More Success!!!

David has only one camera still in place in the jungle.  He plans on collecting that one on Monday. None of us can believe we have to leave next Wednesday...  These images were on the camera he took down last week.  David has been going out with the crew that hauls water for washing dishes and bathing.  While they pump water from the river he investigates nearby "aguadas" or watering holes. He has placed cameras where he has seen footprints of animals he was hoping to capture "on film".  These two images are from an aguada that the workers here call "Los Loros" (The Parrots).  David saw puma and tapir tracks there. And he captured images of both.  We all knew his method was sound.  Still, I told him he is either the luckiest twelve year old in the world or this jungle is FULL of animals.  David is already formulating plans for his 2014 research year.

Jungle Perks

One of the advantages of living in the jungle is that you get to swing on vines. It is at least as fun as it looks.  While doing it one feels a little bit monkey, a little bit Tarzan.  And almost everyone yells: "Oooooohhhhhhhooooooohhhhhooooohhhhhh!"  You just can't help it.  

Food Chain Interference

We didn't actually want to interfere with the food chain, but while I was taking close up pictures of the snake trying to drag the frog away, the boys and I must have spooked the snake because it released its prey and slithered away.  The frog immediately jumped onto Cenzo's leg.  It seemed like the frog thought it camouflaged against Cenzo's pants. The snake went quickly up the nearest tree and into the roof of a champa (a champa is a pole and thatch hut).  The boys just love it when the jungle interrupts their daily activities with curiosities like this. So do Bill and I.

Jungle Insects: Familiar, Just Bigger

This jungle is full, and I mean FULL of interesting bugs.  Some of them are quite beautiful and some are very menacing.  And sometimes they look just like bugs we have in the New England, but much bigger.  This one found it's way into Bill's office yesterday.  David put his hand next to it for scale.  I have seen locusts down here that are bigger than this, but this is a decent size for a grasshopper.  Here this kind is called an "Esperanza" and when you see one you get to make a wish.

ZIPLINE

So... Giancarlo got a Zipline for Christmas.  He waited and waited for our time in the jungle so we could put it up.  I am sorry I am just getting around to posting about it, because all of camp has been enjoying it for more than a month now.  Even putting it up was fun, hard work, but fun.  One end had to be over 20 feet off the ground and the other end at least 10ft off the ground.  Well, we didn't have a ladder that tall.  So, as you can see below, we used the ladder we did have, and then Eddie stood on Matteo's shoulders while Adan held the ladder.  The second pictures shows that it still wasn't high enough so Eddie had to shimmy up alone to loop the cable around the tree.  At the other end of the zipline it took a group of people to pull the cable tight.  But it wasn't tight enough.  In the end we had to pull it with the Landrover.  Nice driving, David!  The whole process involved a lot of giggling and a fair amount of bracing for disaster.   The final result can be seen in the smiles of our boys who by now have ridden it alone, together, backwards, forwards, at night, with balloon wings (my birthday) and with Coca Cola bottle jet packs. Bill has ridden it. I have ridden it.  Just about every single person in camp has ridden it, as well as almost every visitor.  It is wonderful fun for everyone.  Now we can't imagine camp without it.

Look - A Baby Fox!

On Saturday the family got to go visit the site of Xultun.  It is 12 kilometers from San Bartolo by bad road.  Most of the team is working there, but the trucks are crowded, so we don't get to visit much. We love to catch up on current excavations, but we aren't allowed to take pictures...  so Look! A baby fox!  This is one of two babies living in this hollow log with their mama.  The hollow log is right behind one of the buildings being excavated. I hope you can blow the image up to full screen on your computers, because this little pup is beyond adorable.

Visitor!

Last week my dear friend, Kristin Rasmussen, came to visit.  Kristin and I went to high school and college together.  Over the years we have visited or traveled with Kristin in Boston, New York, Santa Fe, San Francisco, Monterey... and outside the US in London, England; Antigua, Guatemala; and Cancun, Mexico.  Now she has come all the way to San Bartolo.  Kristin arrived on a Tuesday and showered us with gifts of Nutella and other chocolates, as well as plenty of Sour Patch Kids, or "SPK's" as the boyos call them.  Kristin got to see the murals here at San Bartolo, as well as walk around at Xultun.  We took several other walks in the jungle and saw plenty of monkeys and birds.  I don't want to put words in her mouth, but I think she thought it was pretty fabulous here.  Kristin had to hitch a ride out with the supply truck, which leaves at 2 am on Saturday morning. Of course, around 9 pm Friday night we realized we hadn't taken any pictures together during her visit - we were too busy walking and talking and just hanging out.  We all piled into Bill's hammock, and giggling, took the last minute photo below.  Thanks for coming, Kristin!!!

David, Kristin, Giancarlo, Cenzo, & Jaime

March16th 2012

Success!!!

Yesterday was a great day!!!  Back on February 22nd, David put up two of his wildlife motion capture cameras at the river when he hiked out with Don Nato.  Using a tree that had fallen very conveniently, they had crossed the river to explore its opposite shore. In one spot David saw both tapir and jaguar tracks.  He decided to put his cameras up around there.  Yesterday he went back for the second time to see if there were any images to download.  There were.  The first time he had checked there were some pictures of pacas (also called agouti) and some yellow-knobbed curacao. ( Due to internet congestion, I haven't as yet been able to upload those photos.) Yesterday's images also included birds and pacas... but the last three images were the ones below.  As David said: " It takes intelligence to find these elegant and majestic beasts, but its mostly just luck."  

Jungle Sidewalk

As I have mentioned, it has been really wet here.  There is a path between two champas that are right in front of our family's tents.  This is the path where most people walk to get to their tents.  Over the several days of rain the mud there became inches deep and very slippery.  Cenzo and I decided to make a rock path over the worst part.  With the help of Gustavo (Cenzo's Spanish tutor), Omar (one of the semester abroad students) and, of course, a rock or two carried by Giancarlo, we made a sidewalk.  We collected chert, which is a rock that is everywhere here.  It is the material the Maya used for making some of their tools, as it flakes to make sharp edges.  Cenzo placed the chert and mortared it in with the mud - and the bajo mud will set like concrete.  And then we covered it with caliza, which is the dirt excavated from the limestone shelf that is everywhere under our part of the jungle (it is quarried  for use in restoration and reinforcements in parts of the archaeological excavations).  This also helped to set the stones.  It looks great and has worked wonderfully.

Mud Soccer

When it is really, really wet and muddy and you are running out of work you can do in the lab, and you are sick of sitting in your tent or under the champas...you play mud soccer.  It is fiercely competitive and ridiculously fun.  The ball gets so muddy and sticky it won't go anywhere.  You can chip it, but it is so heavy with mud that it doesn't go very far and as soon as it hits the ground it is stuck where it lands.  And though the mud is sticky on the ball, the ground is very slippery.  We all spent a plenty of time on our rear ends.  I was showering Giancarlo when the game ended (he got itchy and uncomfortable as the mud dried on his back), so I didn't get the final result.  I am pretty sure the mud won.

Still Raining

After I wrote, we had a few days of sunshine, but it has been raining here since Sunday.  Everything is wet, wet wet.  Our clothes are wet and muddy, our shoes are wet and muddy.  Even things that haven't actually gotten wet feel kind of wet.  Usually we spend only sleeping hours in our tents, but there is just no where to go when it is raining. One is under a champa or in a tent.  Life is just much harder here when it is raining.  That is why archaeologists work in the dry season.  Well, this year, it seems like they are working in the wet season.

Today Bill and David leave camp to try to get to the airport in Guatemala City tomorrow.  Bill is taking David to a soccer tournament with his Bolts team in Richmond, VA.  Originally they were going to leave tonight at 10 pm.  Now because they have no idea how bad the road out of here might be they are leaving at 8 am right after breakfast.  When the road is dry and in good shape it takes about 2 1/2 hours to get out of the jungle to a paved road. I hope to hear from them when they get out, and I hope it isn't too awful.

Long Time, No Post

The internet has been so congested with all the people in camp.  We have had a great week in camp.  Cenzo and David came back from their hiking trip with Don Nato safe and sound.  They made it to the river and on the riverbank David was able to identify both tapir tracks and jaguar tracks.  Cenzo swears he woke up in his hammock that night and heard and then saw a tapir nosing around.  David stopped Cenzo from stepping on a coral snake. He took a picture with his iPod, but it was blurry, so I won't post it here.  They were both covered, and I mean covered, in tick and mosquito bites.

Since their return it has rained. It rained all night Saturday night, and it has rained either in the afternoon or at night almost every day since then.  So far it is the buggiest season I have experienced, because of the still present standing water.  But, it is a rain forest, so even though we are supposed to be in the dry season, it gets to rain whenever it wants.

We are getting settled here in the jungle.  Our tents are all set up and excavations began on Monday.  This morning Cenzo and David packed their hammocks and some buffalo jerky in their backpacks and left for their first overnight away from camp with Don Anatolio and their new spanish teacher, Gustavo.  For those of you who might not be familiar with Don Nato's name, he was with Bill when Bill discovered the murals here at San Bartolo.  He went out into the jungle and found a fruit called "pinuela" when Bill was passing out from dehydration, probably saving his life.  Prior to working with Bill, Don Nato worked with Ian Graham for decades finding and documenting Maya monuments and inscriptions here in the Peten for the Maya Corpus of Hieroglyphic Inscriptions at Harvard University.  Beginning in 2010 he has been taking Cenzo and David out for long walks to teach them how to be in the jungle - which plants are edible, and which animal tracks are which, how to find your way home.  Today they are hiking out to the river 7 1/2 miles away to put up two of Davids wildlife cameras.  You wouldn't know it by looking at him or watching him work but Don Anatolio is (at least) 76 years old.  He has been working in this jungle since he was fourteen. I love that he is teaching David and Cenzo who are twelve and thirteen.

FINALLY - THE JUNGLE!!!

Happy Sunday everyone!  We are finally here.  We got in Friday night just before dark.  We packed up our trucks in Flores on Friday morning, headed through Tikal, stopped in Uaxactun for one last cold drink and set out to tackle the 55 kilometers of "camino en mal estado" that lies between Uaxactun and our camp at San Bartolo.  The first time people tried to go in to set up camp one truck burned out its clutch stuck in the mud, and the other truck burned out the motor on its winch trying to get it out.  The second team to go in , all got in, but it took four days.  We were told that we might be hiking in with a mule train, but thankfully, by Friday, it hadn't rained for a week.  It was a bumpy, slippery, muddy ride - but we made it.  Our hammocks are up.  The stars are magnificent.  The birds are singing, whistling, screeching and squawking.  It smells like trees, leaves, flowers and earth.  It feels like home.  here are some pictures of the ride in.

The journey to the jungle begins...

It is Sunday morning.  Today we go to Copan. We have been packing at the lab like crazy - equipment personal items, food... The big truck comes today and will leave for camp tomorrow.  After visits to  Copan and Quirigua we will meet the rest of the team in Flores on Wednesday, see Tikal on Thursday and head in on Friday.  As of now it is unclear whether we are going to try to drive in or if we are hiking in with a mule train.  It has continued to ran, and last week trucks weren't making it in.  I can't post photos of everything stacked up in the parqueo this morning, because the internet is too slow to upload them and and things are too hectic to wait - gotta pack up the computers.  I will try later this week.

More Monterrico

Releasing the baby sea turtles is definitely a highlight of visiting Monterrico, but even getting there is fun.  About six or sven years ago they built a bridge, so one can actually get all the way there by car.  We prefer to go the old way, which is car barge.  You just drive your car, pick up, bus or whatever onto a rickety flat bottom boat, and a small outboard motor gently pushes you through more than 5 kilometers of mangroves.

Monterrico

We have been out of email contact, by choice, for several days.  We took the Boston University Semester Abroad program to Monterrico on the Pacific coast of Guatemala.  Although Monterrico has beautiful mangrove forests full of great white herons and amazing volcanic black sand beaches, the first pictures I want to post are of the "Liberación de Tortugas." The beaches of Monterrico are nesting grounds for endangered sea turtles.  The Guatemalan government has begun to try to help them survive by using donations to buy turtle eggs from locals who otherwise include them in part of their diet.  They incubate and hatch the eggs in a sequestered part of the beach and then allow people to sponsor them.  The sponsors get to release a turtle to the sea, protected from dogs, birds and ATVs.

Boys at Posada Santiago

I couldn't resist adding some more photos from our weekend. These are pictures of Cenzo, David and Giancarlo enjoying their time at our favorite hotel up at the lake, Posada de Santiago. I can't seem to control the order of photos as I post them, often in the post preview they are in one order and then when the post is published they are in another. So I will just tell you that in one David and Giancarlo are playing in front of the fireplace in our room, wrapped up in the new Guatemalan blankets we bought in Solola (another highland town); in another they are playing instruments in the hotel dining room (David is on the turtle drum); one more has the boys enjoying the sunrise from the wood fired hot tub overlooking the lake; and in the last Giancarlo is pictured on the boat that takes us across the lake to Santiago Atitlan from Panajachel. Lucky us!

Lake Atitlan

This weekend we went back to one of our favorite places in Guatemala, Santiago de Atitlan. It is in the mountainous highlands of Guatemala. The days are warm and sunny, the mornings are misty and cool. If you walk down to the Lake around sunrise you can see local fishermen in their cayucos (small, canoe-like boats) starting their day's labor. The Lake itself is a caldera filled with water, in some places 1000 feet deep. It is surrounded by several dormant volcanoes that provide incredible views, and very fertile soil for local farming. It is breathtakingly beautiful.

Season 2012 Begins

We packed all weekend and said good-by to friends and family. On Monday morning January 23rd, the taxi came to pick us up and bring us to Logan Airport to start our journey to Guatemala. It was a long and tiring day. Cenzo and David ad plenty of time with their ipods in the airport, while Giancarlo had fun with his pocket sized remote control tank. We arrived in Guatemala City at 11:30 pm. Our friend, Boris, was waiting to pick us up, and he brought us to Antigua, where we arrived at 12:30 am. We were exhausted, but we got to wake up in beautiful Antigua!