Turtle watching

As noted in last entry, my dolphin watching trip was cancelled, so I swapped it with turtle watching. While too much wind for the dolphins there was apparently a bumper "crop" of Olive Ridley turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs.

Now in all honesty, if I had realised what a trying long journey it was, and how dull watching a turtle lay eggs is I might not have bothered. On the other hand, what almost made the trip worthwhile was the sunset. So expect a long stream of sunset pictures. Come on, there are worse hardships than looking a t a string of sunset photos aren't there?

Now we tourists were not immediately allowed onto the "laying" part of the beach. You might think this was to protect the turtles, but no the exact opposite. It was to keep us away while the locals dug up the eggs to sell them for omelettes or take them home for personal use. What happened to protection you might ask? Well apparently its because the eggs will only be dug up by a subsequent wave of turtles laying their own eggs. Do I really believe this? Well yes and know. I am sure some eggs will be spoilt by subsequent turtles, but not all. Essentially its just the locals being allowed to nick a fair amount. One gets the impression that Costa Rica depends a lot on eco-tourism, but it's not THAT concerned about the wildlife etc.

Chap on right has a full sack of turtle eggs.

And so to the turtles. By now its getting dark so hard to take decent photos of even the earliest arrivals.

Flash photography really disturbs them, as do lights, so they use infra-red torches and allow us tourists to take photos as best we can. So essentially I spent about half an hour with my camera up a turtle's arse trying to catch an egg coming out.

So there you have it. I am afraid its not going to challenge football as a spectator sport. I think next time I will leave them in peace.