tortuga's

It has been a busy week...hard to imagine on my endless vacation? From the coffee plantation to working at the bookstore to various dinner parties hosted here at the house (dinner with George and Heidi - I'm sure an upcoming book) to finally a turtle station.

Dave, a friend from town, had invited me along for a weekend at a tortuga station. He is looking at starting up a project at a station about 2+ hours from here, so he wanted to visit and "talk business" with the guys that run it. He promised that it would be fun for me to see and learn about how the turtles lay their eggs, so I agreed to go, eager to see what the hoopla is all about with the sea turtles.

So we started out saturday morning with surfboards loaded on top of the car. I know, I know, its hard to imagine that me and my forgiving board would be so quickly reacquainted...

After driving for about an hour and a half (stopping twice for the military to inspect us) we turned off the main road and drove about twenty minutes to meet the surf. Thankfully the waves here were designed for me, the beginner. Not nearly as tall, or fast as the ones in Arroyo Seco!

Out to sea we went, once again, Dave giving me even more instructions and yelling, "ok, now...paddle paddle paddle" and with the waves I flew. Ok, so I was still laying down on the board, I have the board rash on my stomach to prove it. But, I kept at it. Figuring out when an appropriate wave was coming that I could catch and with it I would glide to shore. It was so much fun I felt like yelling, "whoo-hoo", which I am sure I did at least a couple of times! Finally I told Dave to go off and do his thing, afterall, it isn't too much fun to hang out with the beginner all the time, and he had given me all the instructions and confidence I needed to play around. After my body couldn't take it anymore (a couple of hours) I went ashore and was pleasantly greeted with a beer (from the police I may add - this is what happens when the only girl on the beach comes in).

When we first arrived at the beach no-one had been around. But soon the fisherman came in and with them came a few truckloads of people looking to buy fresh fish. I'm not really sure where all these people came from seeing that we were in the middle of nowhere, but, come they did. Once Dave came in, we too bought a couple of fish and a HUGE langosta (lobster) to cook up later at the station.

Then we packed up and hit the road - off to see the SEA turtles.

Getting there was a little tricky, we did have a map, a poorly drawn map, but one none-the-less. After a warm welcome at the station, both by the scientists that run the facility and the group of kids and parents in from Guadalajara we set up camp. Both of us agreed that it would be pretty fun to sleep up in the lifeguard tower. It not only saves you from the bugs, it also has a nice breeze to sleep in the summertime.

Immediately we made friends with the kids whose parents run the station, Zach and Martin, who proceeded to follow us everywhere thereafter. In fact, most of the kids wanted to befriend us, but unfortunately for them it was mostly Dave they could talk to since he speaks the language fluently and I don't! Dave and Tonio spent time talking about the future of the station from both prospectives while I lounged around and got to know the surroundings. About 9pm we had dinner and then started gearing up to walk the beach and find ourselves some eggs. I'd liken it to a big easter egg hunt, less bright colors, and daylight.

Two groups went out on Saturday evening, ours being the last, left at 11:30pm. Our job, to look for turtle tracks and mounds of sand as this is where the eggs are deposited. You can't use your lights since you don't want to scare off the turtles, so the leader has a head lamp that is infar-red which the turtles don't detect. So we would walk down the beach somewhat in file and look for tracks that look like a big log had been drug up the beach from shore. When the tracks were spotted it would take little time to find the mound and when dug down there would be eggs freshly laid. Then they would radio the station and someone in a ATV would come and pick them up to be quickly transported back to the protected area at the station. They only have four hours to have the eggs out of the sand. So quickly the eggs would be re-buried.

All this is important because turtles eggs are poached. Apparently it is big business as Mexicans think that the eggs are aphrodisiacs. However the turtle is a protected animal here and it is against the law to do such a thing. But in a somewhat lawless society it happens all the time. This all going through my head at midnight as I walk down the beach..."uh, Dave, what happens if we encounter poachers..." his reply, "don't know".

Unfortunately our group didn't get to see any of the turtles. I'm sure if I had I would have still been out there. But I get to learn more about one of the many endangered species in our world. For instance, once the sea turtles lay their eggs, they turn and go back out to sea and never come back for their young. Thus leaving the young vulnerable to prey or, worse yet, humans. When these young grow up and become "knocked up" they too come to the same spot that they were born and lay their eggs repeating the process. All eggs are laid at night, and even more so when there is a quarter moon. I also got to hold some of the new eggs, they looking like a ping-pong ball but instead of being hard they are still soft so you can easily dent them. After some time the shell becomes hard like we are used to when we see chicken eggs.

Finally our group returned home about 1am and I wearily climbed up the ladder on our lifeguard tower and quickly fell off to sleep.

The next morning after Dave did a bit of surfing, I watching from the lifeguard tower, we had our breakfast of champions: lobster soup. Tonio's wife, who cooks for the groups in for holiday was nice enough to cook our lobsters in some sort of incredible soup. I had told Dave that if I am in charge of cooking it it would be oil and garlic, I know of no other way. Thankfully she offered to cook it up and delicious it was!

The rest of the day was spent entertaining ourselves with the kids, I playing a disney board game with Zach and Martin, imagine how that went with my limited spanish. But, they were small enough (6+ years old) that they didn't really know how to play either so the questions could be easy. Dave continued working with Tonio and checking out the site. We stayed through a late lunch of camarones (shrimp) and finally headed home.

How could anyone beat this life?

Some foto's to see...

my forgiving board against the truck
tortuga station
Dave on top of our sleeping quarters
Pretty sunset
Me with Zach and Martin