4/20
2:00pm we caught our bus for a 4hr bus ride to San Jose to spend the night before our journey to the turtle project. San Jose was nice but we were all mostly pretty tired and took the night to relax, eat, and catch up on our e-mails, facebook, blogs, etc. before enjoying our first all ladies dorm room hehe sorry timo and nico!
The next morning we woke up bright and early for an interesting journey involving transit from taxi-bus-taxi-boat. The boat was by far the best part. It was a 30 minute ride that led us on canals through a safari jungle. It was like we were on our way to Jurassic Park. Which, we later we found out was actually quite possible considering the movie had been filmed in that very same area of Costa Rica. With no previous experience in this realm of volunteer work we had very few/ little to no ideas about what time place was going to be like just that it was started by a man named Roberto Solano, a biologist and that it was located somewhere on the Carribean coast by the Pacuare River(wherever that is?). After the boat ride and a 15 minute walk through palms we had arrived and were warmly welcomed by the project coordinator Sherry. We all settled in to our rooms and then headed off to have some lunch and orientation. During orientation Sherry told us a little bit about the program and how most of our guides had previously been poachers but had come to work for her and also notified us that we would be walking that night! The shifts were four hours long and we were to go in pairs. Little after we were given this information it began to rain…and rain. Shifts started at 7,8,9,10,11,12. Luckily Rachel and I got the late night shift so we could nap a bit after dinner…or so we thought. After dinner everyone was pretty excited but still so completely unware of what it was exactly that we were going to be doing. We all went to bed awaiting our shift. Two by two every hour our group disappeared off into the unknown. When it came to be 11:30 Rachel and I awoke packed all of our stuff and headed off for Blue Skies Chris (meeting point before walks). Our guide was late so we sat and talked with a member from the other camp who had come to join us that night. The walk started off long cold monotonous with no sound other than the crashing of the waves to our right and the pouring of the rain from above. It was dark and it kept getting darker we stumbled around for 2 hours thinking to ourselves why would anyone want to do this?! We had encountered one turtle but she decided she wasn’t going to lay eggs so we continued on. When we reached the point we turned around to return home. Our clothes were soaked our spirits were low and the constant questions of why am i doing this kept floating around. We walked on for about 20 mintues until we came across another turtle who was in the process of digging her nest. We all stood around hiding in the shadows our clothes stickign to us while Minor our guide yelled instructions at us in incomprehensible spanish. He helped the turtle dig and wrote away in on his clipboard yelling some more for us to help keep the sheets dry and safe from the rain as well as the turtle eggs as he put them in a plastic bag. After about 45min of birthing this turtle we were finally going to be able to go to hatchery and home! We came across to other turtles on our way back but we left them behind. We were later explained that we cannot simply pick up every nest of eggs and that their must be some natural nests in order to not throw off any other balance in nature. We made it to the hatchery and reburied the eggs and finally headed off for home!! When we arrived it was 5:20am we were soaked and starving but too tired to think about anything other than peeling off our soaked clothes and jumping into bed.
In the mornign after discussing our walks over breakfast we were able to tour the project a little bit more and were told that during the day we were to work as well. Aiding in all Camp maintinence duties which included: weeding, composting, beach sweep, tidying rooms, helping in the kitchen, making sure Chancho(the piggy) was well fed and comfortable, and my favorite! filling basins of water and bringing them to the kitchen and outside our dorms. Prior to our arrival the generator that provided the camp with water had decided to kill over and die so no electricity and no running water.The project had many great big ideas to bring them towards their main goal of sustainabiliy but for some reason were just not working. The ideas for the butterfly/frog garden, hydroponics, compost/trash management were all great big ideas but they involved much more planning and work and right now their plans due to disunion within management had caused all these ideas/plans to be poorly executed. It was clear that they had been struggling especially after having weathered a series of storms which had not only thrown off the rythym off the ocean making it unsage to swim but had taken out there flower, vegetable, butterfly&frog;, gardens. Just as the “ocean needs time to heal” as Sherry said so did this place. And we had arrived in the middle of what seemed to be a slow long recovery. There was a lot of work to be done…
Knowing this, the majority of the group seemed really respond to the call for help and accept the challenge. Even though after first having been under the impression that we were to walk all night and sleep all day. The majority got up out of their beds in the morning to help out with camp maintinence and were out there every other night into the dark abyss with high hopes of being able to rescue some of these magnificent creatures. I believe all of the questions we had been asking about this very peculiar labor were finally answered when a man named Glenn who was a coordinator of a different project gave us a mini lecture. Usually all of us tend to zone out, get bored and try sleep without anyone catching us, like a highschool math class. But, this was different. Glenn captivated us all and gave us the run down of basically all the other turtle projects, the migration routes of the turtles and the reasons of why they are so highly endangered and nearly extinct and gave us yet another call to action through his passionate presentation. Glenn at least for me gave me reason to continue my daily labors throughout the rest of my stay. Its a beautiful thing to see someone so passionate about their work. To believe so whole heartedly in what they do that you can feel it and want to be apart of that something. Maybe I am strange but it made the following days much easier for me.
Aside from all the labors we got the chance to meet a new group of people who were also volunteers and really just talk and understand where they were all coming from. A specific group made up of 3 kids from German all around 19 like us were towards the end of their travels. Not wanting to go home. Wanting to explore the rest of the world. Not wanting to worry about college, jobs, money, the realworld! It was nice knowing we weren’t the only ones.
Our last night after dinner we had a pow wow pulled tarot cards and discussed our experiences over the past week of volunteer. It was nice because the previous nights walk had gone much better than we had expected(considering the lack of action on previous nights) for everyone was finally able to see turtles AND rescue a nest of eggs! The discussion was so interesting considering the range of different answers, view points, and stories. It was exciting because even though we are all here together and have been for the last almost 3 months as a little camfamily we each are so unique and experience, see, feel, and take things so differently.
It has been a real treat throughout this trip to hear what everyones thoughts are about our many experiences. We have journeyed for quite a bit and we have all come so far together. Even with our differences we have all managed to become this amazing, strong, and caring mix of friends. With only one m
ore week and pull of tarot left before our return to all over the states.
Our meeting ended early and we all turned in for bed. We had to be awake and ready to go at 4:30am to catch our boat to take us back to the world outside of Jurassic Park.
Sorry i am bad at ze writing of ze blog.
