First Weekend

The weekend was very relaxed and I spent most of it at and around the apartment. Saturday morning, I went with Nicole and Sam to Panama Viejo, one of the earliest European settlements in Panama, and apparently also one of the colonial cities sacked by none other than Captain Morgan and his pirates. What is left of the town stretches across a two-mile corridor along the Pacific Ocean. There are a few low-lying structures that still stand how they were originally set, but most of the buildings have been reconstructed and reinforced over the past few decades. It was cool to see the old architecture and building styles, but after the walking through an old monastery at about the halfway point, it began to feel pretty repetitive. It don't think it helped that we went during the hottest part of the day - it had to have reached at least 95 F. Despite my half-assed efforts to reapply sunscreen, I also managed to burn a decent proportion of my body, though it isn't turning out to be too awful. One of the most enjoyable parts of the trip, really, was flagging down taxis for the ride there and back, negotiating prices, giving directions, and doing my best to hold a conversation. I'm still at the point where my brain doesn't seem ready to understand Spanish the first time I hear it, but once I fall into the rhythm I can do a decent job keeping up with everything.

The big event Sunday was cleaning up the apartment, which gets insanely dirty in no time flat. As I mentioned a few days back, there are construction projects going on all over the place and they stir up a ton of dust. On top of that, diesel engines go roaring through this neighborhood at all hours and in the few days that I've been here I've seen at least have a dozen trash fires. All of the resulting debris in the air comes right in through our window screens (our windows are ALWAYS open) and settles down on everything. In fact, looking from the dining table to my room, I can already see my footprints in the fine dust on our floor that Pedro just mopped yesterday. If we were to skip one of our weekly cleanings, this place would probably look like no one had lived in it for a year.

Other than a quick trip to the nearest Mini Super, I did my best to spend the day in the shade to give my sunburn a break. I'm really hoping that by the time we get going with field work it'll be mostly cleared up!

Tools of the trade

I promise that geology/paleontology posts will be coming eventually so stay tuned! Rumor has it the work permits will come through midweek, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for earlier! I can tell you that we've seen some cool specimens in the lab basement, so there's a chance I'll be finding neat stuff once we finally get out to the canal. Possibilities include sailfish (they have an incredible looking complete one) and dugongs (basically a manatee - they have a decent number of ribs and vertebrae). I've also had the chance to work on extraction of gastropods and mollusks from a football-sized chunk of sandstone. It's hard, painfully slow work! Using an illuminated magnifying glass and a small pick, I chip away at the rock (sometimes grain by grain) and far too frequently the shell will crack in the process. I started by practicing with shells that were already clearly in bad shape, and have since moved on and extracted a few without too much damage. There's one good looking mussel that's been staring at me in defiance, but at this point I'm still too intimidated to challenge it!