Day 8: So I guess the Howler Monkeys know we're here...

Well we definitely brought the rain back with us from Caye Caulker! It was pouring all night long and into the morning. Good news though, our cabin is totally waterproof, yay! We were a little worried about going out into the field given the sheer volume of water coming down, but the weather actually very kindly let up in time for us to get to the site, and this was actually our first day of fieldwork where it didn’t rain on us at all. That meant that the bugs were REALLY bad today though, so there’s definitely a bright side to the rain.

I switched to an excavation unit today (for everything you ever wanted to know about excavations, see the post before this!) which was actually really exciting. I’m working on the mysterious northern mound where we have found a ton of chert flakes (bi-products of stone tool production) as well as some pottery shards (yes, it really is pronounced ‘sherds’), a platform/floor, and even a Mano (the handheld part of the Mayan version of a mortar and pestle)! That all makes for evidence that people probably lived in this structure, and gives us high hopes for future finds.

Most exciting, though, was the massive howler monkey showdown that happened in the canopy above us today. We’ve had a few monkeys chilling in the trees above our site for a while now, but they’ve generally kept to themselves. Until today! Even as we walked into the jungle today we could hear them roaring in front of us. The noise they make is incredible! It’s like if an emphysemic man was angry to the point of unintelligible roaring and it’s pretty cool. And intimidating. The monkeys quieted down once we got to the site until, after lunch, when one of the workmen was machete-ing trees west of the big pyramid and they went INSANE. The roaring was so close and so loud that everyone ran over as soon as it started to see. There were probably five monkeys in the trees above us roaring and moving about. They did look down at us a fair amount but they were also running away from this one really big howler monkey, so I really don’t know if they were fighting or feeling threatened by us. Either way, it was so cool! I took video so I’ll try to post them if they’re good.

We finally get to read some GPR data tonight! I hope we find cool things!

Love you,
Elise