Flavia & Gregory go LA

Las Baulas is the Spanish for leatherback turtles.

For our last spot in Costa Rica, we decided to go and see the beaches, just so to have a more complete picture of the country. The aim was to go to Playa Grande to stay overnight and see the turtles, and then move up to Playa Conchal the next day - this having the reputation of being the most beautiful beach in Costa Rica.

Playa Grande has been part of the Parque Nacional Marino Las Baulas since 1991, when the government finally decided to protect the leatherback turtles that come to nest here. Having a national park here prevents FRONT beach development and ensures that one of the most important leatherback nesting areas in the world is preserved for future generations. Set back from the beach there is actually quite a lot of development for a national park - and more to come, seen the number of lots for sale that we saw everywhere - however not right on the beach, which ensures that lights are kept to a minimum. Lights disorientate the turtles and put them off coming back to lay their eggs - turtles tend to return to lay at the beach where they were born, so if they don´t, this impacts on them a great deal. This is why no lights are allowed on the beach, apart from the infra-red that the park rangers.

The leatherback is critically endangered from over-hunting, a lack of protected nesting sites and plastic bags, which look too similar to their main food, jelly fish. In an effort to protect the decreasing population of turtles, park rangers on Playa Grande collect the eggs daily and incubate them to increase the chances of survival. Normally, only 1 out 1,000 turtles make it to adulthood!!!! The problem is, even when they are incubated, sea turtles must hatch on the beach and enter the water by themselves, otherwise memory imprinting does not occur and they will never return to their birthplace to nest.

At Playa Grande you can book turtle-egg-laying sessions for $16, which all goes to support the conservation effort. Tourists go to the office to register for a place and are told at what time the nesting is going to occur for that night, depending on the tide. The turtles nest at high tide because they are very heavy and it is hard to hike up to the beach.... For us the time was set between 6 and 10 pm - during this period you go back to the office and sit there waiting around till a turtles shows up. At this point the rangers come to get you and they lead you to the turtle, which can be looked at only from behind and cannot be touched. We were lucky - like we have been for a while - and at 7 pm a 1.3 m leatherback turtle weighing 320 kg showed up. It is not like there are millions of this turtles coming to nest there, it is only between 50 and 400 each year between October and March, so I think we were really lucky. Leatherbacks are the largest sea turtle of all, they are huge. We were able to see her deposit the eggs in the meter-deep hole and then cover them all up (futile work since the rangers were going to dig them all up again...). The whole process takes 1-2 hours - to dig out the hole, drop the eggs and cover it up. So we had two groups of 15 tourists all standing there taking turns to look at this giant turtles depositing her eggs. They cannot see very well but I am sure they must notice all these people moving behind them... not sure how conservational this is, but I guess they must have figured out that it does not bother the animals to the point of not coming back. Quite a surreal experience for a human though!

Ah yes! The curious thing is that you only pay the National Park if you actually manage to see a turtle, otherwise you just book again for the next night. This means that you sit around waiting and, as soon as a turtle comes to shore, all tourists queue up to pay the fee and then run to watch the egg laying!! Crazy but very just.

The next day - after seeing the type of beach Playa Grande is now in the rainy season - we decided not to go to visit Playa Conchal, which on top of things could only be reached by an expensive taxi ride. We decided to walk back to Tamarindo instead along the length of Playa Grande, which took the whole of an hour as we were looking for sand dollars, which unfortunately were all broken. At the river estuary which separates Playa Grande from Tamarindo (big built up seaside resort) we boarded a small motor boat to cross the river and then negotiated a river tour with the boat owner to go and see the mangrove swamps, behind the lure of crocodiles, monkeys etc. The river trip was excellent until we desembarked to go ´looking for monkeys´. We were wearing shorts and T´shirts and I had flip flops on... Ever tried to walk in the mangrove swamps?? Well. You should NOT go there with short sleeves or flip flops. The ground is very soft and muddy, I was slipping all over the place and it is not like there is a path there, you have to walk through vegetation some of which has got big thorns. And of course it is full of mosquitos, some carrying dengue!!!!! We ventured in for about 20 mins and our guide actually led us very quickly to some howling monkeys, which we looked at for about 3 minutes till we decided to quickly retire back to the boat, myself covered in mud from the flipping of the flip flops which kept getting stuck into the mud, whenever I did not lose them along the way. Arghh!! I was really furious with the guide for not saying we were going to walk through this place and lie about the mosquitos - he said there were none when I asked!! Ok, that was probably a stupid question to ask - are there mosquitos in the swamps... - but saying no was not too brilliant either. Later it was a good laugh but at the time I guarantee it wasn´t. Plus we could be incubating dengue as we speak!!!

So fingers crossed...

Playa Grande - this is the beach where the turtles make their nests

Pics from the river trip

Mangroves

Today we have crossed into Nicaragua and currently we are staying at the El Puerto hotel in San Juan del Sur. Tomorrow morning at 5 am we are going to see more egg-laying turtles, but a different breed.