A good day starts with a good breakfast.
Today we wanted to visit the Sea Turtle Conservancy Station to learn a bit more about the effort and how that fits into the history of this part of the country.
But there was an ornithological hurdle on the way that took us some time to overcome.
My little friend the Sanderling. This is one amazing bird, it breeds only in the arctic north, northern coast of Alaska and Canada and the Lofoten Islands and then spends the winter at the coastal strips of the US and down to Patagonia AND the North Sea. So I know this bird from Husum, San Diego and now here.
They can be very fast but only if absolutely necessary.
In the conservancy station, a little natural history museum on turtles, we learned a lot, here the outstanding bits:
Sea turtles can get very old, but there is no exact information as they die at sea. They need 20-25 years to mature.
To lay eggs, female sea turtles return to the beach they hatched on. The mechanism resonsible for this is not understood. They lay around 100 eggs per session, but per season they return after around 7 days and lay another 100 eggs, they can do this up to five times. Then they usually do not return for 2 or 3 years for breeding, but at 80 years old, they can still be laying eggs!
Around 60 days after the mother turtle lays the eggs, little turtles hatch. Their gender is determined by the temperature of the nest, temperatures below 31°C in the lower parts of the nest produce males, high temperatures in the upper parts females. It is one big concern that climate change will have a serious impact on this.
After hatching, the little ones work their way up to just under the surface of the sand and wait for the cooler early morning hours to start their desperate dash for the ocean.
We were so impressed that we adopted a turtle right away (for a small donation). They are tagged and as soon as volunteers identify that tag one year when she returns, we will get a notification that she still is alive.
We actually wanted to name the turtle after our son Nikolaus who is currently volunteering in Costa Rica, but then the friendly guy in the center pointed out that the egg laying turtles usually are female. He immediately followed up by saying that neither he nor the organization has any problems how the turtle expresses their identity and Nikolaus as a name would be perfectly fine. We went conventionally with Chris.
The station also provided a lot of context on the region and the importance the abundance of turtles had for the colonial expansion into the Carribean area. Turtles are perfect for feeding sailors on long trips because you can transport them alive and they provide nourishing food and a quick treatment against scurvy. Tortuguero as one of the breeding centers was in big business to sell turtles to whoever wanted some. Chistopher Columbus wrote when he arrived in the Caribbean Sea that the turtles were so many that his ships had difficulty navigating through all the “rock” like structures. That ended over the next centuries, when turtles were slaughtered on masse at the beach. Some people say that the colonial conquest would have looked different if not for the turtles.
Then came the exploitation of jungle wood which led to a short blooming of Tortuguero, but when sawmill after sawmill went out of business due to the difficulties of transporting the lumber through the jungle and via the ocean to Limon, Tortuguero went into a slumber again.
Next came the plantations in the surrounding area which needed better access. When the railroad was built from San José to Limon, laborers from all over the world but especially from Jamaica immigrated to Costa Rica to build the track. And you really feel it. Whereas on the Pacific coast and in the high valley the population is very Hispanic (the indigenous population is more or less invisible), on the Caribbean side you have a large black population with all the Afro-Caribbean culture you would expect, especially food and music (reggae is everywhere).
On our way back we discovered another fine example of nature’s genius with a palm exposing a perfect 4G mobile station mimikri.
The afternoon was spent on a little volcano (long extinct) hike, nothing spectacular from a mountaneering perspective with 120m altitude, made safe by around 450 steps and a guardrail. But we had another good jungle walk and the opportunity to see the forest from above.
All our efforts were rewarded when we were able to look down on the Tortuguero lagoon in the afternoon light.
The way down was less sweat inducing, but our heart rate went up when the Keel-billed Toucan presented itself.
Happy birthday, Isis!!!
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