This past weekends was one of the most spectacular weekends we have had in Guyana so far! We celebrated two birthdays (my friend, and fellow PCV Jillian and America's), spent 12+ hours in speed boats on the rivers in the rainforest and saw 11 leatherback sea turtles!
On Friday Tim and I left Linden with Sara, Amy and her boyfriend Gene, and headed to Georgetown where we met up with 6 other PCVs. We traveled to the Essequibo Coast (where we did our training 17 months ago) where we planned to spend the night and toast to Jillian's 25th birthday, promising her turtles as a gift) before we took a 6 hour boat ride from Essequibo to Shell Beach.
Shell Beach is at the Northern-most point of Guyana, you can practically see Venezuela, and is home to one of the world's few nesting places for sea turtles! The Shell Beach Turtle Project is an NGO dedicated to the protection and conservation of 4 species of turtles. The dedicated folks at the Turtle project patrol the beach twice a night every night, protecting the turtles from predators (poachers who hunt them for meat and eggs, dogs, and birds who eat the eggs etc). We heard that if you go out to the beach you can walk with the patrols to see the nesting process of this endangered species. This month is the last month that the leatherback turtles come to nest so we got our butts out there to see this miracle. I say miracle, because the leatherbacks who are born in Guyana on Shell Beach will always return to nest there and no one knows exactly how or why.
Well, we endured the long but beautiful 6 hour speedboat ride (Tim note:The Rivers here are so crazy! We rode down these huge swathes (and sometimes not so huge) of water surrounded by bush on each side. The mangroves twisting and writhing around each other like petrified limbs remind me of tangled spider legs, while the swamps and wetlands boast both grass and trees intermixed dancing around the mangrove wall.), with our tour guide, and turtle conservationist, Romeo Audley and got to the beach in time for lunch on Saturday. We settled in to the guest house, an open air structure with tents inside and took a swim in the Atlantic ocean (it was salty and brown, but not as muddy as the waters in most places in Guyana). By night fall we were ready for patrol and hoped to see turtles. But before we could do that, we had to protect ourselves from the MOSQUITOES! As soon as dark fell the mosquitoes swarmed like I have never seen before. I was wearing insect repellent and long sleeves but these damn bugs ate through everything, even my jeans! Anyway, we had turtles to see so we would not be deterred.
Right as we were about to leave on patrol, a villager brought a bucket full of 10 baby hatchlings inside. They had tried to get to the ocean but were chased by dogs. The conservationists have trained the local community to help save these little dudes, so they were brought to us and we got to take them down to a safe place on the beach and release them in the sand and watch as they scooted themselves into the ocean to face countless dangers. If they survive, they will come back to the beach in 8-10 years when they are mature to nest. They were so squirmy and cute! I hope they make it.
After releasing the little ones, we walked down the beach for 4 hours, in almost pitch black, since it was a new moon. The brilliant stars above us, the ocean crashing softly to our left, silhouettes of palm trees and jungle to our right and the hope of seeing adult turtles in front of us, we walked. And walked and walked. We saw a whale skull that had washed up the beach years ago but NO turtles. Needless to say, we were disappointed. Back at camp, we slept well but unsettled, dreaming of elusive turtles.
Sunday was spent chilling on the beach, taking photos, swimming and chatting with the turtle project folks, learning about turtles. That night we headed out again on patrol, wishing that we would find at least one turtle so that our trip wouldn't be fruitless. we walked for 2 hours, seeing nothing and decided to sit down and rest our feet for a minute. After about 20 minutes of sitting I was feeling disheartened, thinking we might have to return to camp turtle-less. But then our guide suddenly said, "Look, a turtle is coming out of the water right now." And there she was, a huge mass in the waves, slowing scooting herself up the beach. Right in front of us, as if she knew we were there! We watched in awe as she climbed up above the tide line, then we snuck closer and watched as she dug a hole, over a meter deep with her back flippers and then laid her eggs. When turtles are laying their eggs they go into a sort of trance so we were able to take pictures and even pet her. It was SO cool! Then we watched her bury her eggs (well actually, she thought she was burying them but the conservationists had removed them from the nest, since it was too close to the water and would get washed away, so they moved them to a safer man-made nest). Then the mama headed back out to sea.
I felt so blessed to see this whole process, from start to finish. Only 1 out of 1000 eggs laid will survive and return to the beach to lay their own nests. It is so rare and wonderful and Tim and I got to sit, snuggled up together on a beach in what seemed like the farthest corner of the earth and be part of this phenomenal event.
Then, on July 4th, we all packed up and headed back to our sites, stopping for beers in a small Amerindian village in the river and stopping again on the road to pick up a present that a fellow PCV had made for us for the Fourth; cupcakes with candy hotdogs on them.
It was a stellar weekend! One I will never forget!
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