butterflies and petrified ducks

Today Elvis and Suz and I took a short drive to a butterfly sanctuary outside of the city. For those of you that have visited ES, it's between the lava field and the volcano lake. Anyway, it was such a little treasure filled with beautiful butterflies (in all stages of development) and lots of green open space for Suzy to run! That's a treasure in itself. Suzy's favorite was called the "crying owl butterfly"...see if you see why:

a butterfly that just came out of his little home!

You can see the contrasting inside and outside of this butterfly since his wings were damaged:

a little dinosaur friend ("tenguereche")

Then, we went to an archaeological site which is close to the butterfly sanctuary...I can't believe i'd never been there before! In 1976, they discovered some houses that were buried under a volcanic eruption back in the 7th century. Think of a miniature Pompeii. Here is the description:

The ash perfectly preserved items, such as pots, even human teeth, a duck, etc. Then we walked around to see the various houses that they have excavated and it was amazing to see entire houses, ceremonial areas, even a sauna! It was interesting that all the beds in the homes were only about 5 feet long, which means that my family would have fit in perfectly back then =) Too bad there are no more indigenous people in El salvador...they were all killed in 1920 (but that's a whole different story!) It's amazing to think of how many ancient treasures are below us everyday but there just aren't enough resources to continue excavating.

One of the many pots they found:

A petrified ear of corn:

the duck!

One of the houses they have excavated:

The sauna:

The donut looking stone you see was what they used as a thermostat to alter the temperature of the sauna!

This next week I am on vacation and Elvis will hopefully have a few days, so we hope to find more treasures like this!