On the night of the 25th I went on a snake walk on the Raphia trail with Josh and Kiersten and was able to catch my first snake here in Costa Rica, and used a snake hook to retrieve it down from a tree. It was a very long brown blunt headed tree snake. As I was getting the snake down it musked on me, as i was below it. The musk landed on my face which may have upset most people but it didn’t faze me at all because I was just so excited to have gotten the chance.

The massive pit we had to dig to find an unhatched Leatherback nest. My team mates from left to right include Caitlin McManus (Fleming Environmental Visual Communications student); Dan Jenner (Fleming/Trent Ecological Restoration student); Khrissy (Cano Palma Turtle Project Co-ordinator); Kate Klarer (volunteer and University of Ottawa student)

On the 28th during morning patrol there was a Leather back excavation. It took a lot of hard work and digging in the sun, heat, and dirt. We were well over a meter down and about 2 meters around. A team had previously tried to excavate the nest 2 days before but were not successful. We were about to give up when we found the ID tag. The eggs once finally were found were below the water table. Although it was sad it was extremely interesting to see different levels of development in the baby turtles. Most of them were in stage 3 which is three quarters of development.

A Leatherback turtle that did not finish development. The nest was most likely flooded during late stage of development.

Later that day we were able to do a snake workup of an annulated boa. This was the type of snake I was most looking forward to seeing. Later that night the whole group went for a boat ride with Josh as he taught us about ecological diversity we were privlidged enough to see a Tamandua in the trees searching for food. A tamandua is a type of ant-eater. I also completed a night patrol that night and completed about 12 miles on the beach within morning and night patrols.

The next morning patrol I completed was on the 30th of July. There was an empty green sea turtle carapace on the beach. This was from either the first or second night here. It was the turtle that had been tied up by poachers. Which reminded me of why people are working so hard to patrol the beach and conserve all of the amazing wildlife that is here.