We're off to San Borja today to visit the mission and environs. We'll post more when we return this evening.
We just returned from San Borja. There is lots of activity out there as the renovation of mission seems to have been shifted into high gear. For the last two years there was one man, with occasional workers who helped him, doing the work. This year, he is gone, and there is an entire crew of workers making doors, windows, and replacing the stone blocks of the building. The mission still has a long way to go before the renovation is complete.
For those who have been there, the family that lives next to the mission is still there, but unlike the last two years, now has complete access to the mission buildings and surroundings. They still accompany you pretty much wherever you go around the mission, sort of the self appointed guides to the area.
As the artists were painting and the students who did not have hiking-type shoes on stayed around the mission and caught up on their journals (time is running short!), several of us hiked up to *la cueva mascara,* the mask cave where the Cochimi shamans would light fires from the inside, thus showing their powers to their people. It's a completely off-road hike--lots of cholla, pitalla, and other sticky things that must be avoided. We managed to get up and down without too many wounds, although I am apparently now going to be known as *Dr. Cholla* as I managed to slide across one as my footing gave way, thus requiring the extraction of several of the spines with the always handy leatherman-type pliers. The irony of course was that I had just bragged to several students that I had broken out a nice, clean t-shirt for the day, that is now full of the tiny leftover cholla spines, blood, dirt, etc. I think I'll just retire the t-shirt. But, it was a great hike and everyone enjoyed it, probably more so because of my slide--actually two slides, the second not involving sticky things--on the slopes.
