M8 Ancient Mayan Artifacts

     Waking up on the beach of the Caribbean Sea to the sunrise started my first full day in Central America. I was on the eastern coast of Belize near their largest city, Belize City, containing over 70,000 people. I would be moving soon, searching for ancient Mayan artifacts with other explorers. I got up from the beach and walked back away from the ocean to where our meeting place was. Although it was still early in the morning, all three explorers were already at the meeting place. We would be heading out to the Belize forest just outside the city. Now that we were so close to finding artifacts, I realized we may not find anything at all.
      For 3 hours we searched Central America for Mayan treasures, only coming up with an old piece of Mayan cloth and a wooden piece of an old Mayan bowl. At least we had found something, I thought to myself as we sat down to take a break and discuss where we would look next. Our whole group was now depressed, for usually they would have found great treasures by now. It was a nice 78 degrees in the woods and the day wouldn't have been all that bad if I wasn't stuck looking for something we would never find. I kicked the dirt at my feet hoping to find something beneath the earth, but nothing was there.
     We kept on walking, back towards the trail head this time, but off the trail a bit to keep digging and looking in new places. 60% of Belize is forest and their are thousands of artifacts hidden underneath, but we had come a forest, just without the artifacts we were looking for. A river passed by us, so we got a drink. I learned this was the Belize river and it was the longest river, 290 km, in Belize. I guess the first people who settled here weren't very creative, and just named the biggest city and the longest river after the name of the country. Just then a member of our group said he had found something. I turned to see his metal detector flashing and beeping.
     We all walked over and started digging very fast into the ground with our shovels. We dug, and dug, and dug, until finally we were all out of breath. We all sort of stared at each other not knowing what to do or who to blame. Finally we started suggesting things like, maybe it was some tiny thing that we already dug up, or maybe the metal detector is messed up, or maybe it was more over there. I didn't say anything, but I thought we should all just keep on digging. I kept digging, as the others still argued. Grimy sweat poured down my face. Finally, I heard a loud ding near the ground, and my shovel stopped in the dirt.
     I fell on the ground and started to dig around the metal with my bare hands.Other explorers started to help me, but the metal was huge. We finally pulled out the ultimate shield. It was huge and covered in Mayan designs. It had what looked like a face in the middle with other designs coming out of it and around it. This would definitely do you good in warfare, I thought. Everyone was finally happy to be there. We brought it home only to find out a Mayan museum wanted the shield for $10,000. We declined.