Too Late

Sunday, August 26^th

On crawl counts this morning I was 10 minutes too late in finding another turtle! Luckily, the parlameros were willing to give me a donation. It turns out that they had found another nest earlier as well so I got two donations! I decided to keep going on with crawl count before burying the nest because of how far I already was. I ended up running into my fisherman friend, Abalino. We had a nice chat about the eggs in both English and Spanish as I’m trying to work on my Spanish and he is trying to work on his English. I also got stopped by a lot of other people who wanted to know about the eggs…the eggs were quite the conversation starters. I even got proposed to by an old Guatemalan man who had just moved back to Guatemala from the States. It was an interesting morning for sure.

The rest of the day was spent entering data and cleaning up around the parque. This seems to be a lot of what my days consist of now haha.

Colum came later in the evening just for the night. He brought a more accurate scale, which made me super happy! There was also a huge storm again and this time a ton of turtles came up! On patrol with Glenda, we marked nine nests in a span of two hours and saw two turtles. We only got one donation though. I’m not so secretly glad I had the day off from crawl counts the next morning, because I’m sure it will take FOREVER to count all of the nests.

Too Late

Sunday, August 26^th

On crawl counts this morning I was 10 minutes too late in finding another turtle! Luckily, the parlameros were willing to give me a donation. It turns out that they had found another nest earlier as well so I got two donations! I decided to keep going on with crawl count before burying the nest because of how far I already was. I ended up running into my fisherman friend, Abalino. We had a nice chat about the eggs in both English and Spanish as I’m trying to work on my Spanish and he is trying to work on his English. I also got stopped by a lot of other people who wanted to know about the eggs…the eggs were quite the conversation starters. I even got proposed to by an old Guatemalan man who had just moved back to Guatemala from the States. It was an interesting morning for sure.

The rest of the day was spent entering data and cleaning up around the parque. This seems to be a lot of what my days consist of now haha.

Colum came later in the evening just for the night. He brought a more accurate scale, which made me super happy! There was also a huge storm again and this time a ton of turtles came up! On patrol with Glenda, we marked nine nests in a span of two hours and saw two turtles. We only got one donation though. I’m not so secretly glad I had the day off from crawl counts the next morning, because I’m sure it will take FOREVER to count all of the nests.

Another Turtle!

Saturday, August 25^th

I found my second turtle today on crawl counts! It just goes to show how important it is to leave while it is still dark because there is always a chance that you will find one of the last turtles to come up for the “night.” I think there is an even better chance of finding them in the morning than at night because no one is on the beach at 4:00 in the morning. Any turtle that comes up, you are likely to claim. I was training a volunteer to do crawl counts, so I let her dig the tunnel and pull out the eggs to get the experience. The nest was 112 eggs, so another big nest! The crawl count itself was super weird. We only found 4 tracks, which is the lowest number I have found since the beginning of July. Apparently they all came up on the Hawaii side of the beach…I walked the Monterrico side. Since finding the turtle and waiting for her to lay took up a lot of time, by the time we ended the crawl count it was past 8:00am and already really hot. We decided to hitchhike back to the parque. This nice man stopped with his pick-up truck and let us climb in the back. 

 A blurry picture of me next to the turtle!

 

 Sabine and I hitchhiking

The rest of the day was spent cleaning bathrooms, the kitchen, and all of the sinks. It is amazing how fast stuff gets dirty around here! As a reward, we all took naps, and then went in the ocean. Later, a local brought a boa constrictor to the parque. Apparently, it ate one of his mother's hens and his family wanted to kill it. Instead, he brought it to the parque so that it could be saved. Usually Guatemalans aren't that conscientious about animals...it was nice to see somebody who cares for once.

The snake looking me in the eye

 

For dinner, Fay made bomb quesadillas! I’m going to miss her cooking and her company when she leaves next week.While we were eating dinner, a storm broke out. Turtles usually come up to nest during storms because it offers them more protection from predators. I was excited to get out and try to find another turtle, so I started my patrol early. Unfortunately, not one turtle came up during the storm! So frustrating!

Slow Day

Friday, August 24^th

Today was another slow day. I spent a lot of the day cleaning and sanitizing the tools we use to do necropsies as well as the nest excavations. I also showed Glenda how to do nest excavations so that she can do them when I’m gone. Other than that I applied to a job…fingers crossed!

 

While cleaning, I found this pretty caterpillar! 

Later in the afternoon, three Canadians from a volunteer company came to tour the parque. They are looking into adding this project to their list of options for volunteering in Guatemala, so it was important to give them a good tour. I think they came away with a good impression of the parque, so hopefully they start sending volunteers soon! We are pretty low on volunteers right now...we only have two, which means that we have a lot of work to divide between us.

For dinner, we had a big pot of leftover soup and homemade garlic bread. For dessert, we had cinnamon and honey covered pineapple for dessert! It was delicious! I had the night off from patrols tonight, which was really nice. I got 7 hours of sleep for once!

Goodbyes

Thursday, August 23^rd

Five volunteers left today…one of which was Andrea who had been here for 5 weeks and was an awesome friend and volunteer. I was really sad to see her go! I was also sad to see the other volunteers go as well because they had been a great group to work with. One good thing was that Glenda and Fay came back!

I spent the day making sure that the volunteers leaving packed all their stuff up, filled out the necessary forms, and made their shuttle bus. Also, during lunch, there was another dead turtle that washed up, so I found it and filled out the stranding report. The vultures had almost completely demolished it by the time I got there, so it was basically impossible to even guess what the cause of death was. That makes this the 11^th turtle stranding so far this season (about 2 months).

Later, I showed Fay how excavations work and was able to save a couple more hatchlings that were stuck on the bottom of a nest. Now that it is hatchling season, we basically have to check the hatcheries every couple hours…during the day and at night. One of the volunteers had the 3:00am hatchery check and sure enough a nest hatched! We were able to release them without a hitch. Luckily, when it is that late at night, there is no one on the the beach so we only have to worry about the hatchlings. 

The crazy hatchlings!