Pura Vida

Delayed! There are no computers here.. pretty much have to wait for one of 2 other volunteer's computers so its been kind of difficult getting this thing going again.

Currently in Ostional, Costa Rica on the Nicoya peninsula. Stayed a couple days outside of San Jose (picture on left out the front door of my homestay... usually quite lovely with the mountains but it was cloudy unfortunately)... made the trip here on tuesday... which was quite a journey... 6 hours by bus, the last third of which traversed roads that rival grand canyon national park roads and included driving through four streams....

Despite the ride.. and the fact that my debit card was stuck in an ATM machine and is now being held hostage at a bank in Santa Cruz (2 hours away) its been quite lovely so far.. Right on the beach.. nice people... tropical weather.. Picture on the right is our beach around sunset... not too bad.

Its pretty quiet here during the day on account of the heat and the fact that most of the work is done at night or early in the morning... mostly night patrols and hatchery shifts... from 6 or 7 to midnight and midnight to 5 or 6 am. Hatchery shifts mostly consist of checking the canastas (little baskets/shelters they have around the nests) to see if any hatchlings have emerged every 20-30 minutes. During night patrols, we walk stretches of the beach looking for leatherbacks/leatherback tracks... so we can steal the eggs she lays and bring them to the hatchery. Leatherback eggs have a 0% success rate in the wild so every little bit, like relocating eggs to a hatchery definitely helps. Crossing my fingers for a Leatherback sighting (we're expecting one tonight or tomorrow).. So far I've seen a bunch of Olive Ridley turtles on patrol which is still exciting but a Leatherback would be grand.

We're also required to help out with exhumations... basically digging up remaining eggs from nests that already hatched and recording how far along they got... Pictures to left and below... One on the left is a stage 3 developed leatherback that for whatever reason stopped developing... it also had some fungus growing in its shell... as most of the leftover eggs did. There was a live hatchling when we dug up the eggs, but she didn't make it..

Picture on right of a completed exhumation... Pretty messy and a bit sad seeing little babies that almost made it. Kind of disheartening that its so difficult for a critically endangered species to reproduce, even without additional obstacles like poaching, fishing, global warming, development...etc. Glad that the work here is making even a slight difference... There were over 50 hatchlings that emergedfrom our exhumation nest.. much better than zero, no?