Sea Turtle project – West coast of Costa Rica

For the last few days of my vacation I went to the west coast of Costa Rica. First I was picked up from the hotel in San Jose together with a Belgian guy from another Koning Aap tour. Lots of confusion from the drivers on where to go to and who to pick up. Eventually after picking up several people we were dropped off at the rest stop where the big parrots were, same as where we went on the very first travel day. Here we had to switch to another bus (small vans that fit up to 10 people or so) that brought us to the coast. We were dropped at a small coast town where we had to wait for someone who would bring us to the project location. Some guy in an open jeep came to pick us up. Things got more & more interesting.. pretty bad road, nearly off road, we were driving towards the beach. When we got there, we had to cross water to get to the beach! No one told us this before.. If I had known I would’ve left my big suitcase in San Jose at the hotel where I was returning anyways before my flight home. But no. I had everything with me. Imagine: water where apparently crocodiles live (we’ve seen them before in other rivers...), a small canoe, 2 European tourists with big suitcases up to 20 kilograms.. somehow we made it across, all dry! We then had to walk for about 15 minutes on the beach to reach the hut. Luckily one of the guys that was picking us up offered to help me with my suitcase. It was literally a hut: all wood, no electricity and no running water. Beautiful place though, right behind a sand dune at the beach. Very interesting to be here for a few days. I never knew I was capable of doing absolutely nothing.. Meaning just sitting & staring, that’s it! Funny how you get used to it. Same as for the circumstances. I had never been in this situation before: sleeping under mosquito nets; at night keeping watch for the turtles but also to chase away the racoons that wanted to steal food; cockroaches walking across the dinner table and all you do is just pick up your plate and put it down again when it passed. Normally I would scream and run away probably.

The turtle project was about protecting the eggs of the turtles and taking the baby turtles to the ocean when they hatch. Every night we would have a different schedule of 3 hours watch. Walking around the field where all the eggs are buried to check if they’ve hatched or not. If yes then measuring a few for scientific knowledge and then taking them all to the water. Few meters away let them go and walk in on their own. So cute!! In the morning we would always check if there were still any babies left. Sometimes we did find live ones still in there and brought them to the ocean. Of course we also had to clean up the empty nest: take all the egg shells out and any turtles that hadn’t survived. Not really fun to do.. but part of it. One other night duty was to have the tour on the beach to see if any turtle was laying a new nest of eggs. So cool! They’re in a trance when they deliver the eggs so you can get right in there and catch the eggs right away. Then we would bring them back to the project and put them in a protected part of the beach. Keeping away the crabs & birds that would want to eat them. Pretty awesome to do this work for a few days!
We had 1 afternoon off: the whole group went to the town, tide was low so we could easily cross the water this time. And then just hangout and shop a little. Very nice.

Finally we were brought back to San Jose for the final night of sleep and then back home. Through New York (funny to see the snow outside! And I could see the statue of Liberty! Yay) it was a quick & easy flight home. Amazing holiday!