I'm guessing for everyone with 18+ relics, the bottleneck issue was with those darn cats.
The only real strategy that I pulled was to initially raise my Selvadorian Culture skill before going into the woods--lets you avoid some bee/firefly nonsense and opens the secret shop from which you can buy watcher bases and one of the kinds of tops, along with need fillers for food and hygiene, plus infinite machetes. I also traveled back and for to El Selvadorada and home a few times to reload the market, since I didn't want to get attacked in the jungle. I did a new vacation for every excursion so I didn't have to wait for temple reloads.
The other thing once I realized the usefulness was to fill the Jungle Explorer aspiration, since at that point you had a chance to get multiple relic parts from simple treasure chests.
The only relic that I made sure to get was the skeleton one since then it freezes most of your needs (though it did scare me and said the effect had 4 days left when it only had 2, go figure).
I also just used my computer to buy the 18 common and uncommon jems, helped me keep track of which ones I had a lot better since they were color coded. I got plenty of rare jems from machete'ing through passageways and passing the scenarios. I mailed them all in rather than refining them myself.
If I did it again, I wouldn't even bother with archaeology; I would repeat my beginning strategy then actually prioritize for the Jungle Explorer aspiration, then constantly go into all the jungle doors and through the temples.