Our turtle weeks

We are now back to San Jose-or what we like to call civilisation- after 2 weeks spent volunteering at La Tortuga Feliz project. This project is located on the Carabean cost of Costa Rica 50km north from Puerto Limon in a pretty remote area. To get to the project, we had to take a bus (2h from San Jose to Bataan), then a car for 35 mins and finally 35 mins of motor boat on a river in the middle of the jungle. Amazing view on the Jungle, it was breath taking. We didn t spot any caimans though. Well that´s ok as we´ve seen all in all in the last 2 weeks many ugly creatures: Giant spiders aka radioactive ones, toads, mosquitoes, cochroaches, sandflies, crabes from all colours and sizes..but nice one too: Green turtles, funky birds, Gekos... The project is located near the beach surronded by a small Costa Rican community.



La Tortuga Feliz project-managed by a Welsh 43 years old man- aims to protect sea turtles that come and lay their eggs on the Costa Rican beaches. At the project depending on the season, you can find 3 species of sea turtles: the Hawksbill, the Green Turtle and the leatherback turtle.



At the project we were around 15 volonteers (German, American, Dutch and one Irish)sharing all the same core job with a very different schedule: saving turtles and maitining the project.


Saving the turtles was definitely the most exciting and gratifing activity. One of the task was the night patrols: 4h walk or 12 kms in the sand in the dark (no flashlight allowed)with a local. The goal of these patrols (running from 8 pm to 3 am) is to find turtles and their nest before poachers find them. Despite it´s forbidden to kill turtles in Costa Rica, we could see many poachers. There´s a no confrontation rule with them:if they find a turtle or a nest, we just have to walk away and we can´t interfere. In the community surronding the project, the turtles play an important role as it seemed to us that half of the men work for la Tortuga Feliz and half of them are poachers. Most of our guides were poaches before the project started 5 years ago. As we were there at the end of the nesting season, I saw one turtle in 20h of patrols and Peter none in 12h.
The 2nd activity involving the turtles was garding the hatchery where they were around 40 nests. At night, 2 volonteers were checking the nests every 15 mins in case it would hatch. The last night shift is from 2 am to 6 am (which is a very challenging time!). In case a nest hatches, the babies turtles have to be measured and then realesed in a safe place on the beach..It´s thrilling to see them crawling to the sea..Who would have known that baby turtles are pretty fast! If everything goes fine for them, they should come back in 20 years to lay eggs on the same beach.
Unfortunatelly 1 baby out of a 1000 makes it to the maturity stage, this rate is higher at the project as their first minutes are really super safe.
Three days after a nest hatches, we do an exhumation to find any remaining alive babies and we take the dead ones and egg shells for autopsy. Digging a nest can be great (many baby turtles at the day light) and gross at the same time (Imagine old eggs smell and add to it some maggots...).



Mainting the project was less fun and consisted of raking (better not to do it in flip flops as you can find many ugly crawling creatures under the leaves), cleaning the bathrooms, washing the dishes, preparing the meals and garding an empty school building.

We were doing 1 or 2 shifts of 4h a day..what was very special is that you could work at any hour of the day (or of the night).
During our free time, we could enjoy the beach when it was sunny (beautiful but dangerous because of riptides and bull sharks), the hamocks and we attented for $80 a very gramar focused and intense Spanish course. We didn´t know that we would learn some much in 8 classes. It was useful to communicate with the guides during the patrols.

We defintely enjoyed our 2 weeks there despite it was challenging at times: no electricity (the night falls around 5.30 pm), no hot shower, same food everyday, many mosquitoes bites, many sandflies bite, the heat and the humidity (Peter´s wallet got moldy). It was a great way to start our 3 months journey.. Here we are thougher, closer to nature, more spiritual, tanned...yeah yeah all of that.

Now we´re back in San Jose in a slighty better hotel ($33 a night but there are hot showers! and internet) and we´re enjoying music, coke, ice creams and walking in clean clothes.