Once again, I apologize for the long delay!!! It´s been way too long, but once again I was much busier than anticipated.
Quickly I´ll give an overview of what I´ve been doing and then I´ll go into more detail, though that will probably have to wait until later.
There were two weeks left in the field, from July 11 to July 23. Then Saturday the 24th I left Arequipa with four friends to travel to Puno, where we spent three days and three nights exploring the city and the lake. Saturday we walked around the streets, Sunday we took a tour of the Titicaca islands, and Monday we took a hike up a mountain and saw the city in its glorious sprawl in the basin and along the sides of the mountain. Then early Tuesday morning we took a touristic bus from Puno to Cuzco, hoping to get a tour along the way. We got into Cuzco last night, Tuesday night, really really late because a strike had interrupted our tour and set us a couple hours behind (more on this later!!! It was pretty exciting). Then all of today I´ve been exploring the city of Cuzco which impresses me despite my knowledge of its heavy emphasis on tourism.
Now some details:
The week after I last updated was just another week in the field. Nothing special really happened. We kept the same schedule every day, excavating all day from early morn til the afternoon, and then going back and relaxing until dinner, and finally collapsing into bed. We stopped playing cards at night except for one very intense card game called Nertz (courtesy of Crystal :) ) that is like solitaire if it were on speed. Then we had another weekend in Arequipa where I got brutally sunburned on one side of my body because I sat out by the pool, but it was still a great weekend for going out and experiencing the night life! The next weekend, I managed to get brutally burned on the other side, so it all evened out in the end. There are some great bars with great names that became our favorites, called Deja Vu, Frogs and Split. One of these weekends was the final world cup game and we spent the whole afternoon in a bistro bar that leaned heavily towards the Netherlands in their loyalty. I didn´t have too much of a preference which team won, but those Spaniards are BEAUTIFUL. Especially one Jesus (appropriately named).
The last week in the field was a whirlwind and was sooo much fun. On Tuesday we visited a bodega and learned about wine production and its history in our valley. Vitor was extremely important for the region and the whole colony of Peru in the colonial era because its main products were wine and aguardiente (now called pisco. The Church, powerful institution that it was, had a great need for wine and Vitor satisfied that need for the surrounding areas. It was exported all over the colony from our valley. The bodega we visited had an emphasis on tradition, so they tried to keep the production and the grapes the same as that time. This meant that the wine had a sickly vinegar taste. Apparently the Spaniards did NOT know good wine. That, and they didn't realize that the grapes they brought over from the Old World might taste a little differently grown in New World soil. It wasn´t much to my taste. But the bodega was pretty informative and created a GREAT bonding time among the students. (see below)

Then we came back to the compound, ate dinner and watched a very appropriate movie, Indiana Jones. The next night almost all of the students and a couple of the grad students camped out on our archaeological site. We were driven back to the field and we set up on the ceremonial site of Millo where the view of the sky and the valley is gorgeous. We rushed to collect firewood for the night and then got our fire going. We had made a fire circle and I toasted my tuna sandwhiches on the rocks. We sat around the fire while we talked and tried not to get too scorched by the fire. Some of the guys thought it would be funny to tell a story about a wolf they had seen around the site, but having grown up with Nathan I could spot a lie from a mile away, so I wasn´t too concerned. Thanks, Nathan, for the training ;).
The next day we were all done in the field having finished our excavations, and so we all went to the staff house and did lab work. There was a party that night, but I shall have to leave that for tomorrow because now I have to run and catch my 15 hour bus ride to Lima.
Hasta luego!!!
PS I will post pictures soon too.