First turtles sighted....
Trip Start
Aug 21, 2008
1
22
59
Trip End
Ongoing
Nosara,
Province of Guanacaste,
Costa Rica
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Local politics education
Refuge president shot!
Beach Yoga antics
The series of early night continued after watching an amazing sunset and arranging to meet up at 2am with Kasia (crazy polish girl), Suki and Aki (Japanese couple - they've been traveling 2.5 years!) for a spot of turtle-laying watching. We were not disappointed. We saw over 30 turtles climbing up the beach, digging holes, popping their eggs out into deep nests; then camouflaging them before returning to sea. Each turtle lays around 70 eggs of which only 1% survive due to natural causes. The experience felt better for not having a guide as we were tracking the turtles ourselves and each successful 'treasure hunt' was personally rewarding.
Later that morning we met David, a freelance reporter writing about the arribadas who provided background information. Basically, Costa Rica has proved that although its a nice idea; eco-tourism has basically failed and is not sustainable. Once big business gets involved, big resorts get built; resources become scarce (water for example) and local people end up as cleaners in the big hotels. Slowly, communities break up and much of the natural charm of a place is gone with a plastic tourist trap left in its place.
Ostional is considered one of the most important places in the world where the Olive Ridley Sea turtle nests. During 'arribadas' one can witness more than 1.5 million turtles nesting continuously during 3-9 days and nights. This is mostly a result of the local community (650 people) who have organised themselves into a refuge society, who clean and guard the beaches from poachers and harvest 0.5% of the 1.6 million eggs laid each arrebada. This is the community's main source of income generating approx $140k each month from the sale of eggs of which 30% is invested in environment education, communal infrastructure such as road and bridges, and other areas such as education, health and sports.
Typically, big business wants to enter in Ostenial, build huge resorts and install typical eco-tourist businesss which will enevitbley be the death of the town. Even the Costa Rican Dept of Environment are pressurizing locals to sell up (resulting backhanders -no doubt) however strong local resistance is oresent as the community like their way of life and certainly don't want to clean gringo hotel toilets for the rest of their life. Furthermore, they have proved that their form of self-sustainment works as turtle numbers are increasing (everywhere else worldwide all decreasing) since the inception of the refuge and thus the government is finding it hard to build a case against them..power to the people!
Another threat are the poachers who want a slice of the pie. The community has created a security group to patrol the beaches much to the annoyance of the poachers who last week paid a hit-man to shoot the president of the refuge. The shot was just a 'warning' (leg wound) but just goes to show how serious the situation is. Obviously the pretty much non-existent Costa Rican police have done little to investigate this and conspiracy theorists could be forgiven for suggesting that such incidents works in favor of the dept of environment and big business. Anyhow - enough of the politics.
I've sticking around in Ostional for a couple of nights now. There have been a few nightly turtles but nothing of usual scale and magnitude. The town is pretty quiet so I've had a couple of 14km and 10km walks/hitches to neighboring beaches for to catch some waves and sun and rock-climbing together with my first yoga-lesson on the beach (Krazy Kasia is an ex-yoga teacher - apparently I'm pretty good for a beginner!). Still keeping my fingers crossed though for some turtle action.....
Hitches to date：－
4 Cars
1 Truck
1 4x4
2 motorbikes (one where I had to carry a mailbox)
1 bicycle
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