La Tortuga Feliz: Saving the turtles... hopefully!

Baby leatherback turtle
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We had prearranged several weeks earlier to spend 2 weeks volunteering at a local turtle sanctuary about 1 hour away from the tiny town of Bataan at a project called "La Tortuga Feliz". We thought it would be nice to actually work for a change, stay on a beach side setting, see some turtles and only pay USD$15 each for accomodation and meals. It turned out to be a good move because we had a fantastic time!

We had to take a taxi and then a water taxi ride down the muddy brown river amidst jungle to finally get to the project and we were pretty hot and sticky when we arrived and were greeted by an assortment of volunteers. We were shown around the camp and given a brief introduction to what our shifts would be during our time there. We were required to do a few different shifts, usually about 4hrs in total.

We rounded up about 30 of the turtles in total and were feeling a bit sheepish about it

Baby green turtle saved during excavation
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They consisted of working in the hatchery, which needed to be monitored 24 hrs a day to guard the turtle nests against poachers, crabs and other dangerous critters and also be there to release the turtles when they hatch; patrolling the beaches at night to find turtles laying eggs, collect the eggs and stay with the turtle until it goes back to sea so the poachers dont get them; working in the kitchen all day; or patrolling the beach on horseback. Plus some times we were given other odd jobs during the day.

Baby turtle returning to the ocean after hatching
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Our first night at the project all the new comers had to do a beach patrol at night, I was lucky enought to get the 12am to 4am shift but actually it wasn't that bad as I got to practice very bad spanish with my guide and it was pretty amazing strolling the beach at night and witnessing an amazing lightening storm on the horizon over Cuba! The air was so thick with humidity you could actually feel it as you walked through it. I finally saw a turtle on the beach after my 3rd patrol so that was pretty amazing as they are huge things. The turtle I saw was pretty crazy, it dug like 2 nests before deciding it didn't feel like laying any eggs and went back to sea! Unfortunately, Mark didn't get to see an adult turtle.

Relaxing at the project after 12 midnight to 4am shift
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We all saw plenty of baby turtles while working at the hatchery. On Mark's first night in the hatchery, he had 101 turtles hatch at the same time and came running back to the camp to get people to come help him! They dig their way out from their underground nest to the surface and you need to release them to the ocean to fend for themselves until hopefully a few of them survive to return in 20 or 30 yrs time.

A few days after the first baby turtles have hatched from a nest, the nest is excavated. This involves digging out the nest to see if there are any baby turtles still struggling to get out. If there, we get to release them into the ocean if they are ready as well, which is exciting, because otherwise they may have died in the nest, unable to surface. Unfortunately, it also involves pulling out all the dead baby turtles and unhatched eggs so that the biologist can determine how and why they died or didn't hatch. This can be kind of gross because sometimes the dead turtles are being eaten by ants or maggots so we have to remove all the maggot infested sand and throw it away in the ocean.

The hatchery at sunrise
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Because we sometimes got to go patrolling the beach on horseback, one of the tasks is looking after the horses. This involves walking them down to the river mouth to let them feed in a field there. One day, some of the volunteers went in the afternoon to retrieve the horses but found that the gate was open and the two horses missing! After 3 days of searching for them, we finally gave up, assuming that they had been stolen. Some of the locals told us that people had previously been stealing cattle and cutting up the meat to sell back to the locals, I'm just glad we didn't eat much sausage at our camp!

Mark cracking coconuts
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Our down time at the volunteer project was really good. We lazed around in hammocks reading and chatting to the other volunteers, taking a swim every now and then and maybe spending half an hour cracking open a coconut. There was also a boat that we could take rowing out on the canal to explore the region and search for sloths, howler monkeys, spider monkeys and crocodiles (not that we saw any!). It was a nice way to spend 2 weeks in one place after being on the go for so long.

The downside of working on the project was the amount of insect bites we all got! Scratching and talking about how itchy we all were became a way of life, whether it was sand flea bites, sand fly bites (different to the sand flea bites), spider bites or trusty old mosquito bites, no ones legs were spared!

Rachel eating coconuts!
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My last night at the project was pretty eventful, another volunteer and I were watching the hatchery and after taking turns every 15 minutes to check the nests, suddenly the nest was swarming with 30 little turtles inside the wire cage struggling to get out after burrowing their way up through the sand! There were so many in the cage that they were putting pressure on the cage around the nest and were almost getting out. We measured and released the turtles and settled back down to a few moments rest before the next check.

One of the other volunteers, Mel, came by to drop of some radios that we needed and on her way out she noticed what she thought were little crabs running around, before she tried to stamp on them she realised that they weren't actually crabs, they were little baby turtles that had escaped the hatchery! We jumped up off our chairs and began rounding up all the turtles before they got away, some were stuck in the fence outside the hatchery, some were stuck in the sandbags between the hatchery and they beach and we were scrambling in the dark trying to find them all! It was like a disaster scene seeing all these little baby turtles trapped here there and everywhere!

We rounded up about 30 of the turtles in total and were feeling a bit sheepish about it! I especially since I accidently stepped on one while running out to see what Mel was yelling about (the turtle survived - phew!). Who knows how they got out so quickly within the 15 minutes since we last looked!. We ended up releasing 130 little turtles that night so that was pretty crazy!! I'm just glad none of them got eaten up by crabs or stray dogs!

We spent a total of 2 weeks at the project and although we had a fantastic time, I have to say we were glad to be heading off when the time was over. We were looking forward to ordering food in a restaurant and perhaps the luxury of a fan or airconditioning!