Saving Grace: Tortuguero

“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!

Del Monte banana plantation

On a boat!

We had fun on the boat

Tortuguero National Park!

Sarah and Heather smiling in the sun

I like this place...

From the porch of our hotel

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.

The bird canoe

The party canoe

Caiman crocodilus

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.