Beyond Worth It: The death of my phone and other endings

We closed our units and finished digging on Thursday with mixed emotions. On the one hand, that may have been the last time I was ever so lucky as to work on a dig, an experience which I loved. On the other, I think I could never see another mosquito or doctor fly again and be more sane for it. Clearly I'm gonna miss this. Even the monkeys came out to say goodbye by throwing poop at us again! They haven't done that since maybe the first week of excavations...

Doing some final excavation work before we began to clean up

Melody mapping. She's not even posing, honest!

So to finish a unit you have to map absolutely everything (which involves more measuring than you thought anyone would ever do) and clean the unit for photos. Once that's done, you're done! We backfill the units to protect anything we've discovered and not removed (like architecture) from the elements, and gather everything up so that we can make sense of all the data and prepare to come back next year. Oh! And you take a unit photo of course.

Op 2! That's Eric (our supervisor) and Bethany in the top row, with Sunaina, Beau, myself, and Melody on the bottom. we're sitting on the stairs we excavated.

On Friday we went to Chaa Creek, the superswanky resort where Sam did his PhD work, and ad a total blast. There were amazing swimming and poolside drinks and snacks for all! And as a treat, we got to canoe back home instead of driving. Fun!!! Even the part where our canoe capsized in a rapid and we floated down a river in the middle of the jungle until the intrepid Ali (a staff member with a penchant for being awesome) saved us. Zena and I both had our bags on us and, despite some ziplocks, my phone, her camera, and both of our notebooks were in serious trouble.
So we spent Friday afternoon with a blowdrier, trying to salvage our field notebooks (which we do turn in for a grade. Ooops!) but it all worked out. And what a good story! Especially when I remember to add the part where there was apparently a crocodile lurking prettymuch exactly where we went overboard that the canoe in front of us saw.

After many goodbyes and hours in transit, I'm back in California! I had such a wonderful time!! Who knew that I five weeks of working in the jungle would make me actually laugh at tourists impressed by a toucan, or see me completely ignoring howler monkeys as they roar? Archaeology was everything I'd hoped it to be and more--we found "cool stuff," I got to dig up part of an ancient building, and I even learned a ton about an ancient culture. Actually, the world might be a better place if everyone tried their hand at archaeology; you have to be so open-minded and flexible as new data makes you change all of your ideas every day and it's wonderful. I'll miss the people most of all. Everyone was so passionate and driven, and so adventurous! Not to mention of course my awesome unit and my amazing roomies!

Cabin 10 with our professors! Dr. Morris on the right with Marisa, Melody, myself, Zena, and Sam.

Still, I'm glad to be back.
Love you!
Elise

Day 32: Trying to find high ground

I'm sorry I haven't posted in such a long time! Internet is pretty inconvenient here, and since we're in the last week of the project we've been spending tons of time in the field trying to close our units and I've been spending all of my free time soaking in all of these amazing people. Also, my camera died, so no pictures for you. Sorry!

I have to tell you, we've been making some pretty exciting finds at the site lately. Apparently it's like the Murphy's Law of archaeology that you find the coolest stuff in the last few day's, and it's SO TRUE. I felt like such a true archaeologist today as we were lying on our stomachs reaching into a trench, excavating artifacts with dental tools and paint brushes.

Today was pretty exciting because it rained insanely lots. We had about fifteen people catching water and bailing out our unit and it still got totally flooded. I ran outside to fix the tarp and was instantly soaked. It was pretty funny though because after we had secured the unit we all crowded around the fires (which we burn to keep mosquitoes away) in the rain to get warm. Warm is, of course, a relative term since I'm pretty sure it wasn't actually lower than 75 degrees. Which is cold when you've acclimated!

Anyways, I'll try to be more frequent with the blog posts, sorry!
Love you,
Elise

PS check out our weekend awesomeness below!

Day 30: The most fun project expedition ever!

Yesterday we took the last (sad!) of our project excursions, and it was amazing! We visited the ancient Maya site of Caracol, which is one of the most powerful Maya sites and likely responsible for the Tikal Hiatus...which means they, maybe with the help of another site, Calakmul (I'm sure that spelling is wrong), actually defeated and ruled over Tikal for about a hundred years. So they're important. Caracol is actually the largest site in Belize, and both of our professors actually excavated there when they were students, which makes it really cool to take a tour of the site from them. But more on that later. We did so many other awesome things!

The ride getting there was half the fun. Caracol is about two hours south of San Ignacio, and the roads to it run through natural and archaeological reserves and are generally unpaved. Actually, they're bad enough that we couldn't even take our intrepid schoolbus, which has been through a lot going to the site every day. Which meant we rode all the way there in the back of pickup trucks! It's definitely not the tidy way to travel--between the dirt road dust and the rain we got pretty filthy--but it is by far the most entertaining. Most Belizean trucks have a frame built into the bed so that you can stand up behind the cab or hold on to bars along the outside edge. If you ever find yourself in such a truck, stand. It feels like you're riding the world's fastest skateboard or something. Combine that with bracing yourself for bumps and dodging vines and branches and you have yourself a really good time. We swashbuckled.

Caracol itself was, of course, incredible. The coolest part is that there were a TON of well-preserved monuments at the site, complete with glyphs and iconography, so we can actually know relatively a lot about the site. Picture time!

Climbing to the top of one of the temples. We look like ants!

In a collapsed room. There were also excavated tombs and things, which was super cool!

After Caracol, though, was the best part. Sam and Dr. Morris took us to the Rio Frio cave, which was INCREDIBLE. It's basically one giant cavern, but when I say giant I mean that movie theaters could probably fit inside of it. Plus, water runs through it, and it's gorgeous, and I loved it. But none of my pictures came out at all, so you'll have to imagine.
THEN, they took us to these amazing waterfall things that were actually basically natural waterslides that were SUPERFUN and AWESOME and can only be described through pictures.
Love you!
Elise

Day 32: More Excavations and Visiting Aguacate Dos!

About two weeks ago I told you about a new, larger site that our directors discovered (well, they were the first from our group to find it) while surveying the area nearby our site. As it turns out, that site, named Aguacate Dos after our original El Aguacate, actually has larger buildings than our current site. And we finally got to go visit it yesterday!
The site is off the road to the left there (or south, if you care), about 30 meters into the jungle. I features your usual plaza (it's so much bigger than ours!) surrounded by structures that currently look like very pyramidal mounds of dirt (also bigger). The major difference between this site and ours? It was looted. And when I say looted, I mean LOOTED. There is a full picnic table, barbecue, and lights set up there that the looters very possibly used while they dug the biggest looter's trench I have ever seen. Observe:

Looters usually trench into the sides of temple-type buildings in hopes of finding burials rich with artifacts, etc. This one is actually pretty clearly done by inexperienced looters for a number of reasons. Let's take a look with another picture:
Do you see Beau all the way down there at the bottom? See how HUGE this thing is? Now think about the fact that this thing is dug into the side of a thousand-year-old structure. It can and will collapse at any moment. They're actually really lucky it didn't collapse on them.

This isn't all bad though--thanks to that trench, we can see that this building was built in nine layers, because you can count the floors up the profile of the trench. Also, there's evidence of a paleo-indian structure at the very bottom. Those two things tell us that this site was in use for a very long time. It's pretty cool to know all of that stuff right off the bat, even if it does mean the total mangling of a building.

And then I waxed artsy! This is a tree that tops another structure at Aguacate 2.
Love you!
Elise

Welcome to Flores!

The view across the lake on the bridge into Flores. So pretty!

When we weren't off adventuring in Guatemala, we based our adventures out of the very cute but very touristy island (in the middle of a lake) town of Flores. It's actually a really cool place from my current perspective because the island is actually the site of the Maya people's last stand against the Spanish during colonization. Nowadays it's filled with fun spots, bright colors, and tourists. Definitely a fun place to spend a weekend. OH! and since we were in Guatemala I finally got to bust out my Spanish and it was so much fun!!! I am way less rusty that I remember, and really had very few problems. Yayy!The view from our hotel balcony

We stayed in a really fun hotel (there were 20 of us) for two nights and had a great time. Between all the other people, the nightlife, the shopping, and the lake, there was a ton to do. The funny part was, I know that things were all overpriced thanks to all the Gringos, but with the 7.8 Quetzales to a Dollar exchange rate, I still managed to stay pretty far away from broke. And, added bonus, the food there made me realize how great we've got it here in Belize!Oh, and there was the coolest storm yesterday! Not that that's unusual during the wet season, of course. We got to watch as it came across the lake towards us, though, which was really cool. I think I've seen as much lightning on this trip as I had in my entire life previous.

My roomies and I decided to go swimming in the lake during sunrise this morning (don't ask me why) and it was really fun! We got up at like 5:20 and ran down to the lake. Thankfully, it never really gets lower than 70 degrees outside and the lake must have been at least 75. We swam for about 45 minutes as we watched the sun rise, and it was gorgeous. Plus, I got some beautiful (and artsy. I love!) photos.

We left at 8am for Belize, spent about an hour in the customs line, and made it back home just in time for lunch. And now I'm exhausted! We start work again tomorrow and I'm excited because it feels like forever since we've been in the field.

Love you!
Elise

Day 22: Ziplining over Guatemala!

After going to Tikal we spent the rest of the weekend at the relatively close island town of Flores (more on that later) in Guatemala. That meant we had some free time, and what better to do with that than go flying through the canopy? Ziplining it was! We took a taxi about fifteen minutes away to a natural park-type reserve where you could go ziplining, horseback riding, etc and signed up. It was so fun!I swear they copied the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland from this place. The jeep we took through the jungle WAS the jeep from the ride, only with more bumps and less seatbelts. We actually drove up and down some pretty steep terrain, so it was quite the adventure!
Once we got to the bottom of the ziplines, we suited up and headed out! Here we are, the intrepid explorers.
Climbing up to the ziplines...
It's funny, I had definitely not planned to do anything like this while out here at field school, and we felt like such tourists doing it! (We're very proud of the fact that we're here with a PURPOSE, not just being stuffwhitepeoplelike bums). But then, what trip to Central America is complete without some ziplining?

Love you!
Elise

PS scroll down, there's another post about Tikal below this.

Day 22: Tikal

As I mentioned before, a group of us headed to Tikal this weekend and it was amazing! Tikal is one of the most famous Ancient Maya sites, and features hugely tall temples, palaces, and the like. In the time of the Ancient Maya, Tikal was one of the most powerful city-states, and its influence is evident throughout the Maya area. It is definitely a huge point of pride in Guatemala, and we barely went into a room without an image of it the whole time we were there! Apparently Tikal is also featured in one of the original Star Wars movies. Something to do with Ewoks...

The Guatemalan border is only about half an hour or 45 minutes west of where I'm living, so we were able to spend the majority of Saturday exploring the site after leaving Belize at about 7am. I always love visiting sites that have been worked on for so long (Tikal has actually been being excavated since before the turn of the twentieth century) because they're such a departure from our site. As you've seen from earlier pictures, we're still trying to find the staircases of structures that are otherwise giant mounds of dirt. At sites like Tikal, however, entire plaza groups have been cleared, and you can climb the temples and explore the palaces. It's crazy to think that one day our site could be like that.We kept saying that Tikal is like Guatemalan Disneyland--it's huge (huge!), mazelike, and there are even occasional kiosks selling drinks and snacks. There are paths and walkways that can be really confusing but also really fun. They've even built ladders and stairways beside the largest temples so that you can climb them (the actual temple steps are WAY hard to climb, and far too dangerous)!

See how civilized it is? They have paths through their jungle!

And stairs! Zena demonstrates how to avoid falling through the broken ones...These are the steps built alongside of Temple V. They are soooo steep and so much fun to climb! Trust me though, the actual steps would have been much scarier.

We spent the day climbing temples and exploring the ruins. We even found some ongoing excavation units to examine with our expert eye! The whole thing was just so huge and amazing! I loved it.

Examining the other archaeologists' work
Zena, Marisa, myself, and Melody on top of Temple IV. The view is spectacular!
On top of Temple IV again! I'm pretty sure that's Temple V in the distance.
We all made our signature archaeologist poses. I chose to emulate the candid note-taking pose.

Love you!
Elise