Malaria, Green Turtles, and Chicken Buses

Saturday, September 29^th

Jordan left at 5:00am to go to the airport. It felt like the week flew by! I was not ready for it to be over. After saying goodbye, I met Alice and her friend Antonia at one of the Antigua bus terminals so that we could all catch a ride with the Protortuga veterinarians. The Protortuga organization is a group of Guatemalan veterinarians who donate their time once a month to monitor a population of green sea turtles in the canal near the town of Sipicate. We took the chicken bus to a restaurant right outside of Escuintla and then the vets picked us up. It was about another hour ride down to our site.

Once we got to the canal, we learned that Riikka who had just been diagnosed with malaria a couple days earlier had taken a turn for the worst. We spent the first hour talking on the phone with people and trying to arrange for someone to take her to the hospital. A bus would be an awful way to travel when you are that sick. I felt bad that we missed out on helping the vets and the other volunteers net all of the turtles that we were going to take data on, but Riikka was more important. Once we figured out how to get her to the hospital, we waded into the water and helped drag the turtles into the boat. Afterwards, we carried the turtles to a shaded canopy and attempted to keep them calm while the vets went around and took measurements and weighed them. Keeping them calm was no easy task…especially because they were so huge and strong. Working with olive ridleys is way easier because they are so much smaller!

Keeping my turtle calm by covering her eyes with a towel

Once all the turtles were released back into the water, the vets gave us a ride to the bus stop. We took a bus back to Escuintla, but it took forever because the driver was going SO slow! We were worried we were going to miss our connection, which was the last bus to go back to Hawaii. We got to Escuintla about ten minutes before our bus was supposed to leave, but people kept giving us bad directions so we had trouble finding our bus. To make things worse, it was POURING…the streets were flooded, we had to wade through knee deep water some of the time, and the buses were rerouted due to the main road being flooded. It was out of control! Luckily, the rain made our connection late as well, so we were able to make it on. 

After another 3 hour bus ride, we finally made it back to Hawaii. While I was making dinner, I decided to check on the hatchery and see if there were any hatchlings. What I found was a snake lying on the buckets that we use to release hatchlings. Once it started slithering towards me, I called our night guard, Juan. He came in and killed it with a shovel…which wasn’t quite what I asked for, but at least it’s gone and won’t eat anything of the hatchlings.