Sundays are typically the team’s ‘day off’, but the term is really a misnomer…for some, at least. This is the one day each week that we don’t dive, so that our bodies can rest and expel the excess nitrogen that has accumulated over the preceding days of diving (from breathing air under pressure). It is also our house-cleaning day, which usually consumes the morning hours. After that is done, the rest of the day is each person’s to do with as they please. Some catch up on sleep, others read or email or watch videos, while some go to the beach and enjoy a swim or some lazy sunbathing. Neil and I spend most of these days in Cartagena, at the Arqua library, researching the books, catalogues, and site reports of the museum’s excellent Phoenician holdings. In the evenings, I work on the expedition journal and blog, the week’s photos, the site plan, artifact documentation, the next week’s diving roster and site work, or any number of other things that need doing.
The library of the Arqua Museum in Cartagena (photo courtesy of Museo Arqua, http://museoarqua.mcu.es/)
On this particular Sunday (July 3rd), Neil and I stopped at the Cartagena train station on the way back to La Manga and picked up Joshua Jones, a masters student from Flinders University in Australia. Josh is writing his thesis on public interpretation of archaeological sites, and is using the Bajo de la Campana shipwreck and Arqua Museum as his central case study.