An Almost Full Park

Monday, October 1^st  

After crawl counts, I organized and cleaned all of the patrol kits. They got a LITTLE out of order while I was gone. The other volunteers organized some new ARCAS t-shirts that were delivered. We definitely needed some new ones. Right as I was finishing, Judit got back from taking Riikka to Antigua! We both needed stuff at the tienda, so we made the trip together and caught up.

In the afternoon, we got three more volunteers. The park is about 4 beds short of being full. Most of the volunteers are German and they all seem nice. I spent the next couple hours getting them acquainted with the park.

I took one of the new volunteers on patrol with me, but it was kind of a bad night for her first night of patrolling. We kept JUST missing nests…as in the turtle and the parlamero with the nest had already left by the time we saw the tracks. For the first turtle that we did come across, the parlamero wouldn’t let us buy the nest or get a donation because he wanted to sell to the Monterrico hatchery. The Monterrico hatchery not only gets money from the government, but it also pays parlameros for “donations.” Thus, parlameros get more money by selling to them instead of us. It’s not fair because we should get money from the government as well. Not only do we use better techniques and take more data, but we treat the hatchlings with much more care than they do. 

Later, a young local named Abalito (who about a month ago brought us a boa in order to save it from being killed) called me over to a turtle and a parlamero. The turtle wasn’t laying her eggs, so the man flipped her on her back to try and make her lay the eggs. I was furious and so was he! We both attempted to flip the turtle back over and get it back to the sea, but he kept flipping her over again. We tried to explain that he was stressing her out and that flipping her over wouldn’t cause her to lay her eggs. He wouldn’t listen though. I asked Abalito for this parlameros name and the parlamero overheard me. He got extremely angry and started threatening us because he thought we were going to call the police. Unfortunately, we did about all that we could and had to leave the situation. Abalito seemed like he was going to stay with the turtle, so hopefully he was able to talk some sense in the man. Luckily, the night got a little better because we were able to get a donation near the end of our patrol. At least the walk wasn’t all for naught. In addition, I was able to mark down 9 tracks for my crawl count tomorrow.