Tortugas Marinas

I´m writing from Monterrico, a little beach town on the pacific coast of Guatemala. We have been here for a week now and will be leaving today for Antigua. There we will hang out, maybe hike another volcano, for 2 days and then we are off to Lago de Atitlan. At ¨the Lake,¨ we will be working with a women´s cooperative and mayan weaving school on a permaculture project. We plan on checking out the rest of the lake, which sits among three volcanoes surrounding. I´m very excited to check it out! I want to avoid the touristy parts where there is a supposed gringo culture has risen. In just this past week I have lost much of my Spanish just from hanging out with gringos! Aye! lol.

Our week was pleasant, with weather just the opposite from what we experienced at the mountain school. Here, it has not rained and the heat forces you into the bath-temperature ocean at least once a day. The only condition that still exists, and boy does it, would be the insects. I have mucho mosquito bites, plus sand flea bites to top it off. One of the British girls here has every inch of her foot covered in bites. You do get used to it, but it is the only unpleasant thing about this place. I don´t take too well to heat. Truly, the ocean is a pleasure. I will miss it. The next shore trip will be on the Carribean side in Belize.

So we have been working with ARCAS, a sea turtle conservation group with a hatchery at their park. We arrived at the beginning of the season, so all week we helped patrol the shore at night without a single turtle sighting. Other found turtles, but not us... until our last night! Elisa and I were patrolling at 9pm, having some conversation while shining our red lights on the sand (when searching for turtles, we use red lights since white light is too bright and scares the momma turtle). Then we saw a commotion next to a hotel and lo and behold, a turtle was scampering up on shore with a crowd of tourists looking on. Unfortunately, turtle eggs are not illegal to poach in Guatemala and the locals depend on selling the eggs in the capital. To help save at least some the turtles, hatcheries have a cooperation with the poachers for them to donate at leats 12 eggs from each next they find. Our job was to collect this egg donation and in turn give them a slip which they need in order to legally transport the other eggs. Here, we had a unique situation where a bunch of tourists were looking on. So we announced to them that they can try to buy the eggs from the poacher and we will take the eggs back to the hatchery we they can survive. One man argued with the poacher for about 20 minutes and came out with buying 3 dozen eggs to donate to us. Since he sponsored those eggs, ARCAS will send photos and updates of the eggs and when they hacth and make their journey to sea. Yay! We had tortuga eggs! We took them back to the park and buried them in the hatchery. They will hatch in 45 to 60 days! Our babies!!! It was also awesome to see the momma do her thing. They lay eggs for about half an hour, clearing the spot, digging, laying the egss and then covering them back up. The poacher digs a hole next to hers to take they eggs as she lays them. The momma also does some camoflauging afterwards, shuffling around in other places on the beach to confuse the whereabouts of her nest. Then she b-lines it back to water and takes off. These are Olive Ridley turtles, by the way.

So that was an awesome experience! Last night we also have fun with the other volunteers, having dinner in town and going out dancing to the bars on the beach.

Next time, I´ll be writing from the lake. I miss you all!
-Ari