Nesting & Namaste

7AM: Woken up by the heat and humidity after only 5 hours of sleep (courtesy of CCC of giving us the night off, the entire crew went out dancing as a farewell to the june-august crew of RA's), we start the day leisurely and slightly hung over-dly.  heat is melting us...  melll t i n n n g g.

previous night: had dinner at Buddha Cafe, a surprsingly chic in the middle-of-nowhere restaurant with some very impressive woodfire pizza's (also a potential new site for my yoga classes).  then @ La Taberna, a riverside dirty disco, playing reggaetton and salsa, surrounded by locals who only stare and from their seats yell out sweet annoying nothings to th chicas, and don't even dance.  and then the 18 of us RA's dancing the night away (the girls at least).  i also discovered drinking es mucho affordable here.  (9 drinks = 20bux -not all for me.)

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Today's lesson: Nest Marking, and how to prep for the egg count.

We practiced by splitting into teams of two, creating a nest, and  then:

Person A remains laying face down behind the 300-400 pound momma, one hand on the egg counter and the end of the measuring tape, and the other stretched underneath the turtle, carefully handling the eggs before they drop into the egg chamber, taking count as well as identifying the yolkless ones (smaller and lighter).

Person B: first identifies 3 viable nest marking flag points (solid vegetation), all 3 spots North Sound and Vegetation markers (middle point), flags them, measures the distances and jots down on the handy dandy nesting book.  Finally Person B measures the high tide line (about 40m).  then he/she draws a map and specifies identifyers.

A & B need to work efficiently and carefully, attentive to the turtles nesting stage.  there is only a 15min window to complete all steps, after which turtle goes into trance mode, begins to cover eggs chamber with back flippers (this is becoming more and more the cutest part for me to watch).  she is more at peace here (also tired), so easier to work on all the remaining turtle duties: tagging, body check for unusual gowths, removals of ingrown tags, and 2 measurements.    this second window is of 12 minutes, followed by a 43 minute camouflaging stage, where the momma turtle is sometimes agressively camouflaging its entire nest with front (and back maybe) flippers.  Person A or B may still be able to measure during camou stage, but they should expect some sandy business on their entire beings.

after measuring, we namaste the turtle to the ocean.  this today, with our coconut egg, and our invisible turtle in broad daylight wend very smooothly.  tonight, during our midnight run, we shall see how it goes. :)

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After lesson:  Gigi's sunset riverfront yoga class.
im getting pretty good at and enjoying teaching yoga here, on our deck, with my music, my favorite flows, and some very eager to learn pupils. second class today, i mixed in a little bootcamp.  fun fun.  dead well bad sweat (recently learned british expression meaning awesome haha). side proffesion, es posible?

having the time of my life... :)