Turtle Care

Friday, August 3^rd

Today, we spent a long time taking care of the stranded Hawksbill. First, we cleaned all of the algae off its carapace and plastron. Hawksbill shells are beautiful, so we wanted to make it shine. We tried using a sponge, but it didn’t work well so we ended up using our nails. Afterwards, we pried the barnacles off the turtle's shell. There was one big one on the carapace and a ton on the plastron. It’s natural for turtles to have barnacles, but it had a lot for its age. Barnacles bury into the shell and can damage it, so taking off as many as possible is always good. After about a day in freshwater they come off much easier because they start to die. BTW, I’m calling this turtle an “it” because the turtle is too young to determine the sex without blood work. We guesstimate that her age is between 4-5 years. After cleaning its shell, we put antibiotic anointment on its wounds. They were very small, but we wanted to take every precaution possible. Next, we weighed the turtle and put an IV in it. The IV had a Suero-like mixture for vitamins and re-hydration. During all of these activities, Alice taught us different ways to handle turtles and how to make them comfortable. When everything was done, we put some fish in the water to see if the turtle would eat anything. It was really cool to do some rehab-like work. 

Pre-Cleaning: you can see all of the algae that has built up on the shell 

 

TJ scrubs the turtle's carapace while I hold her in place

 

 

The next step was removing all the barnacles from its plastron 

 

 

We removed over 40 barnacles!

 Post-cleaning: injecting the turtle with Suero for re-hydration purposes

For patrols, Andrea and I had a bad night. We came upon a parlamero who refused to give us a donation. We spent 20 minutes arguing with him. He was extremely rude and unpleasant to deal with. To make things worse, while we were arguing it started to pour. By the end of it, we were upset and soaked. We started walking back to the parque and found another track, but the eggs had already been taken. About 10 minutes away from the parque, we came upon a dead turtle…just to top off the night. I heard later that a dead turtle washed up in the other direction as well. Not a good night for turtles. 

A LIVE Stranded Turtle

Thursday, August 2^nd

Glenda came back from vacation today! She seems super refreshed, rested, and happy, which is great. She brought back lots of stuff for the park…new plants, supplies, tools, and food! The plants she brought are part of the mangrove reforestation project, so we put them in black plastic bags with fresh soil to help them grow. It was messy, but fun work. We planted over 50 plants and saplings.

Unloading all of the new plants and supplies

When we took a break to go swimming, two girls came and brought us an injured hawksbill turtle. Luckily, we had just filled up and cleaned the sea turtle holding pool. It was cool to see a live one here because they are super rare in Guatemala. We took a look at it and only saw a couple shallow cuts on its plastron (belly), which was good. Mariachi called the turtle vets in Guatemala City to come down, take blood samples, and give her a full examination. They will hopefully be here in the next day or so. It was quite a challenge to deal with Mariachi though. He knows a lot about running a hatchery, but not about dealing with live turtles. First, he and Willi kept taking it in and out of the water, which is super stressful. Second, he wanted to feed it shrimp right after putting it in the pool. The turtle was so stressed that eating was a bad idea. Plus, turtles don’t have to eat every day, so waiting a day or two is better. I’m no expert either, but I was able to convince him to go about things in a better way. At the end, I filled out the sea turtle stranding form and got to take measurements on a live turtle for once instead of a dead turtle!!!

A view of the hawksbill in the holding tank

 A great look at the turtle's head and beak

For dinner, we went with Alice to a local woman named Chana’s house. She made us salad, omelets, tortillas, fish (for the people that eat seafood), rolls, a squash dish, and a pasta dish. It was super delicious! Afterwards, we walked to the tienda to get some ice cream, and then we headed to the circus.

I was really curious to see how it would differ from a circus in the States. The first act was a group of exotic dancers. One of the dancers was pregnant, which was odd to see. They also had little girls on stage with the dancers…it was all just really uncomfortable. The next act was three clowns. Of course everything was in Spanish, so I didn’t understand a lot of it, but it was still funny. After that was a little boy who laid on his back and rolled and balanced things with his feet. He had to be only 7 or 8, but he was SO good! One of the objects even had fire on it! Next, came the clowns again and this time they did a skit about the stereotypes of gringos, French people, and Chinese people. It was hilarious…not PC, but still funny! The second to last act was a fire breather. He didn’t really do anything special or out of the ordinary though. The last act was a skit on domestic violence with the clowns. All the Guatemalans thought that it was super funny. It was really weird and I didn’t know what to make of it. The circus was quite the experience and I’m glad I got to go. I don’t know if I would see it again, but it was fun once. 

The gang at the circus posing with some of the preformers

Shooting Stars

Wednesday, August 1^st

This morning on crawl count I saw something for the first time…a shooting star! And I didn’t see just one, but five different ones! I’m not sure if it was a meteor shower or what, but it was really cool. Unfortunately, I was too stunned to make a wish on any of them! Although there haven’t been any turtles on the crawl counts, I have been thoroughly entertained by the beauty of my surroundings.

Today was a pretty low-key day. We finished leveling the extra cage! Now the iguanas can bury their nests…that won’t happen until January, but at least it is finished! We also flipped, cleaned, and laid all of the mattresses from the volunteer lodgings in sun. Laying them in the sun helps to kill any insects that might be in them. It sounds gross, but we are in a rural area of the tropics, so bugs are unavoidable. We also redistributed all of the mosquito nets and pillows.

The extra cage all leveled out! However, it didn't take long for leaves to fall on the freshly raked dirt.

In the afternoon, I went to my Spanish lesson. Alice taught me some useful conjunctions and prepositions, which was helpful. For dinner, I decided to cook for everyone. Fay usually cooks for her and me, so I wanted to give her a break. I was craving stew, so I figured that was an easy dish to make for everyone. It consisted of tomato pasta, chicken broth, carrots, potatoes, garlic, onions, and 2 different kinds of peppers. 

 

As it was simmering TJ tasted it and decided it needed more salt, so he dumped some in. He put in WAY too much though! We tried to salvage it by adding sugar, more spices, and red wine. It tasted a little better, but was still pretty salty. So much for me cooking haha!

 

 The salty soup/stew

A New Friend

Tuesday, July 31^st

On my crawl count this morning I was about 15 minutes away from finding a turtle! We leave at 4:00 when it is still dark, so that we patrol during the last hour that turtles will come out to nest. As I was walking, I noticed flashlights ahead of me. After about 5 minutes, I saw an ATV zoom past me with its lights off. After about another 10 minutes, I came upon fresh turtle tracks and an empty nest. If only I left 20-30 minutes earlier! Oh well. As I was heading back around 5:10, the sunrise was beautiful! I don’t think I’ve seen a prettier one anywhere else. The sky and ocean were bathed in a warm pinkish-peach color and the clouds were orangish wisps that stretched across the sky. I had to stop for a moment to take it all in. I wish I had brought my camera, but I don’t think it would’ve captured the scene accurately anyways.

After the crawl count and some breakfast, we continued to dig and break up concrete in the extra cage. We finished digging and broke up most of the concrete. All that is left now is to level the sand back again and hopefully it will be ready for iguana eggs! Fingers crossed Mariachi agrees!

Around 3:00 today, the volunteer that had been giving me trouble earlier left. I ended up being able to resolve the problems  he was having with the project, but to be honest him leaving relieved a lot of stress. He was an extremely hard worker, but he had problems getting along with some of the other volunteers. Not every volunteer is perfect! However, on their departure, the man gave me a hug and called me a tough girl. I think coming from him that it is pretty high praise. I obviously made some kind of impression on him.

Once we finished, we all headed to the ocean to cool off. The past couple days when we have gone in the ocean, Willi, the local boy who was recently hired by CONAP (Guatemalan environmental agency) to help Mariachi upkeep the parque, has come as well. At first, he was very reluctant to talk to us, but slowly we have gotten him to come out of his shell. He has also started to eat lunch with us instead of going off to eat by himself. We enjoy teaching him English and he enjoys teaching us Spanish. He is very smart and surprisingly artistic. He is super nice and I’m glad that we have all gotten to know him better. You can tell that he enjoys hanging out with people his own age for a change. 

Willi hard at work in the hammock

A New Dog?

Monday, July 30^th

There is an extra cage in the parque that has been abandoned and in disrepair for awhile. We recently used it to house the injured pelican, but we all decided that something needed to be done about it. The most obvious thing was that the sand was extremely unlevel. Thus, Andrea and I decided to make that our task for today. We had barely started digging when Mariachi explained that we had to remove the concrete beneath the soil. Starting in January the cage will be used to house iguana nests. Iguana nests are about a meter deep, so the concrete has to be dug out to make sure there is enough soil for the nests. Our task turned from leveling out the sand to digging until we reached concrete. After we found a section, we used hammers to break it up. It was actually kind of fun to smash the concrete. We got about halfway done at the end of the day and we were proud of our progress.

On another note, since the death of Fanta, we seem to have adopted a new dog. Oso (which means bear in Spanish) followed me back to the parque one day after my crawl count along with Juno and Johnny (Alice’s dogs). He is beautiful compared to most of the dogs down here. He has a light brown coat that looks coppery in certain light and mesmerizing pale yellow eyes. He also is a complete sweetheart…not much of a guard dog, but that’s ok. I fell in love instantly. I’ve been feeding him, playing with him, and scratching him as often as possible so that he wants to stay here with us. It seems to be working because he has been at the parque straight since last Friday. He’s been accompanying me on all the walks. Although he doesn’t do much in the way of protection, he is nice company. I love watching him chase birds and crabs in the sand. He will never replace Fanta, but I enjoy having the company of a dog again. 

 

 Oso playing in the vegetation

 

 The parque's adopted dogs playing on the beach (L to R: Johnny, Juno, random dog, Oso)

El Jefe

Sunday, July 29^th

This morning was my day to sleep in, so I woke up a couple hours later than everyone else. When I did wake up, everyone was in a tizzy. Miriam, the Executive Director of ARCAS, decided she wanted to visit the parque around 11:00. Everyone set out to rake, clean, and straighten things up.

Miriam is a small Guatemalan woman that doesn’t take crap from anyone and gets straight to the point, which I like. We gave her a tour of the parque and she was impressed at how clean and organized it was. Then, we sat down and went over any concerns that we had with her. I mentioned that we weren’t being notified of volunteers’ arrivals, which often causes the volunteers to feel unwelcome. It also makes the project seem unorganized. I also brought up the lack of updates on the website. The Facebook page is updated, but for people who don’t use Facebook the website is important. I brought up a few more minor things, and then asked her about a new and improved hatchery to replace the small one. I showed her my sketches and she was all for them! She agreed that the hatchery needs to be repaired and expanded. She also mentioned helping with fundraising efforts.

I enjoyed that Miriam made me feel like she was listening to my concerns and seems to want to do something about them. She left after about an hour and a half. I spent the rest of the day feeling great because I felt like some of my concerns might be addressed!

 Parque Hawaii Staff minus Glenda (L to R: Mariachi, Miriam, Willi, Me)

Over the Hump

Friday, July 27^th

Alejandro took Fay and I to the mangroves this morning to train us on what to do with his research. We learned the five different locations of the mangrove study plots as well as how to take the tree growth measurements. We also learned how to make the contraptions for measuring tree growth. Finally, he showed us where the sites are for bird watching. He is still working on a data sheet and local guide book for us to use, but I’m excited to go out and look at some birds every week.

In the afternoon, we finished digging around the tortugario! It finally seems done…that is until we have to repair and expand the small one haha. We also all cleaned the park and I talked with most of the volunteers individually to assess how everyone felt about the meeting and anything else in the park. All the responses I got were super positive, which was really encouraging. I had a long talk with the German volunteer who has been causing trouble and explained how I value his opinions, but only when they are conveyed in a respectful manner. He apologized for his behavior the night before and we were able to have a nice long discussion. He even came to me later for help solving a problem, which shows me that he is starting to respect my authority. 

In the beginning, I think he was having a hard time accepting direction from someone so much younger and inexperienced than himself. I think he sees how hard I’m working though and I think he appreciates it. We seemed to have gotten over the hump though, which is great!

Glenda left today for a week, so now I’m OFFICIALLY in charge. She comes back in a week, so hopefully nothing goes seriously wrong while she is gone! Alice is also gone for the weekend, so I agreed to watch her dog, Juno. Juno usually hangs around the parque anyways so it wouldn’t be too difficult. I just have to feed her and give her some antibiotics. However, Juno never showed up, so on the way back from the patrol I went into to town to look for her. As I was walking, I saw that the circus had come into town. I think it would be really interesting to see a Guatemalan circus. Alice said to wait until later in the week when the price drops, so maybe early next week I will go. Eventually, I was able to find Juno and bring her back. No luck with finding turtles though.

She looks innocent now, but she is a little troublemaker!