Tourists & Tortuguero

Today I was invited to join the organization's Eco Volunteer’s tour, primarily as the group’s interpreter.  We rode on an electrically powered boat (nondisturbing) through the different river canals of the Tortuguero National Park.

We spotted over 10 white-face monkeys, a couple caimans (one which had her babys resting on a log), a bunch of different colorful birds, and were accompanied by howler monkeys moans and alpha male macho calls during most of the journey.  It was a fun and effortless ride.

Then I snuck, breaking the coordinator’s orders, into our neighbor hotel, to break free from the heat and have a pina colada by the pool (although technically, breaking the rules would’ve been getting iiiinto the pool ) w a cpuple of the girls).  Came back to some scenario plays, practicing how to deal with guides, tourists, turtles and poachers….  As well as removing and finalizing unfinished tags.

After my failed encounter with the tagger and the not hed flipper, I’ve sort of kindly bowed out of the tagging competition during our big groups patrols; my assistance has been on spotting, tracking, measuring tape and calipers, body checks, and removing a tag for the last few nights (which is basically everything else)…. now that i know we are being released in groups of 2-3, I will confront the tagging monster and once and for all get it under control.

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A little history on Tortuguero and Tourism:

T was declared a national park in 1975, all along working closely with Archie Carr the founder of CCC (or now called Sea Turtle Conservancy), the organization I’m here with.  Toursim here has grown over the past decades significantly, reaching its max in ’08 of over 115,000 tourists!  This national park is recognized at #4 in the country, aand top 3 green sea turtle nesting beaches (5 miles stretch is the reserve) in the world.

The big improvement on tourism happened in ’03, when they integrated the spotter program, placing tour guides and their 10 person/max per shift (10 guides X 10 touriste X 5 sector= 500 toursist max per shift… I can explain if you’re interested) on the dirt path behind the vegetation, waiting for the spotter signals of when they’ve located a turtle in prime viewing stage (post scarying off, AKA after having dug the egg chamber and initiation oviposition)… VERSUS having all 500 tourist walking frankensteinly on the beach looking for their turtle, and practically scaring them all away.  Very successful modification.  And spotters work closely with CCC researcher (moi) as well.  Tour guides not so much… I’ve been pegged the PR girl of the team and have already butted heads with a couple smarty pant guides.

More background lessons to come on poachers and abnormalities we’ve encountered (including our own Bermuda triangle).  Off to perform our final test excavation (or maybe second to last).