You Better Belize it

Yeah, that pun wore out the first day, but I thought you'd all still enjoy it. I wanted to post some photos today, but I forgot my flash drive back at camp so that will have to wait until next week.

For those of you who know my love of squash, I found some when we were picking limes and oranges yesterday. I think squash was first domesticated in Mesoamerica so it's only right that I experience this delicious food down here. I wrapped the squash in big leaves picked by Santos, our lab helper, and put them on the tortilla gridle. Unfortunately, the leaves and sqaush just started burning and it smelled rotten. The whole thing reminded me of a Martha Stewart recipe I tried once that involved artichokes and lemons in a paper bag in the oven. That one did not turn out either. Oh well.

Work is going well. We had orientation and hiked around the site. Uxbenka, like other ancient Maya communities in this area, is like a small city with plazas, courts, other structures and homes on hill tops surrounding ceremonial centers. Keith helped me pick my settlement group to excavate. Last week we excavated a unit behind the building that might be a kitchen garden area. The guy I worked with is going to run some soil samples for his own research to look for evidence of what sort of plants were grown in the soil and he will let me know the results of the tests. Next week I am visiting a cave with a canoe in it. Curious. Then I will start excavating the main structure in the settlement group. It should yield some neat stuff.

Yesterday we had a day off and we went to Nimli Punit, a Maya site that has been turned into an interpretive park. Then we ate a traditional Maya meal with Keith's friend, Pedro. We had chicken soup (1/4 of a chicken in a broth) with corn tortillas and corn and beans wrapped in leaves and steamed. Pedro fed us freshly brewed cocoa drinks. The fresh organic chocolate beans tasted wonderful. We sat around, sweated a lot (a fact of life here, I am pretty much sweaty all the time, even when I sleep) and then went back to Big Falls (the town we are staying in) and swam in the river for a while before supper.