Back to the Big Blue

This weekend I took the long-awaited trip to Tortuguero on the Caribbean coast. Many Tico travel agents (and roadside touts) will tell you that it's difficult to get there on your own, and try to sell you a package for a three-day tour with transportation.  I'm sure these tours are nice, but they can be a little pricey, and we only had two days to make the journey.

Morgan and I made this trip alone, since the new volunteers went to Jaco for the weekend and she and I have been talking about catching the end of turtle season for quite some time. We had also made plans to meet up with our friend Lucy from the CCS house, who had left to travel on her own after four weeks.

The day started out promising- we made it to San Jose in two and half hours (a new record) and were in Cariari by 7:30 Friday night. Cariari is what Lonely Planet describes as a "rough-neck banana town,"which is about as accurate a description as they come. Besides banana plantations, the town is really only known for being a stop-over point for people on their way to Tortuguero.

The only real hotel in Cariari is called Hotel Tortuguero Central, run by the extremely friendly and helpful Patricia (aka the Mama of Cariari). When I read she was called the Mama of Cariari, I was expecting a jolly, Afro-Caribbean woman in a bright patterned dress, so I was surprised when we were greeted by a delicate, soft-spoken woman in a beige cardigan. Patricia met our taxi at the front of the hotel (in its new location by the college futbol field) and offered to drive us to a place we could get some dinner. Driving down the road, I could see why she didn't want us walking-- this was definitely not a tourist town. She dropped us in front of a restaurant and twice reminded us to make sure we got a cab back to the hotel. There was no English spoken (or written on menus), but we managed to order some good food and get our waiter to put some post-season baseball on the TV. Around 9pm it was back to the hotel for a quick, cold shower and early bedtime, so we could catch a 6am bus to Pavona.

Patricia saw us off from the bus stop, and we were off to Pavona right on schedule (ten minutes late, as per Tico Time). From Pavona, we took a boat down the river to Tortuguero Village. Right as we were pulling into the dock, Morgan pointed out a blond girl pulling up in another boat. As luck would have it, it was Lucy! She showed us around town and we checked into the hostel where she was staying (Balcon del Mar, well worth the $7 a night, with a very friendly staff and a five second walk to the beach). We dropped our stuff in the room and went straight to the beach to enjoy the sunny weather and calm waves.

Lucy told us she had seen baby sea turtles around sunset the night before, so we returned to the beach around 4:30 to troll the shore for new hatchlings. We saw newly turned nests with pieces of egg shells, and tracks leading to the water, but no turtles were in sight. Just as we were about to give up, Morgan followed a stray dog up a dune and yelled for us to follow. The dog had already made off with one baby turtle before she shooed it away and we saw that there were many more in the nest! We didn't know what we could do, since touching the turtles is illegal, but luckily a guide showed up out of nowhere (I think six out of ten people in Tortuguero are guides). He dug through the nest and found that many of the turtles were already dead, but there were at least 10 still alive. He told us to help carry them to the water, so we put them in our hands and brought them to the shore.

Baby turtles in the nest.

I had been worried I wouldn't even see any turtles, but there I was, holding them and helping them finish their journey back to the ocean. They were amazingly fast once I set them down, and they knew how to swim even though they had hatched only hours before. After a while, more people saw what we were doing, and flocked to see the turtles. But it was pretty amazing knowing that I was the first to see them--I felt like they were my turtles! Once they all made it into the sea, the guide said to us, "I'm so glad you were here. Thank you for helping save these turtles." Anytime, turtle guy.

Marveling at the little miracle.

Setting the little guy free.

 

 

 

We went for one last swim at sunset, still on a natural high from the surreal turtle-saving experience. We decided that even if we didn't see any mother turtles on the nighttime turtle walk, this had still been one of the best days of our lives. But we got truly lucky around 11pm that night when we got to see a turtle laying her eggs in the sand. After a very long wait, during which I accumulated more bug bites than I can count, the guide brought us onto the beach to watch the mother turtle fill a hole in the send with over 100 round, white eggs. She was there for almost an hour, popping out these glistening ping-pong balls, before she covered them up and made her slow trek back to the sea.

It is amazing to think that something as small as a baby turtle will become so big--the mother was over three feet long, and from the looks of her, very heavy. It's also disheartening to think that in 10 years, the turtle walk might not be allowed anymore. More and more people seem to come every year, and the sad truth is that the more people there are, the more likely it is that someone will try to exploit these amazing animals. Turtle eggs are very valuable, and even though it was wonderful to touch the turtles, it's something that should not be done unless absolutely necessary (as it was that day). It seems that the more people appreciate something, the more we have to appreciate it from afar. The same way you used to be able to go inside some of the Egyptian pyramids, that option is gone now, in part because of too much foot traffic and other human-related dangers. I'm so glad I got to see it in my lifetime.

Sunday morning, we went on a 5:30 canoe tour of the river, where we saw three kinds of monkeys (howler, spider and capuchin), cayman, Jesus Christ lizards and green macaws. After a big breakfast and a little more beach time, it was time to take our three buses and one boat back to San Carlos. The whole way home, I thought about turtles.

Next weekend: Cahuita and the Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary!!