Certainly one of the main reasons that we signed up for the group tour was the chance of seeing the sea turtles come to the beach at night to dig a hole and lay her eggs. We were full of anticipation when the night to do that arrived. The whole group gathered with high hopes at 8:00 to hike to the beach to see that happen. The night was incredibly dark (really dark) for our walk through the bush to the beach.
The tour group was divided into smaller groups according to language. The English speaking group was too large, and for some reason, Joan and I were put in the Italian speaking group. No lights allowed, and everyone had to wear dark clothing, so as not to spook the sea turtles. Because of the darkness of the night and so no one got lost, we had to walk single file, hold hands to the beach.
It was a long trek to through the jungle to the beach. The length of walking on our night expedition, prompted one of the Italian girls to joke, “Pretty soon, we will be in Nicaragua.” We couldn’t understand anything our Spanish-speaking naturalist told us, but fortunately, the Italians could understand Spanish and translated the important commands to us.
The beach was just as dark as the bush we walked through, but once there, we could hear the surf and just faintly make out the waves. Our group trudged through the sand along the beach looking for a turtle. We missed out on seeing a mother turtle laying her eggs, but we were able to make out a large sea turtle crawling back to the surf in the blackness of the night after she had done the deed. Her shell was about two feet across.
While initially we were disappointed at not seeing the turtle dig a hole in the sand and lay her eggs, our attitude soon changed and we began to consider ourselves lucky upon hearing that ours was the only group that even saw a sea turtle. The other groups just stumbled back and forth along the beach in the dark, seeing nothing.
You can view my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca
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