Day 6

On our way to the coastal village of Samara on the Nicoya peninsula, we made a stop for a walk on the Ricon de la Viega volcano. This walk started with the kind of landscape that we had seen before (nevelwoud), but then suddenly changed. Stepping out into the much drier landscape with grass and short trees (droogwoud), we were exposed again to the warm sun, but luckily we did get some occasional relief from clouds and breezes. These breezes would also sometimes introduce to us the nice smells of volcanic activity especially close to the bubbling mud holes.
In Samara we had the option to go to the beach at night to watch turtles lay their eggs. Due to lack of interest, this was initially cancelled, but Dirk and Chavo pulled some strings that would allow me and two other group members to go anyway. The breeding season generally ends the end of October, but since turtles had still been spotted the previous days, we were hopeful.
A van picked us up at the hotel and drove us for about 40 minutes through towns and later through deserted and very dark off-road tracks, until it stopped… As the mother turtles get spooked easily, making them return to the sea before laying their eggs, which could potentially cause their eggs to infect and the turtle to die, we had to be very careful not to spook them. This means as little light as possible and if light was used we could only use red light. So in pitch darkness two of us received a light that was only bright enough to see that there were crabs on the beach (wearing flip-flops was not the best idea in hindsight), but not quite bright enough to properly see where you (or the crabs) were going. Clouds had mostly covered the moon and the only point of reference was the bright fluorescent light coming off the waves breaking on the shore. I have never seen anything like this before and it was actually pretty amazing. I later learned it has to do with algae being activated by light and motion. This would also cause little sparks, like blue fluorescent glitter, to appear around our feet when walking on the beach.
While we were making our way on the beach, our guide suddenly turned around and turned off our lights. ‘Can you see the turtle right there?’. Euh, no! It’s pitch dark and you just turned off the little light we had. Apparently he could see the turtle being spooked, so then he hurried us to move away. Again – dude – it’s dark and we can’t see. It’s not just the crabs that I’m worried about but also the wood that we have seen scattered around the beach in that very dim light we were allowed to use before. Long story short: we ended up walking back holding each other’s hands, guide first, us following. It then turned out that the turtle had returned to the sea and we went through a similar ordeal with another one as well.
Then we got word that a turtle had been spotted that had started to dig the nest and we were taken there. When we arrived she was still digging and I was amazed to see how deep the hole turned out to be. Then she started laying her eggs, which turned out to be more than 100 and I was surprised to feel how hard they were. During this process the mother does not move and goes into some state of trance, it’s only then that we could also approach her from the side and front as well. Also, two students came to take measurements of the turtle and tag some of them, so that they could keep track of what was going on on that beach. Turtles return to the beach they were ‘born’ on to lay their eggs and apparently, this was still a very successful beach for turtles, with a couple of hundred turtles showing up some nights of the season.
In the meantime, the thunderstorm that was approaching from the sea had reached the beach, so we watched wearing our rain poncho’s in the pouring rain. After the mother was done she came out of trance, covered up the eggs, and compressed the sand by dropping her bodyweight on it. Judging from the sound, this was pretty intense. As a result people and other animals can walk over the nest afterwards without damaging the eggs. Then she covered everything up with some loose sand so that you really could not tell the location of the nest anymore and returned to the sea. When we were following her back to the sea, the guide all of a sudden turned off our lights again and dragged us out of the way, as another turtle was just coming out of the sea. Since we already saw the whole process once, he figured we had seen enough. Unfortunately there were no eggs hatching that night, so we did not get to witness the baby turtles making their way to the sea and we were taken back to the hotel again.