The first thing I learnt on going into El Cabo the first day was that the village had been prey to malaria. This distressing news I dutifully conveyed back to my supervisers and we made plans to break the news to the students, lather ourselves in deet, cancel the village BBQ planned for the end of the week and go to the local hospital for up to the minute news on malaria precautions for the region. The next day Corinne closely questioned Manolo, our informant on the matter, who again dolefully confirmed that indeed, several villagers had a bad case of malaria. He then proceeded to describe the symptoms: lack of money, boredom, in short, a general feeling of malaria…not mosquito born then? Corinne enquired, not at all, he said, and besides, the symptoms had been relieved by our arrival…clearly in El Cabo Spanish, malaria means a general feeling of malaise. We were relieved, and prescribed a dose of collaborative excavation, flirting between villagers and Dutch students, village parties and more miscommunications! I resolved to improve my Spanish and not misinterpret the one word I think I understand in a sentence.

Apart from this initial excitement, the 2 days we have had onsite have proved very productive. The mixture of old team and new students makes for quick work. We are excavating squares on the coast, refreshed by a good breeze, and with some nice finds (beads and shell adornments). As usual, I am behind the drawing table, doling out finds labels and bags and watching other people hurt their knees and backs and get covered in fine goat pooh and sand powder from the sieves. Today we had a friendly drunk visiting the site. He lolled on the fence for a while with a bottle of rum and then decided we were interesting enough to visit, climbed on the fence, toppled over the other side onto his head and stumbled over to the pit edge, where he remained, rambling on incomprehensibly at anyone troweling near enough.

More soon...especially seeing as tomorrow night we run the gauntlet of another village party!