Archaeologist Ivan Sprajc braves jungle to find lost Mayan cities

There are days when Ivan Sprajc gets fed up with his job. Hacking pathways through the Mexican jungle with machetes is exhausting. Keeping a constant eye out for deadly snakes can be nerve-wracking. The risk of finding nothing to show for all the effort is real.

But then there is reward that comes when the contours of a plaza, palace or pyramid emerge from beneath the tree cover, or inscriptions that could help explain them are revealed by brushing off undergrowth.

"I've said to myself quite a few times that this is the last season, because it is so difficult. But it is such a reward when you find a new site," said the Slovenian archaeologist, who has made a career of finding lost Mayan cities. "It's tough work, but it's dead romantic."

This year Sprajc's team found two - Tamchen and Lagunita - which followed last year's discovery of a large site called Chactun.

The finding of the three sites is the first step in surveying an almost unexplored area spanning about 310,000 hectares in the northern part of the Calakmul biosphere reserve, in the southern Mexican state of Campeche.

"You can call it archaeological reconnaissance," he said. "It is the very first step into an area that is completely unknown."