Beautiful beaches and sea turtles?

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I went to Tortuguero with my Tropical Ecology class last weekend, and it was terrible. No really, I think all of my bad luck from my first 6 weeks here all piled up into this 36 hour time span.

First, we had to be at school at 5 AM on Saturday to leave. This meant I had to get up at 4 AM, which would have been fine had I been able to go to sleep before midnight. Sadly (and, for them, happily) my Tico uncle who lives in NYC was in town for the first time in 8 years. This means that a raucous Tico party was happening in my house until midnightish. Great start.

So, bus a 5 AM, and the profe wouldn't let us sleep... he kept getting on the overcome and announcing fun facts about the area we were driving through. C'mon man, you know better than that. We finally got to the end of the bus ride and got on a boat, where we drove lazily through mosquito-infested waters, the guides pointed out animals we couldn't see, and we finally got to the station in pretty intense heat.

Bunks were a bit unstable looking, and the barracks were pretty barren. We had a little free time to kill on a beach where we couldn't swim because of strong currents, ate lunch, listened to a number crunching lecture on sea turtles where lots of us fell asleep, and then my group had free time while the other group got on a boat to cruise around the lagoon and look for cool things.

I had a splitting headache by about dinner time, which caused me to lose my dinner eventually. Then, we literally hiked in deep sand, on a beach, in the rain, to look for sea turtles that we basically knew we were too late in the season to see. After our forced march, we returned to the station to find the other group still dry and warm. The other guide who was supposed to meet them never showed up, and the professor didn't make them go out! Fair? I think not.

I woke up the next morning with a slightly diminished headache to the sound of more rain. We ate breakfast and my group got to hop on the boat to go look for things. We did eventually see some cool stuff (monkeys and sloths and lots of birds and a poison dart frog) but it was hardly a silver enough lining.

After that, it was dry off and warm up as best we could, get back on the shuttle boat to get dampened again on our way back to the bus, and ride the bus another 4 hours home.

I was wet, all of my clothes were wet, my bag was wet, and my watch still smells funny.

Hopefully this weekend will be better.

Pura Vida.
Salud. Dinero. Amor.

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Photos

Pirates?
Johnny Depp did not make an appearance.

POISON DART FROG
IN MY HAND

Los Monos!
Howler Monkey!

A Cane Toad...
.., in its natural habitat.

species list
for the weekend