Day 16: Ojochal

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Today, I totally forgot to take pictures! That is a weird thing, as I usually think about that when I’m out and about on holiday.

Today is Sunday, and because of the fact that the nearby village hosts the Festival de Ballena all hotels are packed! A lot of Costa Ricans enjoying their weekend over here. The festival is held as the migration of Whales is peaking right now, so many tours go out to view them.
Neither one if those tours will be containing us today.

We start the day with a nature walk in the garden and on the premise of the hotel. We also saw our very first (clearly visible) sloth! Over here, it is the Three-toed Sloth, and it was really active this morning. So cool!

After this, we decided it was time to visit the beach as temperatures are not that high yet. The tides are working against us, as we had to race to keep our towels dry because of the high tide coming in way faster than expected. This also cut our visit to the beach short, as 2 metres of debris riddled stoney beach is not a nice place to put the towels down. 🙂

The rest of the afternoon was spent poolside. This is quite relaxing!

Tonight, we tag along with the volunteers to go turtle patrolling on the nearby Tortuga Beach. That meant walking the length of the beach until either the time was up or us finding a turtle ready to lay the eggs. Over here, they have the Olive Ridley Turtle in its egg laying season, while we saw Green Sea Turtles before. The Olive Ridley Turtles are much smaller, but equally green.
The volunteers work in three shifts during the night: 7-10pm, 10pm-1am, 1-4 am. We opted for the earliest shift, and were picked up to walk to the beach at half past 6. In the pouring rain. Yay!
This unfortunately meant that we were to patrol during the night in the rain, or if it ever stopped raining, just in the dark.
For about the first hour it rained like crazy, but afterwards everything cleared up and with the full moon and lightning out on the ocean, it turned out to be an amazing night.
But, no nesting turtles.
On this beach, they average about 1 per night, which means that over three shifts chances are small for you to see one. And unfortunately, we didn’t. But we are sure that that beach was the safest beach ever, as we were 5 strong patrolling it against poachers!

Tomorrow, we’ll be on a boat doing a Dolphins & Whales tour! I’m curious and looking forward to it!