reached; we scrub; all scowls are erased. We sleep, dreaming of shards, and knots, and Ralph.

(Day 22) – Digging In; The Real Work Begins

"We have it," Dr. Rick said, matter of factly, over breakfast. "So," and he smiled wider than I thought possible, "we're going to use it." The permission document he referred to was, indeed, in hand, and you could tell from his face that he'd been waiting for this for a long, long time. It was, poetically, the 22nd - exactly a month before I'm scheduled to leave Peru. After three weeks, the red tape was cut, and my last month was looking like a full-tilt excavation.

"Now," Dr. Rick said, raising his bristly eyebrows and rubbing his hands so they made a dry, rasping sound, "we haven't really reviewed the procedures of an excavation yet... so this morning," and he gestured at the lab, "we'll be running a quick and dirty (and he smiled at his pun) orientation session. Cesar," he waved to Cesar, who nodded, "can take las personas que prefieren el Castellano, and I'll take the English speakers. Okay?," he said, looking around eagerly. Wincing from whiplash, we all nodded.

The lecture was a whirlwind tour of "processual archaeology." Forms, tools, and diagrams were presented and tossed away, incomprehensible in the three-hour lecture. Before you trowel, you... pick? But not unless you've taken pictures... and drawings... and a soil sample. Do remember to lay out your units by theodolite, but never take levels without the tape measure. And speaking of levels, you have to measure down to determine how far... up you are... Everything was indeed, confusing -- especially when echoed in Spanish thirty feet away.

That last bit -- the distinction between height and depth, took a little too long to cover. For the better part of an hour, John would boomerang back and re-explain to exasperated faces: "So remember the units will be over 100 meters above our site datum. That means that, even though you record a measurement down into the ground, you are still up from the datum. Complicated? Not really. That still didn't stop us from revisiting that little explanation in a thousand different incarnations. Argh.

*

The afternoon saw a split group. A contingent, largely Peruvian, sallied forth to the field to lay out units for tomorrow's excavation. The more sedentary among us slugged our way to the lab stools for the last afternoon of lithics. As we juggled flakes, we talked about how weird it would be to finally be doing... what we came to do. Upon returning to our rooms, we each conducted a quietly frantic search for tools bought so long ago. Did we have our levels? Our trowels? And what, oh what, would we wear?

Speaking of clothing, I took my post-shower evening to exercise what Bodie would call my "fancies." As I toweled of, I popped in my contacts, and left my glasses tossed on the bed. This led, of course, to some very confused dinner conversation about how alien I looked without them. I exhumed my only pair of jeans and nice long-sleeve shirt for an evening in. I could tell it would be my last chance to wear them. On the morrow, I'd begin the slow but steady process of filling my pockets with the gritty sand of Chavín.

To celebrate, and round out our trilogy, we watched the last Star Wars movie: A New Hope, which, like most of Lucas' old adventures, pales in comparison to... say... anything we've ever seen. Still, it was nice to relax under the heavy folds of my llama (said: YA-ma) blanket and snuggle as Luke lost his hand and such. Under our beds, our backpacks waited patiently, heavy with tools and notes.

(Day 20) When Sundays Go Bad

I'm not sure what I did to Sundays. I mean, granted, I haven't been to church in awhile (sorry, Jesus), but the entire history of Chavin Sundays has been one of terrible disappointment and melancholy. Obviously, 1/7th of the week is against me.

Consider this recent Sunday, the 20th. Not much of note happened - Beth fell ill, we went to Pukutay for the umpteenth time and ordered the same pollo saltado, and were treated to another sweet helping of lithics in the afternoon - a payment for the days off during the week.

By far the worst part was dinner. I brought "Love in the Time of Cholera" to while away the hours until my bistek apanado. Bear in mind, reader, that I've only carried this book, one of five, several thousand miles because of its reputation. It certainly holds its own in this regard: it has, for example, won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Surprise ending: I hated it. Really, really didn't like it. Obviously, it's a translation, so the language is bound to be clunky, but the whole thing was just improbable and poorly thought and unsatisfying. The first sentence, for example, is: "It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of unrequited love." Less than classy.

To make it worse, I tried talking about it as dinner got underway, but was immediately shot down by one devotee and a peanut gallery of acolytes. "Well," _____ said, "have you ever read Marquez? That's just how he writes." The only other student to have read it only insisted blithely that it was the pinnacle of his reading experience, and his neighbors reminded me of what was clearly stamped on the cover - it had won the Nobel Prize.

Entirely too frustrating. It reminded me of IHUM section and every bad seminar - people opining on what they haven't read. If you are reading this, fellow travelers, I am legitimately calling you to account - your insistent parroting has... dimmed you in my eyes.

Anyway, the rest of the night was a bust too. The Peruvians really wanted to play poker, which really made me not want to play (self-preservation), but I didn't want to be anti-social. Would that I was! I lost five hands in a row to Matt, and was barren of chips thirty minutes in. The entire business reminded me of how poor I am at these sort of equivocation games, and how Sundays are, to pun a bit, chancy.

(Day 19) He Said, She Said, Let’s Not Work

No matter which way you cut it, Saturday is not a work day. I mean, you can make a good go of trying, but it never works out. Don’t tell Professor Rick, though – to all appearances, Saturday was a work-day, indeed.

We’d taken Friday for our own, and had been glad to do so, but the price had to be paid. I mean, in the end, we’re basically on vacation with one stipulation: give John a solid five-and-a-half days of work per week. And Festivál week, with its noteworthy (ha! a pun!) paintings, parties, and general antics, hadn’t been very kind to our work ethic. And so it came as little surprise when, after an early breakfast on Saturday morning, Dr. Rick broke the Sabbath for a day of work.

The cagey reader is probably thinking two things. Number one, “hasn’t all the working material been cleaned out of the lab?” and, perhaps, number two: “isn’t that excavation permission still held up in Lima? How could they possibly do any work?” Well, as for number two, reader, we were actually granted permission on Friday in a late-night call. I just didn’t tell you. That’s what you get for assuming; it makes an ASS out of U and ME.And as for number one, that’s pretty much what we spent the day fixing.

*

“I would like to announce,” Dr. Rick said, almost too perkily for his own good, “that because of our excavation grant late last night, we can expect to be digging as early as Monday, but as late as Wednesday, at the outside. Another benefit,” he continued, “is that we can pull the lithic material back from the site, and get started again clearing those babies outta here.” The lithics crew rolled their eyes.

“Right,” John said, decisively, “we’re going to have several crews going about getting us ready today. Rocas,” and he looked at Cesar and the Rocas crew, “you guys can continue if you feel comfortable, now that we have our compass in for you from Lima. Y el equipo de conservación,” he added, addressing the conservation-happy Peruvians, “Alicho will be waiting for you guys up at the site, starting at eight-thirty. The rest of you guys,” and he cast about, looking for free faces, “we’ll be riding up to the site to get back our boxes of lithics.” He clapped his hands – our cue to disappear.

As per usual, Robert and I brushed our teeth and were loitering in the courtyard at eight – ready for the rough ride to the site’s dank storeroom. Rosa, who was patrolling the gate out of breakfast, noticed our toe-tapping, and told us she’d already told others to go back to their room. “I just told Megan,” she said, though the “t” and “d” went unpronounced, “that John is running a late, so to go back to her room and reading a book.” She blinked at us through her rose-colored glasses, and waited until we’d turned tail to slink back to our room to wait for the day to begin.

*

Eventually, close to nine, one of us put down our books and looked around. The courtyard was empty, except for the cat, which was alternating between sunning itself next to the cactus and watching the parrot with an unerring stare. The Señora tottered out of the kitchen, towards he favorite chair in the sun, and I asked, “¿ha ud. visto Senor John?” – “have you seen John?” She shook her head slowly, then sank into the wicker chair, her sigh nearly covered by its creak. I turned to shuffle towards the lab in my socks and sandals (standard gringo relaxation gear), and was mildly surprised to see John, in that one outfit he owns – khaki everything with a floppy Indiana Jones hat, striding toward me. “Ready?” he asked, almost bursting with verve. “Er, yeah, sure…!” I said, a bit taken aback at the enthusiasm. The man really wanted his stones back.

I fetched Robert, and by the time we’d gotten back to the courtyard, John and Megan we clambering into the Land Cruiser. With a coughing rumble and a sound like an anvil being dragged on stone, the engine turned over, turning the headlights a pale gold in the sun. Robert and I mounted our own seats, picking ourselves a good well between packs of the strangest supplies – typewriter erasers, watch batteries, and an emergency blanket. With his customary narration, Dr. Rick jawed the gearshift into place, swung his arm around the passenger seat, and muttered in my direction as he fixed on the gate behind him. The Señor rushed to open it, and we were soon chuttering out onto the street, gunning the gas furiously to keep from stalling.

John toned down his narration this time – perhaps because word has gotten around about his traffic play-by-play. In any case, there were a few choice mumbles, though nothing to prove to Robert that I hadn’t just made the entire stream-of-driving business up. We sat in attentive silence on the way to the site, but Megan fixed on a point outside the window, refusing to answer the rhetorical questions Dr. Rick would pose to her side of the car about parking possibilities.

With an iron hand on the wheel, John cajoled the truck into the site, cutting the engine just as it took a fancy to the steep hill, and began drifting away. The Monster shuddered to a halt, chocked and braked for the moment. We hopped out, and John freed a small cloud of dust as he swung down the rusty tailgate. The site crew spared us from venturing into the moldy room by piling up our boxes near the site scale-model, and it was relatively easy work to transfer them back to the wildly creaking truck bed. With our five-minute task over, we sat on the path’s rocks, waiting for Dr. Rick to come back.

The word from Martín was that Dr. Rick had gone to look over the excavation site, and would be back in a moment. In the meantime, we gave our utmost attention to Shadow, Martín’s awesome dog. His squat, barrel-chested stance and tufted tail (not to mention honey-brown eyes) reminded me pressingly of my dog. We ruffled his stomach and talked about the possibility of going into Huaráz, which was looking dimmer and dimmer as talk of the national holiday – La Día de Patrias, on Monday – and its effect on lodging became more pessimistic. “Ready?” said John, suddenly leaning over us. “Yeah,” we said, and hopped in the Monster, leaving Shadow with two paws scratching absently at the air.

With the lithics back in the lab, sinister in their thousands, we were free to analyze again. Because so many people had escaped to Rocas or conservation, Robert and I drafted two new people to help out – Beth, the new arrival from Mexico (originally Seattle) and Bodie, the Goliath of fainting fame. Over tea and laughter, we gradually got them used to calling pebbles data, slowly stirring jargon into the conversation. Though Dr. Rick flew in and out, we were basically alone, so we conducted scathing reviews of whoever’s music was on – demanding justification of excessive Michael Jackson (14 songs, Beth?), Death Cab for Cutie (I will follow… them with a pickaxe), and Jimmy Buffett (because everyone knows there’s only one song he can sing).
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The hurly-burly came to a head when Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” came on. If you don’t know, and there’s no reason you would, I ended up memorizing the entire song for the AP U.S. History test – it saved my bacon on the essays. It’s a chronological run-down of the last forty years; really just a trivia chant you can memorize if you have a spare month or two. Anyway, with calipers clipping away at bits of quartzite, I mumbled the opening words under my breath: “Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnny Ray…” and was shocked to hear an identical murmur bubbling up to my right.

Robert and I locked eyes. “South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe Di-mag-i-ooo.” His eyes narrowed, and I widened mine – no one knew this song like I did. Soon the calipers slid to a stop in both our grips – “Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television, North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe.” Oh ho – a worthy adversary. We kept it up, mouths in perfect unison, never blinking, never flinching, breathing only during the chorus. Beth sighed in exasperation, and picked up the rock I’d long since dropped:

“Rosenbergs, H Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom Brando, The King And I, and The Catcher In The Rye. Eisenhower, Vaccine, England's got a new queen, Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye [breath] Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc, Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dancron Dien Bien Phu Falls, Rock Around the Clock, Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team, Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland, Bob Dole, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev, Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez [breath] Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, Bridge On The River Kwai Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball, Starkwether, Homicide, Children of Thalidomide, Buddy Holly, Ben Hur, Space Monkey, Mafia, Hula Hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go, U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy, Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo [long, long breath] Hemingway, Eichman, Stranger in a Strange Land, Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion, Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatle mania, Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson, Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British Politician sex, J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say [breath / desperate gasp] Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again, Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock, Begin, Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airline, Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan, Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide, Foreign debts, homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz, Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law, Rock and Roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore...

We broke eye contact, satisfied that we were equally large nerds, and huffed quiety as we picked up our bags again. After they were done laughing, Bodie and Beth made us promise never to do that again. I couldn’t agree more.

*

Again, we gathered in Megan’s room for the next Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back. Robert and I made our now customary chocolate bombing run, and came back with enough for a couple cavities apiece. We winced through the painfully bad graphics and awkward storyline (when was this a blockbuster!?) jawing on decadent sweets. When the speakers started to go towards the end, frustrating Luke into a mute bombing run, we each took on a character, and used ridiculous voices to read their subtitled lines. By far the best, however, was Bodie, who’s bleep-bloop dubbing of R2-D2 was good enough to fool Lucas. I just gave Luke an effeminate British accent. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but it made the Rebellion’s victory that much sweeter.

What happened to Rob?

You may be curious as to why I´ve fallen silent. Or not.
Here are a few reasons, if you are interested:

• Sickness
• Extensive Power Outages
• Internet Failure
• Laziness
• Airplane Issues

All of which can be related, in time.

Keep checking, I´ll keep trying. Promise.