Wednesday 19 August 2015

An experience for a lifetime


Today is my last day in the turtle project and knowing this leaves me somehow with a bad feeling. The last 24 days passed so fast also if the life here is really quiet. And in the village EL Progreso  is not really much to do, besides going to one of the two pulperias. The work with the turtles is mostly limited on the night. Each of the two night shifts lasts four hours, the first begins at 8pm, the second one on midnight. This was for me really tiring after a time, especially when you have to patrol a few days in a row. Besides the night work there are also the shifts in the hatchery, where you have to take care that no eggs get stolen by poachers. But somehow this work simply consists of chilling in a hamac.

I was always left behind with my mouth wide open by all the great nature you can find in the environment of the village, from a huge amount of different butterflies to rare snakes, toucans and a lot of loud parrots and even louder monkeys. This includes also the underwater world of the Caño Island, where you can meet for sure some turtles, sharks and if you have some luck also dolphins and whales.


Rio Oro - A must see 

When volunteers are staying in the project longer than two weeks, they have the possibility to go to Rio Oro, where the turtle partner project of the Corcovado Foundation is located. I took this chance and I was really surprised how good it did to be away from internet, electricity and also the possibility simply going to a grocery store, because there was no one in this accumulation of a few houses. I could really enjoy the calmness and the nature in its finest.


The food is simple and tasty with a lot of rice and beans, as you can imagine. =) And there are way more turtles than on the beach of EL Progreso. Touching the skin of a turtle, when she is laying eggs on the beach gives you a feeling that can’t be explained.




Enjoying life together

To sum up it can be said that working with the turtles makes a lof of fun, but you have to expect that your work exists of long walks on the beach during nighttime and that sometimes you must be lucky to see a turtle and not only her track on the beach. But after all the work with the turtle with the combination of seeing all this great spots in the Costa Rican nature makes this stay to an experience I really don’t want to miss in my lifetime. Meeting people and volunteers from all over the world and going a small way of life together made the stay even better.



Julia, 23, Italy

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