Costa Rica and turtles

Turtle tour

Its pitch dark. Clouds obscure the sky and the only light comes from the phosphorescence off breaking waves which roll in off the murky grey Atlantic Ocean. The sand is black, each grain a tiny remaining survivor of what were once great volcanic rocks spewed as lava from one of costa Rica's many volcanoes.

It is warm but not humid; Atlantic breezes move the humidity on and disperse it in some way. Out at sea impressive thunderstorms take place. Physically eye blinding lightning flashes, both sheet and fork causing everything to become an instant silhouette. And it is the silhouettes we are all looking for. The first clue to their whereabouts are the dark metre wide trails from swash zone to back shore that run up the steep beach; a pattern of markings and scrapings that accelerate the beating of so many human hearts awaiting in the warm tropical rains on those dark beaches. Each line a sculpture testament to perseverance, instinct, a reproductive miracle.

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A dark shape emerges amongst many on the beach; not long and twisted like the so many branches washed up on these shores but oval in shape, at least a metre long and over 70 cm wide............it's paddle like flippers rotating at speed to haul its huge bulk up the beach.  A green turtle reaching the top of the beach, already physically exhausted begins its hour of scrapping a deep chamber. It's egg laying time.

Copyright Bill Beard Costa Rica de.

This was what we had come to see in Costa Rica. And it was worth the thirty hour journey to get here. The people of Tortuguero have got it right. In the past we were told, thousands would turn up. There would be a hundred people around one turtle.............

Now conservation is the name of the game. We arrive by small boat at the national park centre and disembark. Here, amongst hundreds of others, we meet our guide. Nine people per guide. We are allocated a number........48.........and the guide informs us it is a fifteen minute walk in to our section of the five mile long beach front. In single file we weave around the back of the small houses, bars, and the 'soda' cafes of Tortuguero, it's residents sitting out on their terraces, having barbecues, chilling under coconut trees, passing the time away. Nothing but smiles and laughter; soft reggae music playing on radios. And all the time long ‘conga’ lines of tourists, silently weave their way between buildings like the lines of leaf cutter ants so commonly seen in these parts.

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We skirt along the back of the beach for ages, torches pointed downwards, and passing groups returning. Smiles but little talking for noise can carry great distances. The vegetation closes in on all sides, we duck under falling branches mindful of our guide’s advice “don’t hit the branches or brush against them........in the jungle every leaf can have a nasty surprise on it". It just added to the already heightened sense of adventure.

We break out into a small clearing. A small open sided, tin roofed   building in which we can shelter and wait on some basic concrete benches. Several groups wait, the excitement, expectation....the tension is palpable. And then our guide receives the radio call.......station forty eight. We move silently, torches are off and it is pitch black. You can't see a thing except when lightning flashes light up the sky for a brief Nano second. You become rapidly adept at gauging your immediate surroundings in a Nano second!! Stumbling, cautiously advancing, and trying to work out whether your next footfall will be on a rise, a dip, on a twig or soft sand.....we move forward. And then wait, ten metres back from the beach in the jungle. The rangers will call us forward when they think it is safe to do so. The care of the turtle is paramount. The rangers control every bit of access to that beach.

The rules are simple and clear.....no torches and no cameras. The mere sight of one of those and your tour is cancelled......and they do it too! Only two red lights.....that of the guide and the ranger. The setup is clever. Rangers patrol the whole length of a five mile long beach. Without lights and with astonishing eyesight accustomed to the dark, they hunt for the tell tail trails of moving turtles. The disturbed sand stands out as a darker line on what is already a dark sand beach. It's clever! Then when a turtle is found, it is monitored from a distance to work out what it is doing. All that before any decision is made as to whether a small group of desperately excited tourists can be called forward to view one of nature’s astonishing spectacles.

On this night our group were lucky. We saw all the stages.  Two turtles moving up the beach. Two returning down it, exhausted from their endeavours and one laying eggs and covering them over. I cannot adequately describe the time we had literally surrounding the turtle from a metre away as she lay in a trance state oblivious to the nine of us. One hundred and twenty bright white jelly like eggs the size of ping pong balls; three at a time.

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 And then the sheer physical effort in using front and rear flippers to throw sand over.....filling in the hole so that predators would never know below were one hundred and twenty precious eggs of one of the most endangered animals on the planet. Not one of us spoke; the quiet sing song voice of the guide and ranger whispering to us about turtle life, the stages of the whole egg laying process, the threats facing these gentle creatures and their future plans for conserving them all in the gentle red glow of their red torch lights. A magical experience? Yes! A humbling experience.......absolutely.  Could they have made it any better.....hell no! To see the looks of awe and wonder on my wife and children's faces......priceless. On that beach, on that night, my daughter celebrated her twenty first birthday.........one she'll never forget! And neither will the rest of us.

The sheer physical size of a green backed turtle is awesome. It's almost the size of an average dining table, a generally oval shape with a sort of narrowing taper towards its rear. The front flipper paddles are enormous and strong, formidable powerhouses for swimming, moving and digging. Graceful movers in the sea, the poor animal is cumbersome on land, slow and ponderous in its movements although moving down the beach it can shift at quite a pace.

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Our return off the beach wasn't the anti-climax I thought it might be. I think we were all in a rosy glow of having witnessed something special. The sheer management of people along that long gently sweeping beach was astonishing. For miles you could see well-spaced tiny pin pricks of red light. Each tour took two hours from start to finish and there were two tours per night eight til ten and ten til midnight. I estimate that five hundred people were on that beach during that night. No noise, no intrusiveness.....and united in a single purpose.....witness a miracle of life and spread the message of effective eco and conservation based tourism. Well done Tortuguero......impressive, really quite impressive. And THANK-YOU!

Steve