Tortugas

A little while ago, Ryan and I did a "BBC: Life" marathon. This is an amazing series, by the way, and should be watched by EVERYONE. It teaches about the lives of earth`s creatures. The hunting habits, the crazy skills that evolution has given them, etc.. All in amazing footage.
These people are professionals with huge budgets, though, so its not like you ever get to see any of that stuff in real life.

Having said that....

Tyson had invited us out to his beach house to see this thing, and his father, step mother, and younger sister came into town, so it turned out to be a family weekend...With Ryan, Myself, and Tyson's girlfriend Patricia. We all piled in the truck with all the groceries, a giant papaya (Seriously it was longer than my lower leg.) two dogs, and a couple bottles of the local Rum (Flor de Caña) for the long bumpy ride out to Costa Dulce.

(Sunset from Tyson`s beach house)

Tyson had told us that this was the night that all the sea turtles came up onto the beach, under the full moon. Someone else told us, no, they don't like the light, so they come ashore under a new moon. They HATCH under a full moon.

So we`re pretty confused, and not sure if there will even be any at all. In any case, Tyson`s family was tired from the long days of travel, and we didn`t end up going that night at all, voting to go the next night.

The next day, Patricia looks online and finds out that they did come ashore last night. In huge numbers, just as we`d heard. (I don`t know whats wrong with my apostrophe, but bear with me..)

So, bummer. We flailed on that one.

Whatever, we`ll go tonight anyway, turtles or no turtles. So we had a great day at the house, walking the beach, swimming in the connecting river - despite the apparent presence of crocodiles up the river a ways. We drank cool drinks in the sun, and even got a front row seat to a show by some passing monkeys just off the deck.

(No zoom!)

(Awesome.)

(Ryan surfing the beach right in front of the house)

(Same sunset, same deck, a few minutes later.)

At the end of the day, we had a great dinner, and packed everyone up with some snacks and flashlights and headed to Playa La Flor, two beaches down from the house.

What I'm about to try to explain, is going to be interesting because I'm going to write in words something that I have no words to describe.
Yeah. One of those *gasp* moments where the only intelligible words that seem to come out of your mouth are "Ohhhhmygod" over and over again, no matter how many thoughts may be in your head...
It was like a EXACTLY like a BBC special.
First hand.

When we got to the beach, they covered out flashlights in red filters since turtles don`t like the white lights. As soon as they gave us back our lights, we saw that what had looked like large rocks laying all over the dark beach were actually nesting sea turtles.
I cannot describe that feeling we had when we realized what we were looking at. It was beyond anything either of us had expected by a long shot. A thousand or so turtles coming onto the beach, sliding back into the surf, digging their nests, covering them.

The smell was strong in the thick of it, I won`t soon be forgetting that...But that makes sense when you can hardly take a step without running into a sea turtle. We walked around watching them do this amazing thing...Imagine your body is a huge rock and you have to slide yourself out of the water...dig this hole out from underneath yourself..which is really really deep, and surprisingly uniform, lay 100 eggs, cover it all back up, and slide yourself back out into the ocean...It`s hard to believe only 1 in 2,000 babies make it back to the sea when you hear the statistic, but watching the babies we found try to make it, it`s not so surprising. I saw one get run right over by giant heavy turtles repeatedly, and once that was over, the tiniest waves push it way back onto the beach...Life`s tough as a sea turtle. They are such an amazing example of how powerful instincts and nature are, returning to the same beach every year, and going through the process of making the nest, which is both complicated and extremely awkward for a turtle. You`d think evolution would have made their job easier by now...

(Babies!!)

In the moonlight we could see the shiny backs and shadowy mounds all up and down the beach, and it was literally breathtaking.

(We did the best we could to take photos with the light from our flashlights. Here is a sea turtle on her way to make a nest.)

(Here is one on her way back to the sea..)

There were more turtles than sandy spaces, and we were reminded often. Ryan sat watching a turtle dig her nest and got run into head first by a passing turtle. The same happened to me, crouching to watch one lay eggs, the head of a turtle appeared under me and the shell hit me in the back. Nothing more startling than that...We sat down to have some snacks and a few turtles walked right over us. Tyson was trying to stand his ground and see what they would do...they would walk right over him. One came up to us, stopped in front as if to figure out the detour around us, and then decided to just save the trouble and start her nest right there in our laps.

I could write about this for days and still not get the feeling across that I wish I could. We couldn`t capture many photos since flash was not allowed. This one, was not taken by me, but is the same beach, and the same turtles but by daylight, so not quite as many.



So when it all comes down to it, there`s just one word that describes it best to me - as cliche as it may be....
It was magic.