Tortuguero for Thanksgiving

When Chad and I were in Costa Rica 9 years ago for our honeymoon, we stayed in 3 different places over the course of 10 days.  Tortuguero was our first destination. It's in the north east corner of Costa Rica, and is only accessible by boat or plane.  There is a series of canals which you can come through by boat which are loaded with wildlife. Once you arrive in Tortuguero there is a small town (with no cars of course), which lies on a narrow strip of land with the canal on one side and the ocean on the other.  The beach on the ocean side is an important nesting site for 3 species of sea turtles. The whole area is a protected wildlife refuge and National Park. We decided to take the family there for Thanksgiving, to make it feel like a special day, even though we weren't with the Collins family like we usually are.

The boat trip to Tortuguero lasts about 4 hours after an hour drive to the Moin docks.  It was a full day for us.  The kids really liked being on the boat... for about an hour.  After that, they got a bit stir crazy, but we survived. We saw Howlers, a sloth, a basilisk lizard, a big iguana, a baby caiman (a small crocodile), and lots of birds (there are a lot of people who come to Costa Rica to watch birds, so the guides make a big deal of them).

Our boat

A basilisk. They can run on water. This one, however was very comfortable and didn't run anywhere.

A baby caiman.

One of a handful of little houses along the river. 

By the end of the 4 hours, Violet was ridiculously loud.

Once in Tortuguero, we stayed at a place called Casa Marabella. It was highly recommended in our travel book.  It was nice and clean and came with a nice breakfast every morning.  The boat driver dropped us off at the Casa Marabella dock, and picked us up there two days later. Sweet.  We explored the little town of Tortuguero for a little while and then headed out to the beach. Green sea turtles nest on the beaches in Tortuguero durring the months of September and October.  The eggs incubate for 60 days, which means that we were just in time for hatching season.  Many people come to Tortuguero to see other animals, but for us it was all about the baby sea turtles.  After about an hour of walking along the beautiful beach, Ella was the one to spot a solitary baby turtle.  It was probably one of the weaker turtles, and it looked like he had a twisted left arm. When Ella found it, it was upside down, being dragged by a crab towards the crab's hole... but we resued him.  We scarred away the crab and watched him for a minute.  He was so worn out, he didn't have much fight left in him, and he soon stopped moving. We decided that it probably wouldn't do any harm to help the little guy out, so Chad scooped him up and took him to the water's edge.  It still took him quite a while to get out into the ocean. Michael decided to name him Old Maid, since he was the last one left and he was all alone.  We hope he is doing well!

Entering Tortuguero

Our hotel, Casa Marabella

Exploring Tortuguero

Ella is the one who spotted this house.  She thought that was so nice that they put a cactus on their sidewalk. 

We found evidence of the turtles before we found "Old Maid".

There are thousands of nests along this beach. Each of these holes is a nest that can hatch with 150 + baby turtles. 

We found empty eggs...

The shells of some turtles that didn't make it. 

And the skeletons of some of the mother turtles that didn't make it. 

And then we found "Old Maid".  We rescued him from a crab who was trying to drag him to his hole for dinner.

This is how our children sleep after a day of adventuring and turtle rescuing:

The next morning we went out looking for turtles again.  We donned some rain boots that our hotel provided, and walked down to the beach through the National Forrest. (Boots are required along the National Forrest Trails due to snakes).  As we were about to start down the trail, we ran into Norton, our tour guide that we hung out with quite a bit when Chad and I were here for our honeymoon.  He has only one eye, but can still spot basilisks from the other side of the river while the boat is going 40 mph.  It was fun to see him.

Breakfast on the dock

A new friend

Boots!

This is Norton... it was awesome to run in to him.

This is us with Norton in 2004.

Since it was Thanksgiving day, we decided to show our thanks for this beautiful part of the world by cleaning up for a little bit. There is a lot of garbage on a lot of the beaches in Costa Rica.  Part of the problem seems to be a lack of organization for collecting garbage. Once we had collected this rubbish, we had a hard time figuring out what to do with it. 

We got down to the beach, and after not spotting any turtles for a little while, a local man came up to us.  He guaranteed us that he could find a nest of hatching turtles, if we would just pay him $20. Violet was already whining about walking, so we agreed.  We thought it was strange that the man ran past so many turtle nests to a hill where turtles usually wouldn't be hatching.  He dug out a small group of stunned and seemingly lifeless turtles. He made up a story about why they would be there, but I knew he had hidden the turtles there to make money off the tourists. We had heard about shady tour guides, but didn't know they would put the turtles at such a risk.  After a few minutes the turtles seemed to wake up and began walking down to the beach.  By the time they got to the water, they seemed just fine.  The kids were so excited to see the baby turtles, but the whole experience had a bit of a sour taste to me.  Chad took the man aside and told him how wrong he thought it was to do what he was doing.  The man seemed ashamed and left. I was initially pretty angry at the guy for polluting a really cool experience.  But we saw a lot of pretty poor homes and I'm sure that it is a huge temptation to try to make some money off the endless masses of tourists who flock here week after week in search of turtles.  Maybe if tourists were just more informed... that no guide should ever dig up a nest for any reason, and that anyone who does is causing a problem.  If you find yourself in Tortuguero, remind these guides that you are there for a natural experience, not a staged one that puts the animals at risk. 

I think I told the kids not to pick up the turtles 347 times while we were at the beach (or close to it). When I looked through our photos that night I found this.  I guess Chad wasn't as worried about the no touching rule.  It sure made for a cute pic.

After walking around in the rain for a while, we were soaking wet. The ocean was actually really nice and warm so we decided to go for a swim in our clothes (and rain coats). It was a lot of fun.

Later that afternoon we went took a trip to the Turtle museum, which was awesome, and then headed back to the beach to try to find more turtles.  We had a really nice walk along the beautiful Caribbean coastline. We found a couple of jellyfish that had washed ashore, a giant caterpillar, and a handful of sand dollars.  As it was nearing sunset, we spotted a big group of people gathered on the beach.   As we approached, we found yet another local guide who had dug up a nest for tourists.  This time, the man had dug into a nest before the turtles were quite ready to come out.  When Chad and I came to Tortuguero 9 years ago, we stumbled upon a nest of turtles that was naturally hatching.  It was awesome, and the turtles just kept coming.  Over a hundred of them clambering over one another as the came out of a small hole at the bottom of a nest.  This time, the man had dug a large hole sideways into the nest, and a few sleepy, groggy turtles were slowly coming out.  We started asking the man questions, and taking pictures of him, and he left (even changed his shirt so he would be less recognizable).  It was still a fun experience for the kids, and we got to see many many turtles, but it would have been even better if it had been au naturale.

By the time we got back to our hotel, it was well past dark, and we were tired and hungry. We decided to eat at the Wild Ginger restaurant, as it had the best reviews in the area, and it was, after all, Thanksgiving.  We had such a nice meal.  When we got there, we were the only customers, and the owner came out and talked to us, in English so that the whole family could understand, about his food, and Tortuguero.  He was obviously proud of his place and the food they served, and it showed in what we ate.  It was the best food we have eaten in Costa Rica.  Between courses, Jorge showed us a Red-eyed tree frog that had come into his restaurant the night before due to a storm.  The kids loved it! The food was modern Caribbean, and had fantastic flavors.  Chad had the beef stew, and I had shrimp with yucca hash browns. Michael had a BLM (bacon, lettuce, and mango), while the girls shared a boring grilled cheese sandwich made on the restaurants own freshly baked bread.  It turned out to be a really great meal at the end of a very nice day.  It wasn't the traditional turkey, and probably, if we could have transported ourselves up to Idaho for a few hours to be with Chad's family, like we normally are for thanksgiving, we would have done it.  But I think it was a fun way to make a new memory.

Our Thanksgiving dinner at Wild Ginger

On the boat ride home the next morning, we again saw awesome wildlife.  This time we even saw a full grown caiman sunning himself with his mouth wide open, on the bank.

Bananas are HUGE business here in Costa Rica. Huge boats piled high with bananas leave the harbor at Moin every day with logos like Dole, Chiquita, Del Monte, and others.  It's crazy to think of that many bananas. 

We had an awesome Thanksgiving weekend in Tortuguero.