Adios Huanchaco, hola Cuzco and the Andes mountains! The past few weeks have been rather hectic. For one, we finished up lab work and took some awesome day trips to such sites as El Brujo and Huaca del Sol and Huaca de la Luna. Lab concluded satisfactorily, although we did not quite finish weighing, bagging and tagging the plethora of material we collected at Cerro La Virgen. It was not feasible to complete the inventory in such a short period of time. On our last few lab days, we were fortunate enough to have some guest speakers. One of these guests included a bone specialist who had a thing for fish scales. “These are fish scales,” she said. “Can you talk about these bones?” Jen said. “Yes, these are bones. These are fish scales” the bone specialist responded. As it turns out, she was more a fan of fish remains than bones. However the weaver was much more interesting. He showed us how to make the caballitos, or traditional fishing boats which are seen all around Huanchaco. They are made out of a reed material which is twisted to form a large boat. We did not have the time or talent to create a lifesize one, although supposedly one can be formed in two hours. Rather, we made small one foot long caballitos. They were surprisingly easy to make, although I suspect that attempting to construct a seaworthy vessel of one would be more difficult. One of my lab assignments was to identify different shells which we found at the site. I wandered into the lab of the Huanchaco Instituto Del Mar where a biologist there bagged, tagged, and identified individual shells for me as well as provided live samples. Unfortunately the poor live samples did not stay alive for a very long period of time.
Huaca de la Luna and Huaca del Sol were spectacular. They were both absolutely massive, with traditional Moche designs on them. The huacas were used for ceremonial purposes, and feature elaborate murals. Sadly they were both partially destroyed by Spanish Conquistadores and flooding. However, enough of the structures remain so as to show the grand scale upon which the huacas were constructed. El Brjuo was similarly impressive, although on a smaller scale. The site consists of a pyramid, now semi-derelict, near the shore. It receives its name from the shamans who would visit this site, among others, to practice rituals. At first none of us understood this, but after our tour guide passed out complimentary San Pedro cocktails, we began to realize what the Moche did at this site…well, maybe not, but there were some really awesome murals here as well.
From there, we departed Huancahco to the lovely Andes mountains. Lush greens, a sky like cotton upon a pure blue canvas, and an ethereal brightness. Grey rock outcroppings stand sentinel, guarding the valleys below. Of the sites we have seen, Ollyantaytambo and Machu Pichu were the most impressive. The stonework at each site was particularly mesmerizing. Many of the bricks are perfectly flush, and were even carved in situ. To add to the marvel, both sites are enormous in scale. Having the opportunity to see these ranks up there with Baelbek in Lebanon, for the 3 most impressive archeological sites I have ever seen.
Well, guess I had better go see the rest of Cuzco and cherish the Andes while I have the opportunity to. See you Stateside!

Looks like it is back to work after a nice relaxing Spring Break! Last Thursday we finished excavating at Cerro La Virgen, and had a week off. Break started off on a high note. To celebrate our freedom, we went to Sabes, the gringo bar where the bartenders know our usuals: the Madonna play list and the pool balls and cues. After actually winning two games of pool, and not once knocking the cue ball off of the table and into the parking lot, which often occurs, Sean and I convinced the owner of the Tequenos Place to open up so we could eat tequenos burgers. The next morning was not as joyous, as I awoke to Patrick informing us that there had been a major earthquake in Japan and that tsunamis were heading towards multiple coastlines, including our own. As a result, we dined in Trujillo, a town further inland, to get away during the ETA of the tsunami. Luckily, all that happened was that tide came up significantly higher on the beach than usual. Everyone is safe and accounted for, although after weeks of sifting through piles of rocks in the hot sun, I cannot speak for the sanity of the collective group.
I spent the days recovering from the intense field work, reading on the beach and working on my tan. However, there were a few exciting excursions worth noting. I went sand boarding towards the end of break. For those who don’t know what this fun activity entails, it is simple. There is a wooden plank, which looked akin to a snowboard, with straps for your feet. You climb with your board to the top of a large sand dune, strap yourself in and try to slide down the hill. Although I could not stay upright for too much time, I was decent, and wiping out didn’t hurt as we were on soft sand. In fact, the most difficult part of sand boarding, apart from trying to keep my balance speeding down a steep slope on a wooden plank, was the climb to the top of the sand dunes. The tour agency gave us 4 hours, but we ended not being able to continue for the entire time as we all were quite winded after trekking up the dunes 5 or 6 times. It was definitely a blast, even though our instructor got eaten by sand sharks.
Over the week off, I also got to hang out with Robby and Mateo, the sons of the family who maintain order in the house we are all living in. Robby took me to La Maiseria in Trujillo, a massive market with everything you could possibly need, and quite a bit that you don’t ever want to see. Rows of shoes and clothes, toys, books, school supplies, toiletries, electronics, all in a massive open air market. There were bootleg DVD’s such as “Ninja Americano 1-5” the “Jesus Christ 5 en 1 Collecion” and the “Steven Segal More-Movies-Than-You-Wanted-To-Know-Existed Pack.” For some reason, I chose not to purchase any. Amongst the food vendors were various shaman suppliers and craft sellers. Here you can buy rosaries, incense, crucifixes, and various herbs and plants for medicinal purposes, at least that is what I assume. The only plant I actually recognized was the famous San Pedro cactus, used for a number of reasons, including the traditional shaman-concocted hallucinogenic substance. Robbie got me to buy the two of us a tasty beverage, which I was unable to identify, and an empanada. The food and drink were both quite delicious, and very inexpensive. In fact the ride to and from the market was more money than the actual nourishment consumed.
After our few days off, lab started up. With lab work, you have a 2 hour shift a day, 11-1 or 2-4. I usually take the 2-4 time slot, as anyone who knows me will admit that I am not a morning person. Also, with the NCAA tourney, we have had some great games going on lately. Luckily, our supervisors let us pull games up and listen to the commentary or listen to the Harry Potter books on tape while we work. In this case, work entails sorting through all of the juicy finds from Cerro La Virgen, First we dug, collected samples, sifted through massive amounts of cultural materials, separated them into piles such as ceramics, lithics, beads, bones, organic remains, coprolites, carbonized remains, etc., and then bagged it all. Now we are going through the bags of collected materials to see what all we actually have. This is tedious work, but extremely relaxing, and it gives you the chance to hold ancient Chimu ceramics, bones, shells, and the likes. At this stage, we also see where we have messed up, often finding rim sherds and decorated sherds in the body sherds bag, shells in the coprolites, and other such mistakes which cause Jen and Brian to shake their heads and sigh exasperatedly. Now we have about 3 more weeks left of lab work before our 2 weeks of travel to Cuzco and some other sites. Well, guess I better go keep up my constant obsessing over my bracket now. Hope everyone is doing well, and…GO HEELS!

Que bacan! The past week has been pretty eventful. Two weeks ago I turned 21. I never thought that I would become legally able to drink in the United States in a different country, much less be out of the country for a majority of my time being 20. I celebrated accordingly with some fun Peruvian drinks. My family surprised me by sending a delicious cake, a birthday balloon and a bear, named Nilla. The Peruvian family who own the house we are staying in cooked my favorite local meal, tequenos. I didn’t even mess anything up at the site that week. In fact, I found an crystal sherd while sorting. So unfortunately I still haven’t located the entire crystal skull, but the small piece of crystal from the site keeps me hopeful. Other cool finds include some rather large ceramic pots which are fully, or mostly, intact, a smooth black rock which looks akin to the monolith from 2001 a Space Odyssey, and a stone weight for fishing nets. Most recently a dog burial was found which we should be excavating this week.
That Saturday we got to enjoy one of the last celebrations in Carnival, a parade. Primarily, participants consisted of scantily clad women, and extremely intoxicated individuals in costume dancing down the street to music. Our friend Jorge’s featured a large clown doll being held up and shaken by a crowd of people in the back of a pickup. I think it is best just to nod and smile in this case and not think too much about it. The festivities were continued this past Saturday with a massive party in Club Huanchaco, the local country club. The festivities included a free food and drinks which are always a plus, and finally the paint war and chopping down of the gift tree. Tradition goes that whoever knocks down the tree pays for the tree the next year. Although I wanted to take a whack, I think it may be for the best that I did not attempt to bring down the gift tree. I don’t want to pay for a festival next year…The paint war, despite what you may think, actually is exactly what it sounds like. Everyone took paint and slathered it on their friends, enemies, and random passersby. I also went to church two weeks ago and witnessed a beautiful sunset. Since this is the Southern hemisphere, sunset is over the ocean and looks spectacular every night.
On Saturday after the festival, a few of us went to try and watch the UNC Duke game on the computer. Unfortunately, the usual sites I would stream sports with were siezed by the Department of Homeland Security. Luckily my mom has a webcam and thus we were able to stream the game over Skype. Although we finished our food well before the end of the game, we stayed at the restaurant to watch the final celebration. Afterwards, Robby and Mateo, two of our Peruvian friends, wanted to have a bonfire but that fell through. That may be for the best seeing how bonfires on Franklin Street usually work out.
On the weekends, I enjoy going to the beach to read a nice book or take a nap and work on my tan. Most recently I finished Zeitoun, a novel about an Arab-American living in New Orleans during Katrina. The novel resounded with me because of my being, like the protagonist, an Arab-American, as well as the fact that my first Robertson summer was spent in New Orleans. If you get a chance, pick up a copy, I really enjoyed it and hope you do too.
Right now we are on our last week of field work before Spring break and the commencement of lab work. Thursday is the final excavation day so we only have a limited window to find the pyramid, golden llama idol, and crystal skull. Looks like we better get serious here and quickly at that. But I think we can still find time to have fun. Feliz martes gordo (Happy Mardi Gras) everyone! Hope it is a good one. Remember to wear purple green and gold today, and eat some king cake if you can find a piece or two. Buena suerte amigos, ciao!

My entire life I have loved playing in the dirt. Nothing has changed, except that I am now getting class credit for doing so. We began excavating this week at Cerro La Virgen, a Chimu era village near the capital of Chan Chan. So far I am really enjoying it. I get to attend class barefoot, throw rocks, play in the sand, and find different ancient artifacts such as bones, stone tools, ceramics, shellfish remains, dried plant remains, hair, charcoal, fecal matter…you name it, we collect it.
I am on our fearless and faithful program director Brian Billman’s dig team. I suspect that this came about as a result of Brian wanting to keep an eye on me and make sure that I don’t get into too much trouble, but I prefer to say that he needed my muscle for moving tons of sand and stone from the site. Our first day of work was Wednesday. I thought I would be prepared for the experience, but quickly realized that it would take some conditioning to be able to function properly at 7am when we start digging. The structure my group (Stephanie, Kristen and me), has been working on is a masonry compound, most likely a home and/or a store room. As far as I can tell, the classification of masonry compound is based solely on the fact that stones were used to build the said structure. At least this is what Brian said when I asked him, or maybe I just hadn’t had enough coffee that morning. The two main jobs are sorting and digging. The latter is rather self-explanatory, or so it seems. When I started out I thought “hey, this looks simple enough: remove the sand and rocks.” I quickly learned that there are actual techniques for excavating, and one must learn to recognize when to use brute strength and when to use finesse. Basically watch the Peruvian workers who have been excavating for more years than I have been alive, and you should be fine. For instance, I learned that when you hit a floor it is time to drop the trowel and pick up the brush to carefully remove dust and sand from the plaster floor of the compound rather than keep hacking away with a sharp metal tool. Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that I work with something potentially dangerous. If Brian finds out he will surely confiscate it from me…
The other job, sorting, comes after the digging. We uncover sections of the structure we are working on, and then dump buckets of sand, rocks and artifacts through a 1/8 inch mesh screen to filter out the sand. Next all the rocks and potential artifacts are separated. Rocks are thrown away, while collected materials are placed into separate piles. Then it is bag and tag time. All that we have collected goes into bags which are then given appropriate tags to identify them by category of material, where it came from, the date and who recorded all the information. This last bit of information is so Brian can yell at whoever messed up, most likely me. After working at Cerro La Virgen from 7-2:30, we head back to the lab and sort all of our bags of cultural materials into different sections so that all the ceramics are together, all the shellfish remains are together, all the plant remains are together, etc. It is strenuous work, but if we are good girls and boys, Brian will let us all split a cold beverage from the fridge. Somehow I still get one even though we are supposed to be good. Again, maybe I should not point this out to him…
Like excavating, everything else has been quite excellent. The sun is shining, the waves are crashing, and the beach is a whole 2 and a half blocks away from our house. The homestay is now over and our group is now living in a three story building which is closer to the beach, but sadly further away from the Tequenos Place, which has some tasty tequenos. For those who don’t know what they are, tequenos are basically wontons with cheese inside and meat if you want it, which are then smothered in a layer of delicious guacamole and devoured to the eaters delight. They are also really good on burgers which Sean and I discovered when we went out on a limb and experimented by making tequeno burgers. Holy tequenos Batman! Guess I better get back to the Bat Cave (or the Brozone, the room where the only three males on the program reside and bro out…) because I see the Bat Signal…

Tune in next time to see what else our hero will find at the excavation site and to read more of his misadventures…

Dos Cervezas Por Favor

Greetings from Huanchaco! We left Lima for several days of intense travel and since arrived
at our destination for the next three months, a fishing village and beach town, Huanchaco.
After Lima, we arrived in Barraanco, a small beach side town. There, Sean and I had our first
experience playing basketball against Peruvians. We pretty much dominate, each ending the
game with a few blocks and points each. Of course we were playing against children no older
than 12. But it felt good to get back into the game again. Barranco as a whole reminded me of
Bo in Sierra Leone. Dirt roads, run-down and unfinished buildings…apparently if a building is
not finished, then taxes on it are less. Thus, one will often see houses with second or third stories
uncompleted, rebar sticking out of bricks and mortar.
On the way from Barranco to Casma, we stopped at Caral, a site featuring several temples.
Primarily Pyramid Mayor stands out, towering above the other smaller ones. Some of the
smaller buildings are limited as to who could enter them. Private alcoves litter the insides of
some such as the Temple of the Sacred Fire. The entire complex was impressive, featuring well-
restored brick buildings and temples, with very accurate stonework. The next site was Sechin
Alto, a smaller temple, very well preserved. On the structure were designs of men with different
weapons and accompanying scenes of death. A head with blood coming out of the eyes and
mouth, brains being expelled from craniums, a bag of heads, and other such pictures brightened
our day that sunny, 90 degree morning. The commonly held theory is that it may have been a
place of sacrifice, although no graves have been found nearby. It could also be telling the story
of a war. I on the other hand believe that it depicts what happens if you piss off your host family
during your homestay. I don’t think I will try and find out though…Of all the sites we have
been to so far, my favorite is Moxeke. The ruins consisted of two massive structures thought to
have been used for ceremonial, religious, and social purposes. Nearby are about 170 u-shaped
structures which were residential areas. What most intrigues me is that the site was abandoned
and almost nothing save a few seeds and reed mats were left behind.

The next few days were spent at about 12,000 feet in elevation, at Huaraz and Chavin. The small mountain town of Huaraz was beautiful, quiet, and cool. Well, it was at least relatively cooler than the coastal areas. Here we had a series of free days to explore the town and get to know each other a little better. Chavin was even smaller, making Chavin look like a bustling metropolis. At Chavin, we saw another temple with an idol inside. According to Brian and his faithful companion Julio, people would venture to Chavin and take the hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus and have religious experiences while talking to the idols in labyrinths beneath the temple. Meanwhile I was thinking, hey and when I was a kid I thought it was fun getting wine at mass. Talk about an incentive to rejoin an organized religion.
After the mountains, we began the 9 hour bus ride down to the coast, to our final destination for the next 4 months, Huanchaco. To get to the wonderful fishing village/beach resort, we rode through a canyon. I am not quite sure how we made it without falling off the side of the maybe 12 foot wide road, but we did. I think it provided moral support when Maggie, Kristen and I began to watch Magic School Bus on the back of the bus. Believe me, if you want a normal field trip with Brian (our professor)...NO WAY!
When we first arrived in Huanchaco, there was a surfing competition going on, creating a lot of hype. Lindsay and Jenny ran into a few of the surfers at our hotel and befriended them, boldly attempting to overcome the language barrier. Being college students, we quickly found the best hangouts in the town. Notably, Sunkella has live reggae music every Friday night, a popular choice for a chill evening replete with Bob Marley cover bands, dreds, and sketchy characters lingering in the shadows of the patio overhang. The other hotspot is Sabes, a stereotypical gringo bar. Despite being where the gringos congregate, they have cheap drinks during happy hour and a really nice pool table. Sean and I are currently working on our pool, or "tacu" game at the moment. Somehow we keep losing, like last week to Brian and Julio, our professor and TA. However, when we play each other, one of us is bound to win. Maybe we'll practice tonight...
We began our homestay about a week ago. Sean and I are currently housed with Cokie in a nice cozy house. The only problem is that it is a whole 4 blocks from the beach. Motivating myself to walk so far to get to the relaxing sand and sun can often be a challenge. Luckily though it is near the best basketball court in Huanchaco, where Sean, Patrick and I (the Brozone Lair as we like to be called) like to go play with our balls- it doubles as a soccer field. Cokie is very nice, and we are both always well fed. However, somehow she and her sister came under the impression that we like to sing Madonna songs, which although true does not mean that we want to sing them in front of all of Huanchaco at a luau this Saturday. Oh boy, guess Sean and I will have to pray to our luck star about that one...

On that note, I think it is time to go work on my tan. Hasta luego...

Hola amigos! Hope everyone is doing well and that the New Year has treated you kindly. So far Peru has been awesome. The weather is significantly better than London. Warm and sunny is more my type of climate. Hopefully I’ll get a nice tan over the next couple months. Upon first impression, Lima reminds me of Beirut a bit with its close proximity to the ocean and the mountains. This is also characteristic of Freetown. However, we have not lost power on a regular basis or been subjected to extremely subpar hygienic conditions, thus the Beirut comparison seems more appropriate. Also, it is not anywhere near as blisteringly hot as Freetown. And hopefully we will not be in a potentially life-threatening car accident while in Peru.
As for the academics, we have gone to the Larco Museum and Pachacamac already. The Larco Museum featured an extensive collection of Moche pots. Many consisted of human faces, although my favorite was one of a crab demon with a human riding on its back. Also prominently featured at the Larco Museum was the erotic art exhibit. The potters apparently depicted various scenes which may not have been intended for virgin eyes. As for the use of these pots, I suspect maybe storage of chile peppers or other spices. This is of course pure speculation, and has no substantiated basis.
While we have not discovered any crystal skulls (don’t despair yet faithful readers!) we did visit our first archeological site today, Pachacamac. The ruins were at one time the temple of the sun god where pilgrimages were made by those wishing to consult with the oracle. As it turns out, the idol was apparently made of wood. Way to cut down someone’s hopes. I guess they must have been hollow promises. I mean, would you have gone out on a limb and taken the trek to Pachacamac just to talk to a wooden idol?
Nourishment has been no problem. In fact, I am barely able to finish most meals. Food is served in large quantities, more than a Moe can handle. I have dined on some delectable seafood, goat, and chicken. Drinks include bottled water, beer, and pisco sours, the official drink of Peru. The beer of choice in Peru is Cusquena. Julio, our TA, was able to help me get a free Cusquena glass from a restaurant to add to the collection. I decided to start building one last semester. So far the list consists of two Blue Moon glasses, a Starpramen one, and now a Cusquena glass.
Well, thank you for following the adventures of Indiana Moe. Until next time, gracias amigos!

Paz,
Moe