Because of the time of the high tide, Riikka and I combined patrols and crawl count and left at 3:00am. Immediately upon leaving the parque, I found a parlamero with a turtle and as she was meeting me she found a parlamero with a turtle as well. We got two nests in the first half hour, so we walked back to the parque to bury them. We were able to buy one more nest before the sun rose. We also released four more hatchlings. Looking at the data books, close to 200 hatchlings hatched last night while I was asleep. Glenda and Judit were super busy patrolling and releasing all those hatchlings! I was able to hitch a ride with a moto once I got to the end.
The rest of the morning, we did our weekly cleanup of the bathrooms and the kitchen. I also made signs for the parlameros that have donated more than 12 eggs for the past couple of weeks as well as signs for some of the locals that helped Glenda and Judit release hatchlings last night. It seems that publicly acknowledging people by name does wonders for the collaboration rate with ARCAS. I think they are under-appreciated and just want some recognition for the things that they do.
My sign
I tried my pineapple ice cream and it is SO good! Making ice cream by hand actually isn’t too hard. I like that it is fresh, made with real fruit, and has no chemicals. I’m definitely going to take Riikka’s recipe home with me so I can make it back in the States. Around 2:00pm, we went to one of the local hotels to watch Willi play a concert for Independence Day. When we got there, we found out that the concert was cancelled. Since we had walked all the way there, we decided to stay and have a liquado (a smoothie). I got watermelon/lime…it was so refreshing! After we finished our drinks, we went back to the parque for a nap. Before my nap though, I found Paco and Samo playing. I'm so glad that they are friends!
Awwww!
When I woke up from my nap, there were tourists all over the parque. I found out that all of these people wanted to watch a hatchling release and that one family was staying in our volunteer house with us. While we were waiting for hatchlings to fully emerge, Riikka and I decided to patrol. There were lights, bonfires, and fireworks going off all over the beach for Independence Day. Not a good environment for turtles. After walking about 1.5km, we decided to turn back.
When we got back, we saw that they had started releasing the hatchlings without us. It was out of control…the tourists were stepping over our ropes, using their flashlights to guide the hatchlings, throwing cigarettes on the ground, being drunk, not listening, etc. It was awful. They were a horrible crowd and to top it all off they didn’t give us any donations. Sad to say, but typical Guatemala City tourists. I had to get in the face of quite a few unfortunately. To make things worse, when we finally got to bed, the baby of the family that was staying with us decided to scream...ALL night. The parents did nothing too. I was only going to get about 4 hours of sleep max anyway because I had to get up for crawl counts, but it was safe to say I didn’t get any.
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