Manual Labor

Thursday, July 5^th

Today, we woke up early to start collecting crawl counts. We walked 4 kilometers along the high tide line counting tracks and measuring them with GPS coordinates. This is an important way to get population and nesting data. It was also nice to walk along the beach again. We found 4 tracks, but we only got one of the nests, which is a bummer.

 The beach right outside the parque

Afterwards, we went to the other hatchery at El Rosario (about 20 minutes away) and dug up and turned over the sand to get ready for the season. We also picked out any roots and old turtle shells to make sure that the sand was as fresh as possible. It was extremely hard work and I have blisters all over my hands, but anything for the turtles is worth it!

For dinner, we went to a local woman’s house because there are no restaurants in the town of Hawaii. Myra enjoys cooking and by charging us a small amount she generates extra income. It was by far the best meal I have had in Guatemala so far. There were 7 courses: a chicken dish, an avocado salad with a lime vinaigrette, a regular salad, cheesy potatoes, rice with peppers, corn tortillas on the side, fried carrots, and papaya and strawberries for dessert. Fay and I have already decided we are going once a week!

We went on another patrol after dinner, but didn’t find a single turtle. However, from the egg collectors’ behavior it seemed like they didn’t have much luck either. Hopefully, we have better luck tomorrow night!