So we headed off next morning bright and early for our 5 hour bus ride to Matapala. Not too bright for some of us, the ‘Ladies drink free night’ at the casino had taken its toll. Still, a quick stop on route to refuel and spy crocs lazing in the river seemed to rejuvenate everyone.
Matapala is a small village on the Pacific coast. There are no tourists there, just a bundle of volunteers amongst the local poachers. Unfortunately, as with most of the turtle beaches in Costa Rica, it’s a bit of a battle between us and the poachers. The poaching of eggs has been made illegal but is sadly not enforced. The villagers of Matapala are, on a whole, against the turtle project and part of the battle here is to change the locals opinions.
We arrived in a sweaty humid tropical heat. Very pretty though, lovely jungle type trees and a beautifully deserted stretch of mist engulfed coconut palm lined beach. Our accommodation was basic to say the least. One of the worst yet. We shared our sweaty bunk bedded room with 2 other girls, a few cockroaches and a family of mice. Oh, and the toilet/drain smell but I’ll leave that one there. Our basic training involved learning how to recreate a nest which was rather more technical than you’d imagine. Seeing as the depth of the nest affects the temperature which in turn affects the sex of the babies, we had to measure and try to recreate the nest perfectly in the hatchery so as not to tamper with the natural ratio of babies born. The nests are strange and it’s incredible to think that the turtles actually dig them with just their back flippers. The best way to describe them is that they dig almost half a metre of a vertical tunnel, diameter about 20cm which then opens out into a bit of a round cavern at the bottom. The eggs collect in this area and when she’s finished laying the eggs, about a 100 of them, she carefully pushes the sand back down the tunnel to cover them and then heads back to the ocean. When transferring them to the hatchery, you have to place the sand that they were covered with on top of them again so that the first thing they taste when they hatch is the exact chemical composition of the sand so that 30 years later when they come to lay their own eggs, they can find the exact same beach they hatched from. Incredible. Sadly, only 1 in 1000 turtles released to the sea actually make it to adulthood so they really are having a bad time of it. Overfishing and intensive techniques, pollution and rubbish in the ocean and poaching are all endangering these amazing creatures so we really felt our efforts were important.
Ross and I got stuck in straight away with a night patrol. Each night, there are 3 groups of volunteers who patrol the beach in the early hours searching for nesting turtles and their eggs. It’s a pretty tough walk. 11km of sand walking in a couple of hours. Unfortunately, the 3 patrols we did during the week were fruitless. Several factors were against us. Firstly it was only the start of the nesting season and secondly, it was full moon which they don’t like. The turtles are actually quite sensitive things and we had to wear dark clothing and use only red torch light when necessary. We also weren’t allowed to drink, eat, smoke or wear insect repellent as any smells they don’t like means they won’t come out of the sea. Had we found any turtles, we would have measured, tagged and recorded them. We would also have retrieved the eggs and taken them to the special hatchery. The hatchery was a fenced patch of marked out sand higher up on the beach where the eggs where brought and guarded until the turtles hatched and were returned to the sea. One of the other major duties whilst on the project was ‘hatchery duty’. This was around the clock guarding of the eggs from any human, bird or animal who wished to sabotage them. We had to patrol the nests every 15 minutes to make sure no crabs had got into the enclosure as they might burrow down into the sand and destroy the eggs. On one of my night watches, Matt and I had to go crab bashing. Well Matt did the bashing, I was your typical girl who shrieked and pointed the torch. We were both a little unsettled after that incident and were glad when the next volunteers came to take over.
So as well as hatchery and patrol duties, we also did several community based tasks. We made a mess painting a classroom of the local school while others mowed the football pitch and planted trees. Trying to get the locals on side with the project will hopefully breed a new generation of supporters instead of poachers. One of the most memorable tasks we undertook was the making of a new sandbank wall to protect the hatchery from high tides. This took all 50 volunteers all morning and was bloomin hard work. Luckily the weather was a little forgiving and decided to rain. – Well it was better than being roasting hot and as all getting sunburnt. The rain was actually quite refreshing until it turned into a downpour and we were all drenched and covered in sand. The 2 biologists in charge of the project were instructing the building of the wall and allowed us a couple of breaks whereby we all ran straight for the sea seeing as we couldn’t be wetter anyway. During the sand bag wall building, Ross found a very colourful crab. It’s body was bright orange and it’s legs, purple. His mistake was trying to pick it up. One of it’s claws locked onto Ross’s thumb and the crab then ejected it’s whole ‘arm’ from it’s body and ran off leaving Ross holding his thumb up with a bright purple claw attached. There were several screams from the girls and I seriously thought we’d be off to the hospital with it. Bizarrely though, the claw had just clamped on with a slight scratch instead of piercing his thumb to the bone as I’d feared. After breaking the claw off, Ross was disappointed not to have a crab scar – boys!!! (Think he wanted one to compare with Dales piranha scar but that’s another story)
We had a day off during all this too and a group of us went to a nearby national park. We saw sloths, monkeys, racoons and lizards. We also fitted in a swim in the ocean.
All in all, a fantastic week with a great bunch of volunteers. Shame we didn’t see any turtles but we ‘d love the opportunity to go back one day and volunteer with the turtles again. We think it’s one of those things that the more you put in, the more you get out. It’s just a shame we couldn’t stay any longer as we’d have both extended our stay there for a couple more weeks had our flights allowed. Definitely one of the highlights of the year for both of us. (Sorry I’ve written so much but there was so much to tell)
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