Day Four 1/29/26 (Thursday) Kiuic Excursion

 We got an early start (6:30 am), checked out of the hacienda and took an Uber to Noa’s house to pick up Phil and Chenda (Noa’s husband), then stop at the Diplomat hotel to leave our suitcases, and then go to Parque Santa Ana  - the 8:30 am meeting place for the start of our Mayan Archaeology tour. I didn’t know how to order an Uber with two stops so negotiated an off-Uber ride with the Uber driver. We had a hard time finding Noa’s place because the address is somewhat imprecise, but the rest went fairly smoothly and we arrived at Parque Santa Ana at 8:15 am and decided to grab a quick breakfast and watch the meeting place from the restaurant. Bob (the organizer) told us there would be 10-12 people on the tour, but when he arrived at 8:30, he said it would just be the 4 of us because other people didn’t make it because of the snowstorm. And he was not going with us…. We got an SUV and a driver/guide called Arjel and off we went… 2.5 hours later we arrived at a closed gate in the middle of nowhere at the edge of a forest. Apparently somebody was supposed to meet us there and open the gate. Kuic archaeological site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiuic is on 18,000 hectares of private land owned by a cooperative, and they control access. Since there was no phone reception there, Arjel told us that we’d just wait… We waited for an hour and nobody showed up so Arjel decided to drive back to the nearest village, (which didn’t have cell phone reception either, but they had a satellite phone in the grocery store) and called the person who was supposed to open the gate. That’s what we did. Then back at the gate – about 15 minutes later a guy showed up with the key. Then we drove another 15-20 minutes into the wood and arrived at what looked like an abandoned camp grounds with a bunch of dilapidated casitas and a few other buildings. Bob, the organizer, was not very communicative and didn’t tell us anything much about the schedule, activities or lodgings. We knew we were going to stay overnight at an archaeologist field camp, I was just hoping this wasn’t it. We wandered around for about 30-40 minutes waiting for the archaeologist to arrive. When Tomas Gallareta Negron (the archaeologist) arrived, we all walked to the dig site and he explained everything to us in detail. In fact, there were 3 separate sites there and Tomas enjoyed explaining things so by the time he was done, it was already 2:30 pm and we were all starving. We got in the car and followed Tomas in his truck. When we asked Arjel how far food was, he said 25 minutes, which turned out to be more than an hour. We arrived in the little town of Oxcutzcab where the field camp was on its outskirts. Lunch/comida was at 4 pm and it was absolutely delicious – cooked for us by two Mayan women. The main dish was pollo pibil  - chicken breasts slow cooked and flavored with achiote paste (made from ground annatto seeds), sour orange juice, and spices. It was full of flavor and rich orange color (from the achiote paste). We also had rice, beans, tortillas, vegetables and desert. After comida we had a much needed rest in our casitas for 2 hours. The casitas were sparse, but nice and clean.

At 7 pm we gathered in the library building (this site is run in collaboration with Millsap College in Jackson, Mississippi) where Tomas gave us a lecture about the Maya culture and architecture. Then it was bedtime accompanied by sounds of a screaming peacock, barking dogs, roosters and loud fireworks… Definitely need earplugs.

Nat Geo documentary about Kiuic: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/movies-and-specials/52b78dca-5ece-4d74-a6c7-20c777f692ae

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