00:01.79 kinkella Hello and welcome back to the pseudo archeology podcast episode 114 and we have been talking about the mayas and notes and we've talked about how I originally got in to studying the sinottas in my case in Belize. Um. What I was hoping to get from my studies which was ultimately a job in the community college world which I did um, we talked about the history of Mayas and out days in terms of how they related to the ancient maya and all the way up to the. Modern maya that how some of these sanottes have seen been seen as ritual places that have sacred water that you can use in specific ritual events now in terms of. My own learning on this and specifically my own collecting of data for my master's thesis and my dissertation that equated to lots of time walking through the jungle sleeping in hammocks sleeping intense and. Being very sweaty and uncomfortable now I treasure those moments dearly though you know, looking back from my airconditioned home. But my students always asked me ah, can kill what happened to you what happened in the jungle man what was the like and um. 01:32.16 kinkella I Guess I could just relate to you a handful of experiences that I had you know in those summers as I as I studied the Sonote days of the Belizeian jungles. Um. 01:51.79 kinkella I would say that people ask like how long was there? What's a typical summer I mean the longest I was ever is there was four months but I would say a typical summer I would be there for maybe two months something like that somewhere between like six weeks and two months typical summer and. Usually I was able to um, return at the end of the day to where we were staying like I could get back to the trucks and we could drive back to a place that where there was like a structure of some kind you know where we lived in like like for. Quite a few years we lived at ah like a jungle lodge kind of place that was very basic but very nice, right? This was not tent camping so most days I could do that but every so often I did have to just live out in the jungle if I if I was walking out too far because what I was doing I was creating a transect which is a cut through the jungle. Right? And I started at this one major site iner area yalbach and it was like two and a half miles out to the pools and then an extra like 7 or eight miles across the pool something like that. So I was miles and miles out what that meant is some nights I did have to sleep overnight in the jungle one one week um I do remember spending a work week in the jungle from. We went out on Monday and I stayed out there until Friday so I do remember doing that and I would sleep in tens I would sleep in hammocks. It would just sort of depend. Um. 03:27.11 kinkella Ah, used to like hammocks better now I like tense better personal tick because hammocks man Once you're in the jungle in a hammock. Well you better enjoy sleeping on your back because that's all you got and. 03:42.30 kinkella When I think back that's that's what kind of comes across my brain is those times sleeping in the hammock you know and just getting camp ready at Dusk So on a typical day. Um. 04:01.20 kinkella You're going to get up early early in the morning right? You're kind of getting up with the sun and you're not doing this in a chipper fashion. You're doing this in a very rickety fashion your tired your joints are just tired. You're back. Hurts and this isn't because you're an old person like this is even when you're young, you didn't really get and you slept a very rest restless. Um, you have just a bunch of mosquito bites. You're kind of sweaty. You got that like Sheen of like. 04:39.98 kinkella Slime on you at all times just because it's like sweat that you can never go away even if you like even if for some reason you were able to take a shower. It comes back after like 20 minutes and you get up kind of just kind of creaky. Um. And you just you know like you're you're in your mosquito net and you know like oh my god I'm going to have to open this up and they're going to get me because mosquitoes are ever present right? So you open up your mosquito net and you're like oh here we go. You do and then you just start to get bit like mosquitoes immediately because the sun's just about to come up and mosquitoes are worse at at dawn and it does so you get up you try and like maintain your sanity and you. Get some sort of breakfast. Maybe sometimes you make a fire a lot of times I didn't make a fire because it was just too much of a pain so I would just like I don't know I I remember I would eat I would make ah peanut butter and jelly tortillas all the time I would just like make those roll them up I'm not a huge breakfast person. I would just sort of eat and I would get my um, my equipment together for the day you kind of get your backpack set up because you're going to have to you have to break down camp a lot of times so you're you're ah taking down your hammock your um. 06:08.59 kinkella Just getting everything set for walking like I find that when you camp you can't you kind of put everything out to camp and then you have to bring it all back in into walk. Um, got bring it bring it everything back into your pack. You got to kind of get your machete ready to roll. Um, got make sure your canteen is full. Got to make sure that your like Gps unit has batteries in it got to make sure that your pencil's working. Um you got to make sure that you have a pencil ask me how I know about that one don't forget your pencil. Ah, have your paperwork. Yeah I'll make sure that stuff isn't destroyed and then ah once you're ready you you just kind of head out kind of groggy and then the day goes by pretty smooth like you just you just then you're just a machine right. It's like the the sun starts to get hotter and you walk and what I would do is I'd I'd walk and record walk and record whether it be the edge of a sinotte whether it would be small. My amounts between sinotes, you're just walking. You're taking out paperwork you're making notes you're making measurements all the time right? and you're just kind of going. Place to place and you have some idea of where you're going like okay my compass is said at forty one and a half degrees I'm walking forty one and a half degrees through the jungle you're doing a lot of cutting your your wrist is just constantly moving with your machete as you kind of walk very very slowly forward at at 1 point you're going to eat lunch. 07:39.99 kinkella Lunch is always difficult because again, there's just there's mosquitoes and bugs and stuff always going around and you're in the jungle in the jungle. There's never a place to sit down. You're like man if I just 1 thing you're looking for when lunch is coming I'm like please god a boulder. Please god or they may there be a boulder here in this maya jungle and sometimes you'll find some place where you can sit and that's great sitting on the ground is the worst you don't want to do that. You always have to have a tarp or something because there's too many bugs. You. You cannot just sit straight on straight to the ground. It's can be super wet and damp and nasty too and then you eat your lunch lunch is always quick. Lunch is like 20 minutes when you're doing this kind of thing. It's not relaxing. It's oddly more relaxing to keep walking. Like a really slow pace. It's hard to explain unless you've been in a situation like this so you eat and while you've gotten calories. You don't feel any more nourished in a weird way. You just feel like it just took so much energy to eat a well. Then you keep going you record more day goes by now the sun's going down. This is a key moment in the jungle. So the Jun in the jungle. It gets dark quick. So. 09:08.13 kinkella Soon as you're as soon as it's like five p M you're like we're looking for a place to camp for the night right? Make sure. It's not a swamp make sure if if it rains at night which it will make sure you make sure you're not going to get washed away like seriously find a place that's. Kind of up-ish and dry-ish rocky-ish is great. Um, and then set up your tent or set up your hammock right? that time then the Mosquitoes are going to come out even worse in force because it's it's dusk and then it gets dark Super fast. So you better have your hammock already strung like super fast and then you kind of eat a little dinner or something but then the night comes and as soon as it's Dark. You're just like well I guess I'm going to sleep. And then night has its own craziness. Um, the night creatures come out stuff that's happened to me at night. Um, you just start, you'll just listen to the jungle for a while. And I remember you this one you guys I'm in a hammock right? Got my mosquito nett around and I hear this I'm I'm camped like right next to one of the sinnotes and I hear this and I'm like oh my. 10:40.38 kinkella God. 10:46.65 kinkella That's a jaguar now. It wasn't right next to me but it was like on the other side of the sonote and the sinote was not that big now. It's like a hundred feet away you know or something like that right. But hundred and fifty feet away something like ah you like and I'm just sitting there I'm like ah my like arms and legs are all like together. You know like I'm in I'm in my hammock trying to like disappear into myself you know and I'm like it's a ja war o my god just it's go away. You know, but there's like nothing I can do hear no, that's that's the sound that jawars make it's weird they they will growl sometimes they will do like a o. 11:39.49 kinkella But I never really heard that in the journal again jaguars you come across very very rarely. But ah that that sort of tired dog sound. That's what that's what they do and of course so it was a jaguar at night and it had come to drink. The sinote and I just had to like had to chill in my hamhick let it go um another night I was this this night I was sleeping in a tent and like I heard something like super late at night like pulling late like I heard something in my stuff. Like like when you when you um, use a tent. You usually put most of your stuff in the tent to kind of keep bugs and animals from it but I could hear an animal getting something and I like unzip my tent and it was a possum and the possum was like. Pulling my like favorite Bandana it had like gotten it out of my bag or something I think I'd had my bag outside but it was all zipped up it like pulled it out. So then I grabbed the other side of the of my bandana because I'm not letting this go. This is my favorite Bandana it did and so I had a tug of war with a possum at like 2 in the morning in the pitch black. Of the Maya Jungle note it's like hissing it. Ah I'm like pulling my eye I'm like no, there's no way I'm letting this like Bandana go because dude that Bandana was awesome. Another night I was just sleeping in my hammock and it like. 13:09.52 kinkella 3 in the morning. It just goes boof because sometimes in the dark knots are hard to tie correctly. So I tied my hammock incorrectly and then at like 3 in the morning my hammock fell down like just right onto the jungle ground and you're so tired at first I was like screw it and so I like I laid there for like I don't know 15 minutes yeah, because I was just like I can't get up but then I finally had to get up and and rety my hammock in the dark and you and you have you try and turn your flashlight on you try and see it's like terrible so on a typical night. These kind of things happen which is one of the reasons why in the morning you're so tired because you were freaked out about the Jaguar or you had a tug of war with an oposssum you know in terms of being tired. During the day here's my last one this is I remember so walking through the jungle there's these trees that are called poke no boy trees it's like poke no boy and they're just full of spines. They're not very. 14:35.20 kinkella Ah, their diameter isn't very large like there may be like four inches across or something they're they're skinny but they are covered in thick long super sharp spines I mean they are like it's just it almost looks like a hair. Like like it's just covered with these hard thick spines all over the place. Super pokey, super annoying I was so tired once that we had stopped walking. We were walking towards the sinottas and I was going to go diving. And so not only did I have my pack with my tent and all that stuff I was also carrying um a scuba tank across my shoulders with sort of both arms up. You know, holding either side like kind of like atlas holding the world right? behind my neck and my whole big full. Back and backpack on and it was just super heavy and I was sweaty and I was so tired this is like 2 or 3 in the afternoon you get so tired like walking my feet hurt I was just I was so exhausted that I lost my balance. Because I I was just holding so much that that if your center of gravity gets off a little bit. You start to like slowly fall over I started to slowly fall over like super slow you know and I didn't try and catch myself for anything I was super tired and there was a poke no boy tree. 16:04.81 kinkella Right next to my shoulder and I just allowed myself to fall right into the Pokeno Boy tree and I just allowed the spines to sink like right into my shoulder and I just didn't. Care Now that sounds crazy and just telling you that story right now I'm like I really did that what was I doing but I remember that and it's. It sounds crazy and weird. But what I hope you get from that is how tired you are and you just don't care anymore and so once I fell into the tree and was stuck to it with the spines right into my shoulder. Just slowly got my pack straightened and allowed the weight of it to pull me off the spines and back up now that's probably not the most attractive story you've ever heard. But. Even with the spines of the Poke. No Boy Tree I do have to say that my years studying the sin out days in the Belizeian Jungle were the most. 17:37.21 kinkella Dynamic exciting memorable bits of archeology that I've ever done and with that I'll see you guys next time.