well i've been here 3 weeks now and it feels like aaaaaaaaaages!! we are well into the swing of doing 'proper work' now, and i'm loving it.
as you can probably have guessed, there is no such thing as an 'average day' so i will describe a few sorts of days.
Day 1.
get up at 4.00am and eat breakfast, ready to go on the beach by 5.00am, to do nest checking. this invovles walking about 5 miles, noting down all the turtle nests that have been laid the previous night. this is usually somewhere in the region of 100. we also note down when turtles come onto the beach but don't nest. you can clearly see their tracks so it's easy enough... so long as the weather stays cool.
back to camp for lunch, then a lazy hour to lie in a hammock or do some laundry or have a cold shower. then at 2pm, off on Incidentals walk for 3 hours. this invovlers walking through the forest and writing down any vertebrate species you see... this generally invovles snakes (4 speices seen so far) some lizards / skinks / anoles, monkeys (howler monkeys; capuchins; spider monkeys) and if you are lucky maybe something out of the ordinary like a sloth or tapir - i haven't seen them yet though. well i saw a sloth but it just looked like a black blob and you coulndt tell what it was. i'm getting some amazing phots woith my big camera.
back to camp for tea, then in the evening, play cards and chat with people in the kitchen till they turn off the lights at 8pm,. then we go to bed.
Day 2
get up at 3.00am, eat breakfast and be out by 4.00am, ready to do bird surveys along the canal. this invovles canoeing in a gourp of 6 of us, along the canals (which are amazingly beautiful and NOTHING like the ugly waterways in England. they're about 30m wide, and are overhanging with plants and trees. we note down all the bird species we see.
back to camp for lunch, then spend an hour doing some launrdy (in cold water, by hand). having the afternoon off, then having tea and having a meeting where we all share stories of exciting things we've seen in the past couple of days. then going to bed for a nap at about 8pm when they turn off the lights, and waking up at 11pm, to get ready for midnight to go on a turtle walk till 4.00am. this invovles wearing all black clothes, trousers and long sleeves, and going along the beach to find turtles who've come ashore to nest. as they dig their holes, we wait, and then we count the eggs, record / measure where the nest is, then tag the turtle.
back to camp at 4.30am, and say goodnight / good morning to the people who've just got up for an early task.
Day 3
have a lie in till lunch, as we only went to bed around 4.30. then after lunch, going off on a nest excavation. where you use the measurements that another group did a coupel of months ago, and you dig down to see if the eggs have hatched or not.
back to camp for dinner, then spend a couple of hours writing my journal, and playing cards in the kitchen, till they turn out the lights at 8.00pm and we all go to bed, ready for another 4am start the next day.
so that's the sorts of things we are doing, and there have been some amazing experiences so far. for example, seeing jaguar prints on the beach, in the footprints you made only a couple of hours before is both exciting and unnerving! and Edouard stepped on a venomous snake - eek!! something else which was great was seeing a hatchling on the beach, and wathicng its epic journey (we can't interfere though) as it goes the 20m down to the sea. we were all standing round, cheering it on, videoing it, etc. we have also become accustomed to seeing dead turtles on the beach too - i don't mind seeing it, as they have been killed by jaguars, so it seems reasonable. we have , however, had a couple of our nests taken by poachers, which is upsetting and sad and makes me angry. the turtles are endangered, and they take the eggs and sell them in bars, because they are supposedly an aphrodisiac, even though there is no documented proof whatsover that that's true. >:o(
the people i'm here were are generally a really good buch. most of them are students, but age does not seem to matter - i'm the 3rd oldest. some of them are here for just 5 weeks, and i'm really going to miss them when they go.... loads of people... i like everyone, and we have had loads of fun together.
I was doing a nest excavation with Sarah and Kyle, and the nest hole was so deep that Kyle was head and shoulders deep into it, and me and Sarah had to hold his legs so he didn't fall in!! it was so funny.... and another time, the same 3 of us again (the dream team! plkus Molly) were caught in a tropical storm, and could not see for the rivers of water in our eyes, so we sheltered under a tree and sand drinking songs and had zombie face-pulling contests.
generally speaking, it's all brilliant stuff, and i feel like i'm doing something useful, fun interesting etc. My only real gripes are the mosquitoes; they didn't seem to bother me at first, but now they're really getting a taste for me - and the insect repellant i'm using! honestly, my legs look like i have chicken pox!
at the moment we are in a nearby town as we have a 'long weekend' (wed-thu-fri) off work, and we are all doing a 2-day white water rafting trip, and we're sleeping out by the riverside. it should be cool!!
well that's it for now....
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