Barra Matina Norte

After lunch, we rode bus to the Turtle Station. Towards the end we passed banana plantations. Blue bags covered the banana bunches to help them rip me and look yellow.
We rode a boat to the turtle station. Once there, we settled into our primitive rooms. No A/C, No wi-fi, No fans, no warm water. Just a small dim light for the room and mosquito nets over the beds. Two rooms share a bathroom. It’s pretty rough, but surprisingly Kamran said it was better than he thought it would be. (The negatives were talked about beforehand). I think I dislike it more than they do. Overall I’m proud of them for being flexible and tolerant. We have gotten very little sleep the last couple days, so another night of little sleep will be rough. They told us to hurry and see some turtle hatchlings just coming up. They let a few kids transfer the babies to a container. Later we released the hatchlings to the seas. At night we went to the beach for turtle patrol. Luckily there was a female Leatherback turtle starting to prepare a nest to lay her eggs. We aren’t allowed to bring cameras at night to the beach because the light disorients the nesting turtles. The roughly 45 year old female was huge and the guide set up behind her in the dug hole and collected her eggs. Since she is aquatic apparently she could not hear us or see us since we only had one red flashlight to see. We could see the stars-the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt. I think it may have been the first time I was able to show Kamran and Micah the Big Dipper.Read more