Turtle Release Rancho San Cristobal
Gorgeous pristine beach, beautiful weather, amazing company
and the cutest little turtles you can find… this weekend had all that. We arrived around 6:30 pm on Saturday, we were a little late but full of excitement, we were going to help release baby Leatherback sea turtles and we couldn’t wait. Pablo was waiting for us at the gate of Rancho San Cristobal, the location where ASUPMATOMA, the organization behind these commendable efforts, has chosen to do their part in protecting this species. He told us to follow the road until we got the house on the beach and so we did (it’s amazing how obedient one becomes when out of your own environment). After a 5 minute drive we got to the camp and parked, there were people already there listening to the instructions given by Elizabeth, one of the resident Marine Biologists, on what everybody had to do in order to help and not get in the way.
What happened next was incredible; we were all holding the tiniest baby sea turtles we had ever seen and were ready to release them to the ocean but we had to wait, we couldn’t just put them in the water… they have to struggle to get there, they have to push and pull their little bodies for a few meters (must seem like miles and miles for them) in order to get to the ocean, it’s an experience that will prepare them for the rest of their lives.We had all named our baby turtles and of course we all wanted our particular one to be the first to get in the water. These tiny creatures are very resilient, they have to fight the blasting sun, aggressive crabs, kamikaze sea gulls and the powerful waves; you have to refrain yourself from helping them, it doesn’t do them any good. We released about 200 of them, only about 0.5% will actually make it as adults and come back to lay eggs to this beach again, that’s how the job that these biologists are doing is.
After all of the excitement we set our camp and talked about what we had just done and seen for hours until we started dreaming. Next morning we awaken by Ran, a volunteer from Israel who was inviting us to help plant some of the eggs that they had collected during the night from the adjacent beach after looking all night for the trails that adult turtles leave when laying their eggs in holes they make in the sand.
I took several eggs in my hand, the size of a golf ball and the feel of a ping pong ball that’s been in the sun for too long. We put the eggs in the wholes and covered the carefully and couldn’t stop smiling all the time! We can’t wait until they call us to let us know that OUR eggs have hatched!!! A truly amazing adventure that we can’t even start to describe in words, a humbling experience that we would love everybody else to experience, join us next time!
