Travel Journal (Week 2)

29MAY2011

It rained hard for about an hour today. It is the first significant rain I have seen since arriving almost two weeks ago. I am certain it will not be the last. The downpour was enough to wash the smoke out of the air and impart a crispness to the greenery now relieved of weeks of the soot, ash, and dust that result from swidden agriculture. The sun is back out and it sparkles across the landscape. The aptly named flamboyant trees are heavily laden with deep pink flowers, many of which now litter the ground beneath them. In the afternoon sun those that remain on the trees blaze fire-red while those below wither in the heat. The butterflies and humming birds flit about drawn to the brighter colors and freshened scents. The cacophony of birdcalls that is a continuous din from sunup to sundown seems even louder; as though they need to make up for the hour they were drowned out by the rain on a metal roof. It is only what is just off my porch, but today it seems like plenty to write about.

28MAY2011

I slept in about five hours this morning, still rising well before noon and in time to prepare myself a nice brunch of roast-beef hash and fried eggs. The bad belly is persistent, but I refuse to submit totally. If I can get it down to four short meetings today I think I will call it good. We are having BBQ at Las Faldos for dinner and I am not sure if I will make it for that, but the hash and eggs I had for brunch should get me through the day. I did not go to PG or to Big Falls Lodge to swim at the pool, although I did want to sport my new Speedo and lounge (mostly the former as I am evil). However, ignoring a problem and disregarding it are different matters entirely. ‘Tis but a short trot to my bathroom from camp, not so much from town or the pool; there may be a few matters for the minister and I to hash out before all is said and done.

Not much else is likely to be happening today. I am assuming that Foca, our favorite laundry detergent, was purchased in town and I can do some wash and that is about all I have on my plate. The bottle of scotch sitting on the table in front of me is starting to look very tempting, but I think I will wait until brunch settles to think about it. I did have a limejuice with honey and rum-for medicinal purposes of course-after brunch, but whisky during the day sound like tempting fate. A wee dram and some nice cool water in the evening does however sound particularly enticing. I don’t know what happened to the days when malaria was feared and gin and tonics were daily necessities, but they seem long in the past. I have not had gin or seen tonic water in several years down here. Kristina, who is staying in the village, said she was sick and was going to get some leaves from one of the bush doctors and chew on them to calm her stomach. She will almost certainly see better results, but I am still sticking to alcohol as a cure-all. It at least kills all the nasties in the water and I can stay hydrated as much more juice is leaving my body than under normal circumstances.

27MAY2011

Not much shaking on the excavation front today. I finished the 2x2 unit I was working on and set in a 1x2 on a nearby building platform. This one is definitely a platform. I am hoping to find sufficient evidence of domestic activity to indicate there was a house on it to connect the manufacturing activity at the opposite end of the plaza with the overall research goals of the project this year to explore settlement at the site. We will see what we will see, but I may not even excavate the unit, as I have to go back out and document the axial trench I started at SG09.

The big doings of the day, except of course for the karaoke at Las Faldos, was the meeting between the leadership groups of Santa Cruz and San Antonio to decide if we can still work out at SG09 (and adjacent SG10). There was never any real hope that the boundary issue would be resolved, but I did expect them to let us work out there. However, the San Antonio folks were well prepared and insistent that the land should be under their authority, while the people form Santa Cruz were ill prepared to offer any coherent resistance to the idea or stand up for themselves. I think they just showed up and hoped for the best. In the end the decision was that the ownership of the land was still in dispute and we would not be aloud to work there. Monday we will go out and record the extent of our excavations and backfill the units.

The other big news of the day is that the lidar survey was started. When they are done (after three days of flyovers and about six months of data crunching) we will have a topo map of the site with about 50-cm accuracy, which is pretty fucking good. I think they may have done a few runs Thursday, but there were several problems with the permits, the most serious being that one of the guys at the airport was saying that they were only aloud one takeoff and landing, not the 30 days worth that had been arraigned. I am guessing some words and paper money were exchanged and the problem was solved, but I did not hear this directly. Michael, the lidar guy on the ground here with us, is a practical man and I assume this is how he got it done. I know he expects to need to grease a few palms while working in Central America. I like him. He just kind of dropped into camp and will be with us for the five or six days it takes to complete the survey, but he fits in well with the group. Baring unforeseen complications, it will be a short one-time addition to the ever growing group affiliated with the Uxbenka Archaeological Project (UAP). I know he will probably be back in Belize next year as several projects in Cayo are writing a grant to have them come fly the areas they are working in so they can have similarly fucking awesome maps (keeping up with the Joneses you know).

For my part of today’s drama, I got the bad belly. Every year I get some type of food poisoning or other microbial nonsense that chains my ass to a toilet for a day or two. It took almost two weeks this season, but the inevitable was…well inevitable. I missed karaoke as I had a big meeting with the minister (a popular local euphemism is to have a meeting with the minister; something about paperwork I think) before and after dinner, which prompted me to stay close to my bathroom rather than go out drinking with everyone. I heard that there was more ranting and less singing than would have been enjoyable so no harm I guess. Me and the minister are fast friends now and I think it was a shrewd political move on my part to skip Friday night on the town.

26MAY2011

Today was another day at SG37. There was surprisingly no talk of the burning the day before. Tomorrow is the meeting between the leaders of the two villages. I actually doubt there will be any resolution to the boundary issue, but one never knows. It should resolve the issue of us working out there and I am cautiously optimistic it will be positive as we are technically permitted to be there by the national government and the local authorities are bound by law to respect that permit.

Today was hot, big surprise. Work went fine, but very slow in the afternoon. We found nothing much of note except some stuff that looks like fossil bone. I got several pieces in my unit and Clair got at least one in hers. It may be petrified wood, but it seems more bonelike to me, but I am no paleontologist. The structure seems to be more platformy than originally suspected, but still not totally convincing. We almost finished our 2-m by 2-m unit today and will get it done tomorrow morning. What next I do not know. OK, I do know that karaoke is on the program for tomorrow night-I am thrilled beyond expression of this prospect. And on that bombshell…

25MAY2011

My new place to work is with Clair at SG37, a pleasant 5 min. hike in from the road onto a hill top about 300 m across the ravine from the stela plaza. It was suspected to be a residential group, but there is a lot of manufacturing going on there. Clare is finding incense burners of various types that do not appear to have been used, which at this point we think may indicate that they were being made there. She also recovered a bunch of obsidian flakes. There are obsidian blades all over the place, as they were a ubiquitous tool, but flakes indicate that they were working with the raw material to shape the cores that the blades were struck off of, or at least that is the current thinking. It is not surprising that there are manufacturing areas near the site core. I think the farther away from the center of the site the more likely it is that most of what went on was farming, but near the center there was virtually certainly trade and production for trade occurring. This appears to be evidence of that, albeit preliminary.

The small structure I am digging on is barely recognizable as a structure and in fact I am still somewhat unconvinced it is a platform for a building. It probably is as it is a small raised area with a bunch of stones in it, but it is all blown out and there was just a suggestion of an edge to it along the plaza side. I am not finding anything much just a few pot sherds and a couple of pieces of chert, except for the small ground stone celt, which was cool enough to make it work working there, but nothing cool like Clair’s haul from her unit on the next building over.

On the boarder war front, people from San Antonio came out the area near where we had been working and started burning fields, a fairly aggressive statement of reproach for our encroachment on to land they want to claim as there own. Burning fields as in burning them in preparation for planting, not crop burning. The Santa Cruz folks I am working with are being tight lipped about it, but I suspect it is a hot topic around the village and this will not go unnoticed.

24MAY2011

Back to work and back to SG09 and my long hike, it is really only a little bit more than a mile, but I take a lot of water, which makes my pack heavy, it is hilly and hot, and I am really not in shape for this; whatever. It was much less difficult after a week of acclimating to the heat and a weekend at the beach. I huffed and puffed, but made it no problem.

There has been an ongoing boundary dispute between Santa Cruz, the village we work in and with, and the next village down the road (San Antonio) from which they split off of I am guessing about 50 years ago and no more than half again that. San Antonio is an older village established when the Maya fled Guatemala in the nineteenth century. It is fairly large with a population of at least a couple of thousand, maybe as many as five (fact checking is not gona be a big priority in this exercise).

Some people from San Antonio have been farming on the Santa Cruz side of the disputed boundary and that is where the part of the site I have been working at is located. Farmers from San Antonio have been coming out to our excavations and complaining that we were on their land and there has been some back and forth that I thought had been resolved over the weekend while I was at the beach. It is between the villages and we are aloud to dig where the site goes regardless. However, at the end of the day the police constable from San Antonio showed up and took everyone’s names and told us we could not work there until the matter had been settled between the villages. There had already been a meeting set up for that Friday that I only found out about when I talked to the Santa Cruz Village Chairman, who was working with me that day. The San Antonio farmers were not to overtly threatening, but they were certainly vexed by our presence and refusal to leave at the behest of local farmers who had no authority in the village. I was a bit annoyed that they kept coming out to harass us.

I was happy the cops finally showed up. The constable was most interested in this not escalating as some of the San Antonio farmers were starting to get belligerent and hostile was just below the surface. He was the only person from San Antonio with any authority that seemed willing to deal with these angry farmers. I was not that happy that he said we couldn’t work there until the meeting on Friday, but I don’t think he was up for the hour hike out there the next day when it all started over again. I can’t blame him for that.

23MAY2011

Yesterday’s dinner was great; I can’t say enough about Rum Fish. They pit together a seating for twenty-some college kids and a table of “adults” Sunday night that went off without a hitch. The food was just as good as the other four times I have been there and they serve pretty good wine. I like the finer things in life even if I am in out of the way places.

I took a day off-day off. Sometimes I am so busy having fun I don’t have time to enjoy myself. Not Monday. I got out of bed around 10:00 had a bite to eat at De Tatch after packing up and checking out of my room, leaving everything, including my computer in front office of the Sea Spray Hotel (the place I always stay in Placencia). After that I lounged on the beach the rest of the day, only taking a short walk to the store to get money put on my cell phone. I was a bit lazy in getting to the Hokey Pokey and the first boat was full and pulled away from the dock without me (much to the consternation of Doug who I was supposed to be shepherding back to camp via public transportation). The brought another boat and took me and the other ten people that didn’t get on the first boat over to Mango Creek and I caught up with him at the bus stop; no big whoop.

Travel Journal (Week 1)

22MAY2011

For me, Placencia diving means Splash Dive. Patty is great and she runs a great dive center. She and her staff always go above and beyond. Today I went on a whale shark dive with Keith and Doug. Prince, a dive master I have gone out with for several years now, was in charge of the dive and all went smoothly and was fun. There was not much to see on the first dive, but they are blue water dives so there are not many reef fish and whatnot about, just whale sharks and huge shoals of snappers. The snappers spawn and the sharks feast. We did see a whale shark though and a few snappers, not even a dozen. It was cool, as you never know if you will see one at all. The second dive we found a huge shoal of snappers. Prince said there were easily more than 10,000. The basic game is to find the snappers and stay above them and hope some of the whale sharks come up to feed while you are there. I wish a bunch had, but only one did. The literature says that most of the sharks in this area are young solitary males and the two we saw were no more than 40 ft long. The can get to 60 ft or more. I have done dozens of reef dives so I figured I would take a shot and see if we could get out and dive with some sharks and it paid off.

As well as the whale sharks there was a snapper that had been hooked and broke the line swimming with the school that we rescued. I am not sure if the bull shark that showed up at the same time we ran across it was looking for it or us, but it kept its distance and once we let the snapper off the hook the bull shark swam off into the blue. It was big and cool to see, but I was happy that it was a short encounter; they have a reputation for being aggressive and dangerous.

Last night we had dinner at Rum Fish, which was excellent and a nice night out with Clair, Ethan, Doug and Keith. Tonight we are going back with a bunch (20ish) of USC students. It will be pretty zooy, but I will have fresh whale shark adventures to regale the kids with. The food is excellent, I had poached fish with onions and peppers and a nice eggplant side. It rocked, I am not sure what I am up for this evening, but I know it will be good.

Tomorrow it is over to Mango Creek on the Hokey Pokey and the bus to Big Falls. I am sure I will get shit for missing work on Monday, but I think everyone knows that they will be having a better time than me. For now, I am sitting at De Tatch, inches from the sand, feet from the see, and worlds away from the cares of the world.

21MAY2011

Palm fronds rattling in a stiff onshore; Belizean Creole spoken in a thick accent by a couple of women enjoying a Saturday afternoon a few chairs down the beach; the rhythmic crash of small, wind-blown rollers on the sand; salt on my lips and the coolness of wet clothes against my skin after a swim; no sweat, no stress, no where to be, no things to get done; Placencia.

20MAY2011

I went back out to the settlement group I worked in my first day. We cleared off tree small structures, laid out a 1-m by 6-m axial trench, put up a tarp over the excavation unit, and got through most of the first level of excavation. The buildings are small (4 m to 5 m on a side) and little more than a jumble of rocks on the surface. There was not much in the first level; maybe a dozen small sherds of pottery and a small chunk of chert. You never know, but it is unlikely that anything spectacular will come out of the small house mounds in the settlement portions of the site. They were mostly just farmers that were living there.

The fifth annual Toledo Cacao Fest wine and chocolate party kicked off the weekend celebration at a seaside hotel in PG Friday night. It was a swanky affair with plenty of wine and chocolate for all. I was not in a particularly social mood for whatever reason, but I still managed to enjoy myself. Lots of the townsfolk turned out in their finest, although it seemed decidedly like a gringo-fest rather than a local shindig, but what you going to do. Confections seemed the mainstay of the chocolate theme, as well they should, but there was an interesting cacao wine made from the slimy stuff around the beans when they are fresh in the pods. It was sour and a bit citrusy and fairly enjoyable, but didn’t have much chocolate in the background. There was also some cacoa liqueur, which I avoided. There was a good fireworks show at the end too, but a chunk of one of the misfires hit Amy in the face. No damage, but a little scary.

19MAY2011

I worked in the site core today. It was a much easier hike, which was a good thing on such a hot day. I think all the days are going to be extra hot, which I guess means they are not extra, but just regular hot. I had a crew of guys from the village clearing off the side of a building next to one of the ball courts at the site (pictures were taken, but I am too lazy right now to figure out how to add them). The opposite side of the building has some of the best intact architecture at the site (yah yah, pictures; whatever). The side I was working on appears to be totally blown out. A few days of excavation should get that figured out.

Excitement for the day was some border dispute action involving a few young punks from the next village down the road who were all in a huff about some work that was allegedly done in land for San Antonio, but all that know the score seem to be sure is actually for Santa Cruz and the kids are just causing trouble without any real cause. Someone from Santa Cruz, the village where the site is located and who the project has been working with for the last seven years, is going to go talk to the Alcalde in San Antonio tomorrow to get it straightened out.

Don, Becky, I had a nice visit after work, although it was a bit short as showing was needed badly after my day in the field. She is the lead cultural anthropologist on the project and I wish she could spend more time, but she has a new baby and is all about raising her kind. Becky is great and I always regret not paying more attention to what her research is. At least she was here long enough to buy me a couple of beers. I had hoped to return the favor this evening, but she ended up stuck ate Jimmy and Fancisca’s because Jimmy tore apart the front seat of the truck to see if he could get it to slide back. Electric connivances on vehicles don’t stay convenient very long in Belize and the switch moving the seat back and forth is stuck with the seat all the way forward. He couldn’t fix it, but at least he tried. I will just have to catch up with Becky more the next time I see her. She is leaving tomorrow and won’t be back until August when I won’t be here.

18MAY2011

First day in the field started with a 5:00 AM alarm, which I was awake to hear. I was glad I had taken the time to unpack and get my field gear together so I just had to get dressed and fill my water bottles. I went down to camp where people were still waking up and made some breakfast; scrambled egg sliders with cheesy salsa eggs on left over diner rolls with a bit of greens and tomato from last night’s diner salad (salads are a treat and I was lucky to have some). We drove off to the field and I steeled myself for the jarring ride down the very rough road back into the Maya villages from the Southern Highway. It is now under construction, which will improve the road and even half built is an improvement, it made my stomach turn to see construction start. I have known it was coming since the beginning of the project in 2005, but somehow hoped Belize would screw it up and they would put the Pan-American Highway through Cayo and the Belize Valley. The road through the villages now ends at the boarder and while locals cross illegally on foot, there is no vehicle traffic; it is a road to the villages. Now it will be a through road with an official border crossing and traffic and development will change everything in Toledo. I have written enough culture histories to know with improved transportation comes wholesale change. I don’t begrudge the Maya their chance to get a better crack at the world and move away from subsistence farming. It is coming road or not, but the dust and machinery just seem to make horrifically real what I was able to pretend was not inevitable as my kidneys took the beating on that so familiar stretch of rough road.

Excavations were nothing spectacular. It was a long hike and coming back out to the road about did me in. I sat the truck with the AC on and had a hydration packet and the nausea soon passed, just to return as we drove out through the construction. My legs are sore and I am glad I have been reassigned to a different part of the site. I liked working with Clayton of Boarder Taco fame. He wrote a poem about a bad taco experience coming back across the border from Guatemala to Belize, which was later set to music a performance of which ended up on YouTube and facebook. It is good to see him return to the project, but the hike up the farmer’s road to Group B in the Site Core is much more manageable in this heat. After a week or so I will be fine, but it was a tough first day hike.

17MAY2011

Got up and decided to try and do a travel journal. I don’t actually have high hopes for it working out, but what the fuck. Donna is not up and I kept my computer on to chat with her before heading off to see if I can’t actually get to Belize today. So here I sit, stale hotel coffee in hand writing about yesterday and contemplating today’s adventure. I have no idea how I will be getting to camp from Belize City. Presumably my ride left yesterday with everyone I was supposed to be meeting there and I am on my own to make arrangements. I know how to get there and several routes I can take. However, there is also the significant obstacle of getting past Placencia, which is on the way-oh so temptingly on the way. The Siren call of the beach has sucked me in on every previous trip. I know that there would be time to fly there stick my feet in the sand and eat something then catch the Hokey Pokey water taxi across to Mango Creek and catch the bus to camp. We will just have to see how the day progresses.

I made it to Belize and caught a nonstop to Punta Gorda (PG), circumventing the Placencia conundrum, and of course had a few Belikins at Jets. Jet is a tiny man, who with his son runs a small bar in the airport. It has been there since I first came through and will probably survive me. A place of some local renown, he serves cold beer, strong drinks, and bad bar food to the gringos passing through to other destinations in Belize or heading home. After a brief stop in PG I took the local bus to Big Falls and arrived at camp just in time to watch the truck leave about an hour and a half early to come get me. Much hugging and catching up ensued.

Don is a curmudgeon’s curmudgeon and a hell of a guy. He has provided space for researches in Southern Belize for going on half a century now. A British ex-pat, former liaison with the Maya Indians in Toledo for colonial government, retired citrus farmer, ardent do-gooder hater, it is always great to see him again when I get here. I stay at his house, which it just up the hill from camp, as we have known each other for fifteen years or so. He runs it as a guesthouse for friends mostly now I think. I gladly pay him the meager sum of $50.00 a week. Having my own bathroom is more than worth the price of admission and putting a bit of extra money in his pocket good.

I got my phone working, found that high-speed Internet was at one of our favorite local bars, which had reopened after closing for a couple of years, contact with home was secured, beers were had, more catching up ensued and then dinner and to bed after a discussion of the merits and drawbacks of screening dirt with respect to efficiency and archaeological rigor. Sleep came easily.

16MAY2011

Got up very early, snarfed leftover frittata from Sunday brunch; a potato-heavy, bacon and horseradish cheesy delight that sat in my stomach like led in a good way as I figured on little food options for quite a while. Turned out the early start was a bit later than it should have been, but I made it to the gate in time and was off. Just before getting to Miami the captain announced that if we looked off to the left of the plane, fortunately the side I was on at a window, we could see the space shuttle taking off. It was the first launch I had ever seen live and although seeing it from that vantage point was cool, it was way more cool than spectacular-mostly because it was way fucking cool! The canceled flight to Belize City on the other hand was neither cool nor spectacular.

I wasted the rest of my day contacting the friends I was supposed to meet to get a ride to camp with. Facebook worked surprisingly well. I shot off a group message and before I could send an email to Keith, who I was pretty sure would not get the message through facebook, I was getting responses. Keith even got back to me although he did insist I contact him by phone in the future, as Internet access in Toledo can be problematic and is spotty at best.

Sadly I must say that I wasted my night in Miami sleeping. I took a nap, got some Pizza and beer while hanging out at the hotel bar. The pizza was surprisingly good along with the equally surprisingly Yuengling that was available, chatted with Donna, and pretty much just hit the sack after deciding that the two days I spent in South Beach about a decade ago for Art Deco weekend was a sufficient experience of the place. Had I decided at that point to try and do a travel journal I probably would have made more of an effort to, well travel around a little and find something to write about.