The Miracle Of Turtle Nesting, Loose Nut Israelis

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  San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua
Sunday, November 18, 2007

On the way to SJDS a guy boarded the bus and tried to sell vitamins for an hour. The stuff he was selling looked like seaweed mixed with sperm in a jar and well could have been. San Juan Del Sur is a shithole and the beach there is the plug but maybe we are spoiled with such beautiful beaches in Australia. There are some good surf spots on the Pacific coast here and many surfers and wannabe dudes are doing safaris from here in 4wds. We will get in some beach time in Costa Rica.

We stayed at Casa Oro where the walls were paper thin and surfing the flavour of the day. Australian surf movies were playing on a large screen and we think we saw Snapper Rocks. I thought i saw Allens Lollies in a store the other day, i wish i did. Nicaraguan chocolate is good and the coffee better, the rest of the street food is crap and there doesnīt seem to be any distinctive nico dishes. The ice-cream is awesome though and comes in bright eclectic flavours

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. A tiny, loose nut young Israeli guy travelling on chicken buses with a surfboard that was like a chunky block of cheese and 7.2 feet long(stupid idea) befriended us and followed us around.

We came here for the turtles and we are completely obsessed with them now. I would love to stay and volunteer here, a somewhat dangerous job protecting the nests from egg poachers. Tourism is only fairly fresh in Nico especially in these parts so the turtle reserve is a little dodge with guards pocketing money and still allowing poachers in to the nests. Conservationists and volunteers are helping protect the nesting site by monitoring and raising money with eco sensitive turtle watching tours. Sometimes they have to buy the nests from poachers. The issue is that the people have been using these eggs as trade for a very long time but are killing the goose that lays the golden egg by over poaching, less turtles are now in existence. Playa La Flor near SJDS is one of the worldīs seven principle nesting areas for the endangered Olive Ridley turtle. Seven or eight times a year, thousands of these creatures emerge from the ocean during the night and dig holes above the tide line in which they lay their eggs, which in turn start hatching a month and a half later. The widespread gathering of these eggs for profit has greatly reduced their numbers, many restaurants in Nica have Olive Ridley eggs on the menus especially in soup

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We left at 6pm in a troop carrier and drove for about 40 minutes on a rough road to the reserve where we were hoping to see some hatchlings and the entire process of a lay which can take hours. We had some grand turtle luck. The tour was well run with guides giving the turtles a wide berth, not using flashlights or cameras. One injured turtle was struggling to come ashore and lay but gave up exhausted and went back out to sea. Immediately we spotted another healthy one come up the shore to above the water line and dig a nest using her very efficient back flippers as scoops. The guide uncovered the hole a bit and using a red light we could see the process of the lay which was about 100 eggs. The eggs were small, round and white and covered in a slime which acts as a natural anti-fungal liquid to prevent the eggs rotting and to deter insects. We were amazed at the experience of witnessing this special event and can imagine the display when thousands nest at once. Only 1 in 1000 hatchlings make it out to sea to grow old due to poaching and predators so they are all very special and important. The turtle was in a trance like state for the process and was not aware of our presence. The laying of the eggs seemed exhausting and we heard her puffing very softly. After the lay which took about one hour, the turtle filled the hole with sand and patted down the surrounding area with her flippers and body, compressing the sand above the eggs then made her way back out to sea

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. The turtles have a good sense of which way to go but can easily become confused if the lay process is interrupted. We were allowed to take two pictures. The guards were keeping two hatchlings in a bucket when we arrived by surprise and there was no purpose to this. These babies disappeared later when we returned from the beach under strange circumstances, suspect business was going on there.

There was a director of a large sea turtle conservation group in Costa Rica on our tour named Alec and we spoke at length with him about the turtles and his projects. We continued this conversation back at the hotel over some beers and he invited us to visit one of his projects on the Pacific Coast where volunteers are onsite. We have decide to chase turtles in Costa Rica now as itīs prime season time for Leather backs, the largest of the sea turtles which grow to 3.7metres and weigh in at up to 900kg. Imagine the phenomenon that would be watching one of those old monsters lay. So, the chase is on to find one (extremely rare and critically endangered).

We head out to Lago de Nicaragua to Ometepe Island where we stay in a barn at Finca Magdalena, a coffee plantation

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