Shadows at midnight

Let's start off by saying there was an earthquake last week. I believe that the final decision was that it was a 6.6 but everything is ok! We started feeling the quake and Victor and I told our two volunteers from Germany we need to get out of the house and to follow up. Right out our front door is a little open field (car parking) that we were able to go to and not have to worry about coconuts falling from the sky. Once the ground stopped shaking we were back inside closing up the windows grabbing passports, and in my case anything I could shove in my backpack real quick (Mr. Bear, my iPad, camera, whatever clothes I happened to grab, the important stuff), and then were were off to the bus stop. Now the locals have told us that the bus stop is safe if there is a tsunami because there are so many mangroves and fields between it and the beach that the wave would stop.... I'm not sure how I believe this but it was dark and there were mosquitos after to me so I didn't want to go too far. Courtney was taking the night off up at the hotel and so she had left her phone with us, which was a good thing to have. She was able to text us from another phone and asked us to call her at the hotel, except we could not get calls through. So we sat and wait until we deemed it was safe to go back to the house. During that time Lotti was able to call and told us she had the news on and nothing had been said about a tsunami but just to wait about 10 more minutes and she would call us back with an update. We were then able to get in touch with Courtney who also had the news on at the hotel and nothing had been said about a tsunami. We returned home and one of our neighbors, who will sometimes patrol with us, was leaving our house; he had come to check on us. Lotti called us back and told us we might want to take the rest of the night off and just do a morning check just in case there was a large aftershock we needed to make a move for. Guess it wouldn't be ideal to be 2km down the beach if we had to evacuate.

We've also completed our shirts with the kids. Before Courtney left on her visa run we had tie-dyed the shirts and now it was time to paint some turtles on them. We had a giant party out in the rancho, well not so much a party but just lots of kids and the dogs all came over as well.

I've also become quite the bread maker. Everyone one else has troubles getting their bread to rise and mine seems to come out quite well. I've started making rolls for dinner and I guess they are so good they all seem to get eaten . We never have any leftovers when Courtney goes looking. Think we might need to start keeping a secret stash!

It's been really bright at night as we are getting close to a full moon. It was weird going out on the beach last night and having a shadow and stars weren't even visible because it was so bright. This should be better light for turtles, they tend to come up the night before a full moon and the night after a full moon. I did get one turtle last night. Julia (one of our Germans) and I poked around for the nest. I found the chamber and where her nest should have been but there were no eggs. We did pass a poacher on our way towards that turtle so her eggs might have been poached. Talking to Courtney this morning she said to smell the sand next time and if you can smell the eggs you know for sure that it had been poached. This was kind of a bummer we only need 3 more nests in our hatchery to have filled every hole once, and we are starting to push it with getting nests in so late.

I've reached half way with my stay in Costa de Oro. We've found out that our offical project end date will be December 10. It may be just Courtney and me for the last few days; Vic has to get back to the states. Then Courtney and I will be off exploring Costa Rica for a few days and maybe go down to Bocas Del Toro in Panama. They have cheap SCUBA certifications down there so maybe I'll get certified there, much more to see that La Jolla Shores and much warmer water!

We are just about ready for Halloween! Drew is throwing a party at his hotel for us from 12-5 so we can be back in time to nap and patrol. Courtney and I need to get to work on our costumes!