Blogs from La Tortuga Feliz, Limón, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 2

I did not end up going to bed at all, I stayed up and worked on the schedules more. Its a lot of hard work to do, but I managed somehow. I had to change it like 4 or 5 times tho. I did a kitchen 2 shift for the day, went swimming in the afternoon, and then released 6 baby turtles, but couldnt go because I was on kitchen. I ended up going to bed around 9 and had to wake up at 5 to do my 6 hatchery shift. No me gusta!... read more

Worked at the hatchery today with a few others by putting big plastic trashbags over the wall and covering it with sand so just in case the water wouldnt wash anything away. Its been cloudy most of the day and windy. Took over for an hour at the hatchery, covered for someone and then worked a 10 to 2 shift for a friend. Otherwise, its been a pretty lazy day. ... read more

I had a hatchery shift from 10 to 2. My job was to go in every 15 or 20 minutes and patrol, to make sure there was no crabs or ants in the cages, to see if there were any hatchings,etc. This was the morning shift. Other than that, I sat there in the chair watching the waves roll in. I saw a lot of pelicans fly by. It was a very sunny day and I wasnt smart enough to bring sunscreen with me so I got burnt pretty badly. My shoulders and my arms, and my feet were red as a lobster. After my shift, I went back and had some lunch, then went for a swim for a good half an hour. In the afternoon, we played capture the flag with some of the ... read more

There is another project on the island, and they are called Quilonios, or however its spelled. They are a self sustained farm and they barely have anything. They help out with us from time to time, but they are never reliable. Anyways, we had a meeting with them today, and talked about measuring rainfall and temperature everyday. We also went over how to measure baby turtles, the length, width, and weight. In the afternoon, we had hatchery training, showing us what to do just in case a nest comes in while we are on shift,etc. After that we had nest digging training, and I must say, digging a leatherback nest isn't close to being easy. It was quite tricky. For those, we dig down 70 cm and then dig another 30 or 35 cm inwards, to ... read more

I arrived to Bataan around noon and was greeted by the hosts. We had to wait 2 hours for the boat to come in due to the low tide. We left at 2 and got to the dock from where we traveled by boat. There were 7 of us in total but there was 9 or 10 more at the project. As soon as we left from the dock, I heard the first call of a howler monkey right above us!! The boat ride took about 30 minutes. We arrived at the project and were greeted by the other volunteers. We unloaded, got a tour of the place, then talked with the manager in the office about rules and safety, payment, etc. We relaxed after that, had dinner, then schedules were made. I had to go ... read more