Costa Rica: The last week

Now onto the last week of an amazing journey in Costa Rica. Little did I know that the last week held many if not more amazing people, places and activities then the other 2.

We started with our home-stay's where I was staying with a lovely family with two daughters. Ana who was 13 and Gabi who was 10. I enjoyed chatting with my host mother Margot who made me remember the delicious Costa Rican food and the welcoming atmosphere that envelopes the country as a whole. It was an incredible experience as I got to get the daughters really well and help out at Gabi's school.
     During the home-stay's Caroline (the director of CIRENAS and the person in charge of our course) knew I was interested in marine biology and becoming a marine biologist, so talked to the PRETOMA people about staying and doing a patrol with another station on Caletas beach which was beautiful.
We left for the station at 7:30 at night and arrived at the station after the 3 km walk along a steep beach at 9. Where we were immediately taken onto a patrol to look for turtles in order to collect the eggs to move into the nursery so that poachers and raccoons didn't take them.  It was only me and Caroline which was nice to do something so incredibly special with someone who shared my love of the ocean and Costa Rica. We walked along the steep beach with 3 volunteers who were very efficient and passionate about the work they were doing. Turtle tracks were spotted up ahead and we quickly walked up to see a beautiful Olive Ridley laying in the sand. Unfortunately some of her eggs had been poached (the poacher had obviously heard us and had left) but we still managed to rescue 72 and we placed them in a bag in order to take them back to the nursery. Seeing this beautiful turtle was absolutley stunning, the way in which they know exactly when to lay their eggs is incredible.
We continued on our way along the beach and turned around at about 4km down the beach, as we walking "briskly" back to the station we saw another Olive Ridley beginning to nest. She was so methodical and precise in her building of her nest. She was beautiful. I stroked her shell and as I took my hand away I left a trail of blue where the phosphorescence had stayed on the turtles shell from the water. At to add to this amazing experience there was a comet shower and a full moon.
It is a night I will never forget.

After the home-stay's we headed up into the mountains to see a sustainable forest lodge, it was beautiful and the people warm and welcoming. It was an incredible place and so different from the coast, not to mention how cold it was compared to the beach. :)

Down the mountains we travelled to San Jose and I was dropped off from an life time of experiences. I felt as if I had changed, grown up, met people who I will never forget and seen so many different wonders of my birth country.

Costa Rica: Week 1 and 2

Costa Rica was absolutely incredible. The biodiversity there is just mind-blowing. We travelled from the hot dry forest to the rainforest and finally to the cloud and mountain forests. Every scene was so unique, yet all of the ecosystems were in the same country.

There were 4 students learning on the course, me included. We were planning to learn about biodiversity, sustainable development, communicate in different languages, help the local communities and build a turtle nursery.

We started by going up into the rainforest and seeing all the different plants and animals that lived there.  We began our course there to see the different rural/sustainable tourism and see how each one affected the natural ecosystem around them. It was a really good beginning to the course as I learnt a huge amount about the sustainable projects going on in Costa Rica.

      After many wet days and a thorough drenching on horse back, we headed down to the dry hot coast where we stayed at the Cirenas (the course we were on) campus. It was on the Nicoya peninsula and it was stunning. You could see the waves crashing on the long beach from the porch and at high tide the sea would climb so high that it felt like you where on an island. At the campus we learnt about the different systems used to make someone more sustainable and we looked at different projects around Costa Rica to see how sustainable each one was.

A small bit of sad news, as we were walking on the beach to collect garbage I found a dead baby bull shark about 1.5 feet long and basically its whole body gone. At first I thought it was a natural death till I saw the deadly longline hook in its mouth. It made me angry that this beautiful shark would never make it to adulthood all because it was accidentally caught on a longline and I assume either eaten by a bigger animal or drifted till exhaustion.

Overall the experience at the Cirenas campus was relaxing, knowledgable and peaceful because I really felt like I was in nature.

After hiking and exploring the coast we travelled further up along the Nicoya peninsula to help build a turtle nursery and do patrols for nesting sea turtles.

We went to Playa San Miguel. It was a beautiful beach, which we saw in both sunlight (building the nursery) and in the moonlight (on turtle patrols). We didn't see any turtles on the patrols but we had a great time bonding and learning about turtles on the late night strolls. We made a great start on the nursery and the PRETOMA (A turtle and shark conservation organization) volunteers were grateful for our help, as it was a tough and tiring job.