We stopped by a place for breakfast, which was pretty delicious. I had gallo pinto, huevos con jamón, and fried queso. After that we stopped by a bridge that had a swamp underneath with a ton of crocodiles.
We finally arrived to the place which looks like a hostel but is for the volunteers only. I think there are 12 of us here from the program and we are all in one huge room with bunk-beds! There are other people here from other countries, some which are traveling solo.
We had a delicious lunch. Before that we actually were able to go in the ocean. The waves and the water were great!
After lunch the people who manage the volunteer work talked to us about the turtles and one of the women showed us the hatchery and how to make nests. Ill be honest, the nests were not my thing, but nevertheless it was an experience.
Now I'm sitting at the hatchery on a four hour shift with one of the girls from my program. We have to check the turtle nests every 15 minutes. If you're like me and don't know anything about turtles, well the way the eggs are laid is pretty interesting. The mother turtle digs a hole that's weirdly shaped in the sand, lays her eggs, and leaves them behind. Then the volunteer work people to and take the eggs and bring them to their hatchery, wait for them to hatch and take then to the water. They do this because the sea turtles are an endangered species and there's a lot of poachers around here.
Anyways nothing interesting has happened so far; none of the nests have any hatched turtles. It's pitch black outside and kind of creepy.
After my shift there's a walk to patrol the beach for mother turtles. I'm still thinking whether to do it or not! Well see! :)
Today is Sunday, last night I stayed in and knocked out promptly! I slept the entire night through and then woke up. At that point I learned everyone in the group saw turtles! About 168 turtles hatched during the night and on top of that turtle eggs were found and one of the girls had to make the nest for them.
I was feeling pretty bummed that I didn't get to see the turtles. I walked over to the hatchery where our program director and one of the students had a shift and nothing was going on :( so I went back for breakfast and was still feeling super bummed out while everyone talked about the turtles they saw. I was regretting going to bed but really felt great after getting sleep.
After breakfast we had a meeting because our volunteer work was not over yet. One of the ladies who works with the volunteer program asked who hadn't seen the turtles and I was the only one! Well turns out there was some turtles that didn't come out last night from the nests that already hatched!!!
So we all went over to the hatchery and first we had to work. We had to fill up holes in the hatchery with new sand in order for them to be ready for new eggs. It was a lot of work. I went between digging sand and putting them in the bags for people, to being the person who carried the bags back to the hatchery! It really was a lot of work and we were all very sandy and sweaty!!! After that was done they had pulled out the remaining turtles and it turned out that there were three left. I was able to take tons of pictures:) They released the turtles into the water and we all went swimming. The waves were amazing like in Puerto Viejo! The journey ended with a shower and a yummy lunch:)
It was a different experience and definitely a lot of work! It's amazing that the workers do it everyday.
No comments:
Post a Comment