“For where your
treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
~
Luke 12:34
Our final field trip stop in Costa Rica was Tortuguero
National Park. The park is known
mostly for the green sea turtles that visit the beaches to nest. To get there, we had to take a bus for
a few hours, and then a boat for about an hour, and finally we arrived at the
beach!
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Del Monte banana plantation |
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On a boat! |
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We had fun on the boat |
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Tortuguero National Park! |
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Sarah and Heather smiling in the sun |
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I like this place... |
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From the porch of our hotel |
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And of course the ocean! |
I think this was my first time going in the Caribbean
Sea. The water was so warm it
almost wasn’t refreshing, which was quite a change for the girl from
Alaska. The hotel welcomed us with
fresh juice, and we spent the evening walking the beach and playing in the
water before our lecture that evening.
One day while we were there we went on a canoe tour of the
rivers in the area. I enjoyed
paddling around and looking at birds, monkeys, herps, and sloths! Floating seeds in the water made great
skipping stones. I would skip one,
and then pick it right back up and do it again when we paddled by where it
landed! Here are some pictures
from our adventure.
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The bird canoe |
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The party canoe |
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Caiman crocodilus |
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Choloepus hoffmanni!!! |
The highlight of Tortuguero was most definitely the sea
turtles. We visited the Sea Turtle
Conservancy to learn about conservation and research of sea turtles, and also
went on an early morning beach stroll (4:00 am) in the hopes of seeing laying
turtles or a nest hatching.
Tortuguero is an important breeding ground for green sea turtles (
Chelonia mydas). The creation of the National Park
turned the economy from one based on turtle hunting, to one based on
ecotourism. The turtles are
protected, and the area earns income through turtle walks and the visitors that
come to see the turtles. Sea turtles
spend 1% of their life on land, and yet that is where almost all of the
research efforts take place, therefore very little is known about the actual
life history of these amazing animals.
Here are some fun facts that I do know about turtles.
1) They can live to be over 100 years old.
2) They have temperature dependent sex determination. If the nest temperature averages below
29 degrees Celsius, then males will develop, but if it is above 32 degrees
Celsius, then females will develop.
Temperatures in the middle yield a more even sex ratio.
3) To find sea turtles laying eggs, you walk along the beach
until you find tracks that are heading up towards the vegetation, and are not accompanied
by another set of tracks returning to the sea. On our walk, we passed by 49 pairs of tracks (all from that
night) before we came to a lone track heading up to where we found a turtle
finishing to lay and bury her eggs.
So cool! The morning
sunrise was beautiful, and on our walk back we found an even better surprise!
Here are some pictures of our sea turtle adventures.
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The Sea Turtle Conservancy |
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All the places sea turtles from Tortuguero go |
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Chelonia mydas laying eggs! |
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Making her way back to the ocean |
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The beach |
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The ocean |
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Sea turtle tracks |
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Baby turtles hatching! |
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