Travel Journal (Week 3)

05JUN2011

Santa Cruz had a soccer marathon today. It was a big day in the village, the Catholics even canceled mass (or so I was told). It is a single elimination tournament where the games consist of two short halves. They seemed to last 10 minutes, possibly 15. The top three teems take home a cash prize and the village gets a chance to raise some always much-needed cash from the concessions. I contributed a couple of beers and a barbequed chicken lunch’s worth. The soccer was actually pretty good. One of the matches going down to penalty kicks. We only stayed a couple of hours, a good part of it visiting with Kristina, who is one of the cultural anthropologists associated with the project staying in the village. I saw Joel, the Peace Corps guy who was working in Santa Cruz for a while before being given a more administrative job and moving to town (PG). It was good to be in the village on a day when we were not working at the site.

On the way back to camp the blue truck bit it again. This time it was a broken leaf spring. The power steering is only half fixed and the driver’s seat is still stuck all the way forward. Keith is going to Cleveland next weekend and will return with the parts to fix it. The leaf spring is an entirely different kettle of fish. We have to find that down here and I don’t think that is going to be very easy. The road to the village eats vehicles and I don’t know if there has been a season when all of the trucks were in for reasonably major repairs. Thankfully Bruno has trucks and vans that he can rent us in a pinch.

We were supposed to have been picking Bruno and some of his guests up to take them back after the marathon, which we ended up not needing to do. He got stuck with some people who couldn’t make it to the end of the hike they hired him to guide and had retreated to Santa Cruz from where they had no transport back to Sun Creek, Bruno’s resort. We were happy to and would have gladly brought them back had someone from his place not showed up to rescue them, so the favors go both ways and all is good.

04JUN2011

Today I made myself some breakfast from leftovers. I had intended to go to town, but they left earlier than they said and I was just getting out of bed. Brendan went off to work in the lab and by the afternoon most people were going to go to the pool. I opted out for no particular reason. I took the day to write some emails and do a little laundry. I did download my camera and went through my pictures from the project. I should get some of them saved in a format that can go in this journal, but somehow it seems like too much effort at the moment. I will just throw a nice shot of where Val is working in Group B in here and see how it goes when I upload it. I didn’t do jack squat today so I might as well at least try and see if I can get this to work so when I do nothing again I will be able to go back and just add some pictures to the journal and reminisce about things that happened earlier in my trip.

03JUN2011

Friday comes to Toledo just like it does at home. Work is not drudgery here so it is not such a sharp contrast with the weekend, but Friday does mean a couple of days off working in the field. Today work was not too exciting. I found out that the platform I was excavating is very shallow and may not have been anything more than a rise on the hilltop. There were never any well-defined edges to it and after excavating down to the bedrock it became apparent that all of the sandstone boulders I assumed were construction blocks could just have been rocks. I am sure there was a pole building on top of the little rise and it is definitely part of the plaza group, I just don’t know that it was ever a stone platform. Meh, they all can’t be exiting. After finishing the unit we set in another on an adjacent platform, this one looks built for sure, but we will see. We moved the tarp and by the time we were set up there was not enough time left in the day to bother opening the unit. Now I am back at camp and getting ready to go out to do Internet and have a few stouts.

The dynamic in camp is changing a bit. Willa went to Chicago for a wedding a few days ago, Carman arrived a couple of days ago, and Yuki just made it to camp today. Last year we stopped at the Tiki bar most days on the way home because it was at Dump where vehicles parted ways and passengers were consolidated for the short trip north on the Southern Highway to camp as Keith and other VIP types went toward town to Bruno’s where they stayed. This year the bar is not what it was last and we have not had so many people that they couldn’t all fit in the blue truck and go straight to camp so we have not stopped there much. Brendan tried to meet us there on his way to camp from PG and apparently we drove past him. Today was the firs time we stopped there since I have been in the field and just by coincidence Yuki was on the bus and saw us. She was able to get off and catch our attention. We were almost ready to head off as the bus pulled up. I think I have fallen into the routine of the UAP when a simple coincidence is a noteworthy occurrence. Sometimes I need to remind myself how cool all this is.

02JUN2011

For me today was just another day at the site. We dug; we found some pottery, chert, obsidian blades, etc., and we got a bit deeper into the structure. Clayton, on the other hand is digging in the site core at the unit I laid out a couple of weeks ago. I was sent off to dig settlement and he got to do the unit. He is down over 3 m from the surface and has found the remains of a buried building beneath the structure and plaza floor at the surface. We knew from previous excavations that there were at least three building episodes in that part of the site core, and large boulders that were used as fill in a building on the opposite side of the plaza, led me to conclude that there had been some big buildings up there prior to the construction of the ones on the surface. They just seemed too large to have been hauled up to the ridgetop simply to be used as fill. They had to have been construction blocks for earlier buildings that were being reused as fill for the later ones. It was the only thing that made sense to me. There were some other units that had buried architectural remains that hinted this was the case, but from the description Clayton has given, this seals the deal; not that it was a particularly insightful conclusion, but it is nice to be right.

The blue truck is back in action. it just blew a hose. We were fortunate that the fitting, which needed to be replaced, was available and could be flown down from Belize City this morning. It seemed dire yesterday as it sat dripping fluid on the side of the soccer pitch where we pulled it off the road. We will see if the switch we need to replace so the drivers seat will move back from its fully forward position has arrived. I think it had to be ordered from the US, so it could be a while.

01JUN2011

Today more rain came to the village. It is the rainy season as of June and it has come right on time. I went out to a new settlement group. It is nice and surprisingly it is not looted. There are four low platforms around a plaza and I am starting my excavations with an axial trench across the center of the northern building in the plaza group. We spent most of the day clearing off the vegetation to identify the corners and find the center, setting in the unit, and putting up the tarp. The rain today was heavy thunderstorms with 10–15 knot winds. Nothing crazy, but we had to do a little adjusting of the tarp to keep it from falling down. It stayed up, but we got soaked. You would think I would have this figured out by now, but no; I had the tarp set up facing the wrong way, plus we set it up too high so it will not provide sufficient shade from the sun or protection from the rain, but it is at least something. We will do a better job when we move it to the next spot, or I might take it down and set it back up the right way tomorrow morning. We have all the sticks so it wouldn’t take that long.

The blue truck, which has been named Ethula, broke down today. It has been having problems with the power steering and something blew up as we were getting ready to head home today. The power-steering fluid that sprayed out and was dripping out of the truck was black and unless I am mistaken it should be pink. We managed to limp the truck back, no small feet on the hilly, gravel road from the village to the Southern Highway. A necessity, as although the Internet has made it to Toledo, there are no tow trucks (funny world we live in). It is now at Dick’s garage and hopefully we can order the parts needed to fix it and have Adam, one of the people yet to arrive at camp, bring them down from the US. I feel for Adam, as every day there seems to be one or two things that get mentioned as something he can bring down with him.

31MAY2011

Today the rain came to the village. It was just a few short showers, not even half an inch probably, but it was something. A good sign of what is to come and enough I think that the corn will be OK for several days if it doesn’t come right away.

I found a feature in the bottom of my unit, which is a surprisingly rare event considering we are working at a densely occupied site. I thought it might be there and then gave up on it only to find out I was right after all. It was just a soft spot with a bit darker soil that had not discernable shape, we pulled back all the structure fill composing the bottom layer of the platform exposing the bedrock and I though it was just a low spot in the uneven surface of the nib (the local name for the siltstone bedrock in the area), but it turned out to be a post hole. There were thatched pole buildings on top of probably all of these platforms and I don’t know why we don’t see more post holes. My best guess is it is easier for plants to grow in them and animals to burrow through them and they end up getting destroyed over time. The only reason I found this one was because it had been dug into the bedrock. There was nothing in it, but it was still cool to find.

We finished our unit and moved on to some salvage work cleaning out a looter’s pit. There are several people in the village who still loot the site and there have been for well over 50 years. It is a problem you have to live with here. As he was digging through some fill in the bottom of the hole, Epinito found a little piece of jade. It is only polished on one side and does not appear to be shaped, but it is always exciting to find something the Ancient Maya held precious. The day before he found half of a polished stone bead. It was actually a much more interesting find, having been shaped, drilled and polished, but it was some black onyxlike stone. I am not sure what it is except that it is not jade.

30MAY2011

Monday came and went without incident. None of the rain from yesterday made it out to the site and the guys in the village are starting to worry about their corn. It will be June in a couple of days and that is when the rainy season starts so it shouldn’t be long before the corn gets a drink. I have seen it go three weeks without rain after people have planted and it gets pretty tense. Crop loss for subsistence farmers is no joke. Personally, I really like the nice dry trails, but even I am not so selfish as to not hope for rain.

The two guys I am working with this week are friend who I actually remember. I have a terrible time with names and it is bad with the men in the village who I should know, and often do, but cannot recall their names. Benancio and Epinito I do remember however-how I don’t know. We have had many interesting conversations over the last several years and I like working with them both, I actually think they worked together with me last season too.

Andy, the owner of Las Faldos, is putting in a zip line. It will go in four or five stages from platform to platform extending along, across, and back across the river for I think 500 m. Regardless of the absolute length, it will be the longest of three in Belize and should reach speeds of about 60 mph. He got is first cable strung over the weekend although it still needs to be tensioned. It is a slow process to get it done, being too hot to work most days and soon too wet. I kind of doubt I will be around when it is operational, but it is a cool addition to southern Belize. There has been all kinds of talk about it and it is good to see some cable finally up.