23 April 2005
At the outset of today's entry, I want to thank you all for your notes. The outpouring of support from my family and friends has been amazing, and the sharing of the load has made a difficult situation easier to bear. Thank you.
The week has been pretty uneventful. No word from NSF. It could be as much as six more weeks – at which point I will have no hair left and by body will have been dumped into a ditch by roommates who are tired of my whining. Lithic analysis is going well. Matt has been working to obtain permits for our work, and has been talking with officials and politicking and smoothing feathers and forwarding requests for paperwork. He is also working with friends of mine from Earth Search to set up a pilot project for the underwater archaeology we want to do at the site.
At Trinidad, we have a port site, a harbor, and a lot of long-distance trade goods coming into the site along a lake that is known for a few things: (1) being a place for shamans to see visions, (2) being a nexus for trade across the region (and Trinidad is located at the easiest overland route away from the lake), and (3) having rough waters in the afternoon (at least one local family has died when the afternoon winds capsized their boat). And the combination of the three elements puts forward the possibility of one really good thing.
Lots of loot, just right off the shore.
Excuse me. What I meant to say was, there is an excellent possibility for obtaining evidence of long-distance exchange from good context immediately adjacent to the site of Trinidad, with concomitant data concerning the site's importance in a regional politico-ritual hierarchy, while establishing economic importance as an independent
variable in the…. (This comes from the right shoulder. I just told him to hush.)
Lots of loot, just right off the shore.
Lago Atitlan, here in the highlands, has been subjected to underwater survey, and the results are staggering. Part of the ritual of scrying involves chucking (that's the technical term) offerings into the lake in exchange for a vision of future events. The number of whole vessels they pulled off the bottom of the lake was astonishing. We
are hoping that they did the same thing at Lake Petén Itzá. We are also hoping (wishful thinking) that there is a possibility of finding capsized watercraft like those depicted in art from Tikal. One of the pieces from Tikal even shows the boat capsizing in rough water. Add that to the trade route we believe was coming through Trinidad. Well.
Lots of loot. Just right off the shore.
There are a few snags. The first of which is to put together a team of divers that can do the archaeology we need done. That involves mapping and underwater survey. Insert Earth Search. Jill Yakubik and Earth Search have just, in the past year, begun to look toward the water for more business. Two (maybe three, now that I am no longer on the payroll) archaeologists with underwater archaeology experience have been hired, and others are training for the work. The exposure that would result from doing a project that recovers material like the
stuff we are hoping to find, well, let's just say it would not be bad for business, not to mention fun.
So now we are trying to make sure that the permits that have already been submitted can have the sub-project (insert chuckle at bad pun) added and also that we can actually get the equipment. So yesterday, Matt and I went to Guatemala City with a dual purpose: to retrieve my car from the mechanic, and to check out prices for scuba equipment rentals.
Around noon (morning traffic in the capital is horrendous) we grabbed a cab driver that Matt had used before and headed off to get the car.
The address we had was pretty clear: 5 Calle 6-09 Z.13 Pamplona. I have now been through the capital a few times, and I have to say that "pretty clear" in terms of navigating the capital is difficult, at best. But, if you are a taxicab driver in Antigua, it is a pretty safe bet that you know the grid system of Guatemala cold. After all,
most people take a tuk-tuk or walk for travel within Antigua; the majority of fares for cab drivers involve travel to the capital. Bet on it.
We lost that bet. The driver got us to Guatemala City into Zone 13 (that is the Z13 part of the address), then stopped and asked another cab driver how to get to the Pamplona area. He followed the convoluted instructions (involving U-turns and New Orleans-style left-hand turns and one tunnel) and promptly got us to where we were
going. And just as promptly failed to recognize where he was (to be fair, we didn't either, but when we had arrived at the mechanic's shop it had been dark at the end of a hellacious day – see previous journal
entry). And then he turned one block too soon, and two left-hand turns later crossed back over the divided road and quickly entered Zone 12.
You will note that the above-mentioned address did not have the designation Z12. Matt and I conferred while the driver, unconcerned, took us through the un-scenic tour of Z12, stopping to ask for directions three times. Each time he headed off in the wrong direction, and I would ask him: "Are you sure?"
"Absolutely."
The directions are pretty straightforward, as I learned after he finally let us out. The streets are numbered in each zone, N-S Avenidas and E-W Calles. The address we had was Calle 5 (just one block from Calle 4, which we saw as we were leaving Z13), between Avenida 6 (that is the 6 in the address) and 7, nine meters (thus the
9) from the intersection. Seven sets of hand gestures later, he stopped to ask directions without recognizing that we were across the street from our destination. We did, however, and got out, paid, and walked across the street to the garage. Did we vow to avoid his cab for the rest of our natural lives? "Absolutely."
When we walked into the garage, the guy greeted us and immediately showed us the car, which had responded well to surgery. The rear axle had been replaced, and he offered me the still-usable catarina (whatever that is) to take with me if I wanted. I politely declined, and then asked the all-important question: "You guys do accept credit
cards, right?"
Nope. Cash on the barrelhead, only. We waited until the boss arrived, and he confirmed the bad news. Cash. 5,600Q (~$675 – not bad for replacing a rear axle on an imported vehicle) in cash, please.
But he was willing to take us to the ATM, so that we could pay him – we could use it as a test drive for the car, to make sure everything felt right.
ATMs, of course, allow you to pull a maximum of 2000Q at a time – a little less than $300. Matt and I both pulled 2kQ and, after a few stressful moments, combined our spare change to make up the difference.
We then hit the scuba shop down the road (Matt navigated us there without a single stop for hand gestures – but he had lived in this zone for one field season, a number of years ago.) We got out, and Matt asked if I wanted to roll up the windows. While he went into the shop, I hopped back in and proceeded to do that, at which time the
driver's window escaped its moorings inside the door panel.
This has happened before. Numerous times – I essentially spent all last summer in New Orleans without a working window or air conditioning. Three days before we left New Orleans, I had finally called the autoglass company, and they came out to fix the problem (all my previous fixes had been very temporary, but much cheaper) and I could, at long last, roll down my window.
That happy period lasted five days – just enough to get us across the border. From that point on, any time an official stopped me to ask for papers, I had to open the door. Startling armed officials by swinging open the car door is not good policy, so I figured out a way of holding on to the window while rolling it up and down so that it
stayed in its track. Inelegant solution, but preferable to being shot.
But in the week since I had last driven the car, I had forgotten about holding on to the window, managed to get it thoroughly jammed, shook it loose, and accidentally yanked it loose from its tracks.
No problem. I simply have to remove the panel from the door, reach in and guide the glass into the tracks, and roll it up, this time holding it while doing it. In the glove compartment I have a screwdriver.
Scratch that. In the entire car I have no tools whatsoever – they are carefully cached in Antigua to keep then from being stolen. After trying to guide the window back into the tracks without removing the door panel for 10 minutes, I headed inside to borrow a screwdriver.
The guy who loans me one follows me back out (protecting his investment, I am sure) and starts to help. After another 15 minutes, Matt finds me, completely excluded form the process of fixing my car (gringos, as you know, cannot fix anything mechanical), while two Guatemaltecos are jockeying for position through the open window.
They tug and push and grunt and order each other about. After waiting for a while, I tell them thank you, replace the door panel, the corner of the window sticking out like a compound fracture, and drive off.
Predictably, it starts to rain.
I have never been to Beijing, I have only stopped at the Sao Paolo airport, and I have not even been to Mexico City. So my knowledge of the grime associated with big cities in other countries is limited.
But Guatemala's capital is nasty, reminiscent of (sorry, Aunt Esther) Cleveland. You don't want to breathe while you are there. Massive black flowers blossom from behind every brightly colored bus, exhaling toxic, foul-smelling perfume that hangs like a miasma over the entire city. It makes me need a shower when I arrive back in clean (albeit dusty) Antigua.
All of that smoke settles on the ground, and the first rain of the rainy season (today) loosens the oil, pitch, gas, and diesel from the surface, making the road as slick as owl turds. Traffic between the capital and Antigua presses you from every direction, and then stops abruptly behind a stalled car or bus stop (placed conveniently at the termination of each blind curve). It is dangerous, treacherous, and mostly, scary. I saw one woman getting out of her car that had a rock wedged under her car as the fulcrum. Nothing else separated her from
the 500' drop below. She had skidded (been pushed?) off the road and driven up on the 3'wide shoulder. As my dad says, "That sure is a funny place to park."
And I was driving in this, in a place where traffic rules are, at best, suggestions, and where the sidewalk is an acceptable and even preferred place to pass. Add an open window quickly soaking me with water, and, well, I was not happy.
But we got home without incident, I dropped Matt off at the internet café, and proceeded to take off the door panel, make two small adjustments, and slide the window back into place, five minutes before the arrival of the rain. I had just enough time to lock it up tight, grab my stuff, get inside and pour myself a very strong drink before
the first thunderstorm of the year descended on us.
And watching a thunderstorm from the open window in Antigua while drinking bourbon is not a bad way to spend an evening.
At the outset of today's entry, I want to thank you all for your notes. The outpouring of support from my family and friends has been amazing, and the sharing of the load has made a difficult situation easier to bear. Thank you.
The week has been pretty uneventful. No word from NSF. It could be as much as six more weeks – at which point I will have no hair left and by body will have been dumped into a ditch by roommates who are tired of my whining. Lithic analysis is going well. Matt has been working to obtain permits for our work, and has been talking with officials and politicking and smoothing feathers and forwarding requests for paperwork. He is also working with friends of mine from Earth Search to set up a pilot project for the underwater archaeology we want to do at the site.
At Trinidad, we have a port site, a harbor, and a lot of long-distance trade goods coming into the site along a lake that is known for a few things: (1) being a place for shamans to see visions, (2) being a nexus for trade across the region (and Trinidad is located at the easiest overland route away from the lake), and (3) having rough waters in the afternoon (at least one local family has died when the afternoon winds capsized their boat). And the combination of the three elements puts forward the possibility of one really good thing.
Lots of loot, just right off the shore.
Excuse me. What I meant to say was, there is an excellent possibility for obtaining evidence of long-distance exchange from good context immediately adjacent to the site of Trinidad, with concomitant data concerning the site's importance in a regional politico-ritual hierarchy, while establishing economic importance as an independent
variable in the…. (This comes from the right shoulder. I just told him to hush.)
Lots of loot, just right off the shore.
Lago Atitlan, here in the highlands, has been subjected to underwater survey, and the results are staggering. Part of the ritual of scrying involves chucking (that's the technical term) offerings into the lake in exchange for a vision of future events. The number of whole vessels they pulled off the bottom of the lake was astonishing. We
are hoping that they did the same thing at Lake Petén Itzá. We are also hoping (wishful thinking) that there is a possibility of finding capsized watercraft like those depicted in art from Tikal. One of the pieces from Tikal even shows the boat capsizing in rough water. Add that to the trade route we believe was coming through Trinidad. Well.
Lots of loot. Just right off the shore.
There are a few snags. The first of which is to put together a team of divers that can do the archaeology we need done. That involves mapping and underwater survey. Insert Earth Search. Jill Yakubik and Earth Search have just, in the past year, begun to look toward the water for more business. Two (maybe three, now that I am no longer on the payroll) archaeologists with underwater archaeology experience have been hired, and others are training for the work. The exposure that would result from doing a project that recovers material like the
stuff we are hoping to find, well, let's just say it would not be bad for business, not to mention fun.
So now we are trying to make sure that the permits that have already been submitted can have the sub-project (insert chuckle at bad pun) added and also that we can actually get the equipment. So yesterday, Matt and I went to Guatemala City with a dual purpose: to retrieve my car from the mechanic, and to check out prices for scuba equipment rentals.
Around noon (morning traffic in the capital is horrendous) we grabbed a cab driver that Matt had used before and headed off to get the car.
The address we had was pretty clear: 5 Calle 6-09 Z.13 Pamplona. I have now been through the capital a few times, and I have to say that "pretty clear" in terms of navigating the capital is difficult, at best. But, if you are a taxicab driver in Antigua, it is a pretty safe bet that you know the grid system of Guatemala cold. After all,
most people take a tuk-tuk or walk for travel within Antigua; the majority of fares for cab drivers involve travel to the capital. Bet on it.
We lost that bet. The driver got us to Guatemala City into Zone 13 (that is the Z13 part of the address), then stopped and asked another cab driver how to get to the Pamplona area. He followed the convoluted instructions (involving U-turns and New Orleans-style left-hand turns and one tunnel) and promptly got us to where we were
going. And just as promptly failed to recognize where he was (to be fair, we didn't either, but when we had arrived at the mechanic's shop it had been dark at the end of a hellacious day – see previous journal
entry). And then he turned one block too soon, and two left-hand turns later crossed back over the divided road and quickly entered Zone 12.
You will note that the above-mentioned address did not have the designation Z12. Matt and I conferred while the driver, unconcerned, took us through the un-scenic tour of Z12, stopping to ask for directions three times. Each time he headed off in the wrong direction, and I would ask him: "Are you sure?"
"Absolutely."
The directions are pretty straightforward, as I learned after he finally let us out. The streets are numbered in each zone, N-S Avenidas and E-W Calles. The address we had was Calle 5 (just one block from Calle 4, which we saw as we were leaving Z13), between Avenida 6 (that is the 6 in the address) and 7, nine meters (thus the
9) from the intersection. Seven sets of hand gestures later, he stopped to ask directions without recognizing that we were across the street from our destination. We did, however, and got out, paid, and walked across the street to the garage. Did we vow to avoid his cab for the rest of our natural lives? "Absolutely."
When we walked into the garage, the guy greeted us and immediately showed us the car, which had responded well to surgery. The rear axle had been replaced, and he offered me the still-usable catarina (whatever that is) to take with me if I wanted. I politely declined, and then asked the all-important question: "You guys do accept credit
cards, right?"
Nope. Cash on the barrelhead, only. We waited until the boss arrived, and he confirmed the bad news. Cash. 5,600Q (~$675 – not bad for replacing a rear axle on an imported vehicle) in cash, please.
But he was willing to take us to the ATM, so that we could pay him – we could use it as a test drive for the car, to make sure everything felt right.
ATMs, of course, allow you to pull a maximum of 2000Q at a time – a little less than $300. Matt and I both pulled 2kQ and, after a few stressful moments, combined our spare change to make up the difference.
We then hit the scuba shop down the road (Matt navigated us there without a single stop for hand gestures – but he had lived in this zone for one field season, a number of years ago.) We got out, and Matt asked if I wanted to roll up the windows. While he went into the shop, I hopped back in and proceeded to do that, at which time the
driver's window escaped its moorings inside the door panel.
This has happened before. Numerous times – I essentially spent all last summer in New Orleans without a working window or air conditioning. Three days before we left New Orleans, I had finally called the autoglass company, and they came out to fix the problem (all my previous fixes had been very temporary, but much cheaper) and I could, at long last, roll down my window.
That happy period lasted five days – just enough to get us across the border. From that point on, any time an official stopped me to ask for papers, I had to open the door. Startling armed officials by swinging open the car door is not good policy, so I figured out a way of holding on to the window while rolling it up and down so that it
stayed in its track. Inelegant solution, but preferable to being shot.
But in the week since I had last driven the car, I had forgotten about holding on to the window, managed to get it thoroughly jammed, shook it loose, and accidentally yanked it loose from its tracks.
No problem. I simply have to remove the panel from the door, reach in and guide the glass into the tracks, and roll it up, this time holding it while doing it. In the glove compartment I have a screwdriver.
Scratch that. In the entire car I have no tools whatsoever – they are carefully cached in Antigua to keep then from being stolen. After trying to guide the window back into the tracks without removing the door panel for 10 minutes, I headed inside to borrow a screwdriver.
The guy who loans me one follows me back out (protecting his investment, I am sure) and starts to help. After another 15 minutes, Matt finds me, completely excluded form the process of fixing my car (gringos, as you know, cannot fix anything mechanical), while two Guatemaltecos are jockeying for position through the open window.
They tug and push and grunt and order each other about. After waiting for a while, I tell them thank you, replace the door panel, the corner of the window sticking out like a compound fracture, and drive off.
Predictably, it starts to rain.
I have never been to Beijing, I have only stopped at the Sao Paolo airport, and I have not even been to Mexico City. So my knowledge of the grime associated with big cities in other countries is limited.
But Guatemala's capital is nasty, reminiscent of (sorry, Aunt Esther) Cleveland. You don't want to breathe while you are there. Massive black flowers blossom from behind every brightly colored bus, exhaling toxic, foul-smelling perfume that hangs like a miasma over the entire city. It makes me need a shower when I arrive back in clean (albeit dusty) Antigua.
All of that smoke settles on the ground, and the first rain of the rainy season (today) loosens the oil, pitch, gas, and diesel from the surface, making the road as slick as owl turds. Traffic between the capital and Antigua presses you from every direction, and then stops abruptly behind a stalled car or bus stop (placed conveniently at the termination of each blind curve). It is dangerous, treacherous, and mostly, scary. I saw one woman getting out of her car that had a rock wedged under her car as the fulcrum. Nothing else separated her from
the 500' drop below. She had skidded (been pushed?) off the road and driven up on the 3'wide shoulder. As my dad says, "That sure is a funny place to park."
And I was driving in this, in a place where traffic rules are, at best, suggestions, and where the sidewalk is an acceptable and even preferred place to pass. Add an open window quickly soaking me with water, and, well, I was not happy.
But we got home without incident, I dropped Matt off at the internet café, and proceeded to take off the door panel, make two small adjustments, and slide the window back into place, five minutes before the arrival of the rain. I had just enough time to lock it up tight, grab my stuff, get inside and pour myself a very strong drink before
the first thunderstorm of the year descended on us.
And watching a thunderstorm from the open window in Antigua while drinking bourbon is not a bad way to spend an evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment