Belize, Again!
In June of this year, I was lucky enough to have the chance to head back to Belize for two weeks! The project director of the Maya archaeological site of Alabama, Dr. Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown, was gracious enough to let me come and volunteer for a week. There was six of us for the first week. This is the same project that I was at last year, for a field school for University. We headed to a Belize Archaeology conference the week after.
I flew in on a Saturday. It was a long day of travel, I started at midnight in Calgary, flew to Toronto, then to Belize city. From Belize city, I took a Cessna EX Grand Caravan to Dangriga with Maya Air. It only cost about $68 USD, and I would definitely recommend it, if you can make it work! The views alone were worth it.
Exhausted as I was, the first night there, we went to a Maya de-haunting. Definitely a new experience for me! Our friends that we stay with brought down healer, and they sacrificed a turkey, to rid a house of the weird vibes that it’s had for a while. We stayed up till 2am drinking to bring good feelings to the area.
The next day, we headed to Placencia for lunch, taking a boat there. After, we met Dr. Geoff Braswell at Nim Li Punit and he gave us a personal tour of the site.
It was a lovely time, and it was great to the behind-the scenes look at a different Maya site in the area. Geoff also showed us their home base and lab, and they have so much more ceramic than we do at Alabama. Not to mention they found the renowned Ik jade pendant.
I spent the next six days working at the Alabama site, mostly just drawing an excavation map of the building in the monumental core that we were excavating. I spent one day in the lab (because I accidentally slept in and missed everyone leaving). Although we were working hard, we still had time to head to Hopkins one night for dinner and some drinks.
Belize and Surinam have struck up a partnership, where Belize is teaching Surinam some of their methods for archaeology, and Surinam is teaching some tactics for historic research. So two archaeologists from Surinam and one of the Belize archaeologists came to site for three days to share knowledge. They were lovely, and we had a great time getting to know them!
We left them, and Dave on Saturday, and then the five of us headed to San Ignacio on Sunday. They rented a lovely Airbnb that we stayed in for the week. Everyone was working on their papers for the conference, so I mostly did my own thing. On Monday, I went on a tour to the Maya site of Caracol, and some of the surrounding caves.
On Tuesday, I just hung around and walked around town, and we went out for dinner at a friend’s restaurant on Tuesday night. The Belize Archaeological Symposium started on Wednesday, and it was really interesting to hear the research being done in Belize this year, and to be able to network a bit, even if I might not end up doing Maya archaeology in Belize at the end of all this. I was a little bored for some of it, and ended up doing a fair amount of doodling in my little notebook.
On the last night, the Friday, there was a big party, and I had a great time. I danced a bunch with my new friend Gabriel, and managed to get an hour of sleep before taking the 3am shuttle to the Belize city airport to go home.
All in all, I had a great time, and I’m very thankful that I had an opportunity to head back (and to add some volunteer work and another conference attended to my CV!). When I got home, I was exhausted, but happy, and had to head back to work the next day, unfortunately. Maybe I’ll even be able to go back again, next year!!
Till next time, adios!
