The stairs leading up from the lobby at Hotel Cacts

I’m at the Hotel Cacts in San Jose and it’s the final morning that we will be in Costa Rica.  Our flight leaves at 12:05 this afternoon.  I always start and end my Costa Rican experiences at Hotel Cacts.  It’s small, quiet, comfortable, affordable, and owned by a Costa Rican who does everything she can to make her guests comfortable and happy.  After each trip, I take time to reflect on the experience and recount the events of the journey.  These are my thoughts and reflections of the past six weeks.

First, while traveling to Costa Rica with this crew of six young women, a few questions came to mind that have now been answered.  Despite what you might think the first question was not: What have I gotten myself into?  I was excited and curious to see how things would play out.  I wondered how they would get along with each other?  How will they deal with the conditions at the station?  Will they be able to handle the physical nature of the work?  Will they engage in their own adventures outside of what I have planned?

"The Crew" - Clarissa, Meaghan, Leah, Bailey, Heather, and Charity

How did they get along?  From my perspective, they got along very well.  Cano Palma is a little space carved out of the rainforest with virtually no space to call entirely your own.  When it’s raining it is even more difficult because most people are gathered in doors and conditions become even more difficult.  The only places you will be left completely alone are the shower and the loo.  Even then, you may have some unexpected visitors: right Heather!  We had an interesting moment when Todd was providing a tour of the station for some newcommers.  He was showing them where the toilets were when the door swung wide open to reveal a very surprised Heather!  However, Heather, in her usual laid back style just laughed and shut the door.

How will they deal with the conditions at the station?  As mentioned above, the station provides virtually no private space.  You are likely to share your room with a number of non-primates including spiders, beetles, ants, geckos, scorpions and occasionally Maggie the station dog who sneaks in during thunder storms.  The showers are “refreshing” because the water is not heated.  Our crew adopted two strategies to manage the temperature of the water.  One, slowly sprinkle water onto yourself or expose one limb at at time to the water until you are sufficiently acclimatized to step under the shower.  Two, step right in and get it over with all at once.  Actually, there is a third option.  Don’t shower.  That’s not a good plan given the close quarters and the capacity of the human body to produce odours that are thoroughly unbearable.  That said, this crew of six settled into the routine of cold showers and they even began to look forward to them.  Showering in the wee hours of the morning after a long patrol on the beach is simply awesome!

Wandering or Hunting Spiders were a common "guest" in our rooms.

Did they handle the physical nature of the work?  In short, yes.  Walking on a sandy beach sounds romantic and it is if you are taking a short leisurely stroll.  Turtle patrol is something different.  We try and maintain a pace that gets us from one end of the study site to the other in about an hour.  That’s a pace of about 5 km/hr on sand in the dark.  Doesn’t sound too difficult.  Try it for a total of 4 hours on a night with no moon and get back to me.  This crew also endured the humid rainforest, mud, mosquitoes, sand fly bites and the hot sun while completing their daily duties as researchers at Cano Palma.  Now that the experience is over, we are all more fit and confident.

Fer-de-lance: Still my favourite thing to encounter while in the rainforest

Did they have adventures?  The certainly did.  Most of them are recounted in their blogs but a few were missed.  First, Meaghan and Charity had a stressful morning when a local dog chased – and captured a pregnant goat on the beach.  They managed to catch up to the unfortunate goat in the water and get the dog to release his grip on it’s throat.  Everyone now understands why we do not encourage dogs to accompany us on the beach.  Second, Leah and Bailey made several attempts at practical jokes ranging from hiding under cabins to “scare” Mario and myself to attempting to drop frozen coconut milk down my back.  If you know these two, they can’t hide anything.  They are as easy to read as Dick and Jane book.  One of Heather’s “moments” was recounted above with the toilet incident of 2011 which leaves us with Clarissa.  Clarissa managed to fly under the radar for the entire six weeks.  If she had any unusual adventures, she’s kept them to herself.  As for me, capturing Fer-de-lance number two along the beach trail after morning census was a highlight.  Charity and I were just at the south end of the Turtle Beach Lodge property when we happened across a Fer-de-lance crossing the trail.  With no hook or snake bag available, I modified a fallen branch and asked Charity for her backpack.  The snake was eventually coaxed into the bag and the capture was complete.  Any day that I can capture a Fer-de-lance is a good day in my books!

What’s next?  Everyone has provided me with valuable feedback regarding their experience and the overall summary is that this is a very worthwhile investment.  I will take time to reflect on the experience, make adjustments, and begin to plan for 2012.  The selection process for the second trip will begin this fall.  I can’t wait!

So it’s my last blog and I can’t believe how fast time has flown by!  If I could explain how much I’ve learned, I would describe it as my brain being the size of an elephant. I don’t have much time to write because even though it’s our last night we are still busy.. doing stuff!  That is what life is all about: getting out there and experiencing life. There is no other way to do it and no better way to learn. Everyone I have met here has contributed to this life changing experience and I am so thankful to all of them. Thank you Costa Rica and Cano Palma, I will be back.  PURA VIDA!

09/08/2011

Five weeks ago today I was sitting sleepless in my room in Kitchener, ON, Canada thinking about what my summer was about to turn into. Wondering, if I packed too much or not enough? What would the food be like? What would the station be like? What sort of adventures would I get myself into? Would I miss home being away for most of the summer? Now with only one week left, most of my questions have been answered. Yes, I packed to much; the food is normal, and good. The station is campy and now feels like home and I got into a lot of crazy adventures I could not have begun to imagine. The last few days and the week we are heading into are shaping up to be quite eventfull.

I missed my morning census on Friday to go do botany with Mario. Josh and Leah came back and said they had seen a single set of hatchling tracks heading to the ocean. They dug up the nest but decided to leave it incase more hatched out. Saturday, I was not scheduled for morning census but decided to go anyway because I missed Friday and have not been able to go out with Leah very much. I struck lucky with this decision because where the hatchling tracks were the day before we saw a few more. It was very difficult to see because it had been raining and the tracks were very light on the sand but luckily Leah and Lauren noticed them. We decided to dig up the nest again and see what was happening.

I should go back a bit and explain; When hatchling tracks are found protocol is to follow them back to their origin. Because most eggs should hatch around the same time, you can be pretty confident that the remaining eggs did not hatch or that some of the hatchlings are trapped in the nest.  The protocol at the station is to excavate all recorded nests and do a report on the nest. This data can give us a minimum survivorship of the nests; reasons for the lack of success, and more.

So, we dug up the nest and took all the eggs out. We believe that this nest was likely drowned. It would have been below the high tide line at some point and the eggs often cannot survive this flooding. Digging the hole was an adventure in itself. I don’t know how the turtles do it. The walls kept breaking down and filling our hole. Leather backs are the largest of the turtles so the nest turned out to be 110cm deep which means most of our bodies were in the hole by the time we got to the eggs. Leah and I took turns digging and then removing the eggs. We had to determine what stage of growth they were in when the nest failed; which means we had to break open all the eggs and report what was inside. Most of these eggs were well developed with a good shell and developed limbs and only a small amount of yolk left, making them stage three.

The experience was new and fun, but somewhat disheartening. Seeing that so many of the eggs did not survive was difficult. Being able to be part of the excavation and inspecting the deceased baby turtles was to some maybe grose; but I found it an extremely interesting learning experience.

That same night I was on night patrol. We had barely been on the beach 30 minutes when we came upon a turtle emerging. We stopped in our tracks and waited, sitting still so we wouldnt disturb her. My glasses were fogging up but looking at her through the blur I could tell something was odd about this turtle. After a good cleaning and a minute to look clearly I realised this turtle was missing its front left flipper. This turtle has no left flipper! It was a surprising sight, but inspiring to see this survivor turtle strugle her way up the beach. She got about 4 meters out of the water and for unknown reasons turned around and headed back to the water. We acted fast and Leah, who was on tagging duty that night, was able to tag the one front flipper she had left.

After that exciting and strange sighting we knew we were in for a good night, we all felt it. We made it all the way to mile 3 1/8 and back most of the way with out seeing anything. At about 3/8 we came across an uptrack. When we reached the nest site there was no turtle but there were two dogs hanging around and a nap sack sitting on the ground. We knew the turtle had been lifted. This is always a saddening sight, knowing that an adult turtle has been poached. Andy heard something farther back in the vegetation. We turned on our lights and went to check it out. We found the turtle! She was flipped on her back about 10 meters back from the nest site. We all went into first aid, rescue mode and went to help her. We removed the ropes they had tied around her front flippers and flipped her right side up. She was very stressed but not injured. She was thrashing around a lot when we found her; when we started working on the ropes she calmed right down. I felt like she knew that we were there to help her. After all that we were still able to tag her and make sure she got safely to the ocean. It was quite a thrill being able to save a turtle like that.  After such an eventfull night, it was a little difficult to calm down enough to sleep.