The Never Ending Lunch Adventure

The other day Steph and I decided that the tide was perfect to walk to Tenga's for lunch. We have to cross the estuary at low tide to get to Tanga's which is over near Punta Coyota. Well, after walking the 2 KM to the estuary we cross and find out that he will not cook any food without seafood in it and that he will not make anything vegetarian for Steph. We kindly say thank you and decided to head up the road to see if the next restaurant is open, it wasn't.

Part of the river we crossed, figured it was safe since a local was doing it too

We took a pause here to look at the time and decide if we walk back to Costa de Oro via the beach or if we keep walking up to Coyote (4 KM more). We decided to just keep walking to Coyote since we had walked so far already. After walking through a couple rivers, oh yeah it had rained the whole night before, we finally made it through to Coyote about 2 PM (we started started this journey at 11:30). We finally got food at my favorite restaurant in Coyote, Loma Clara; Steph was able to get a vegetarian pasta and I had rice with shrimp. I was starving so this is probably the best meal that I have had in Costa Rica ever, though I know in actuality that Thanksgiving last year still wins.

My arroz con camarones

After our trip for lunch wrapping up at about 4 now, we went by the super to pick up some ice cream for the walk home, we still had another 5 KM left to go. We stopped by the office to use the bathroom and booked it home making it back just as the sun was setting! Good thing we got back just then because the bug spray on my legs was for sure gone and I am pretty sure what I put on my arms had been warn off from all the sweat. Oh well made for a fun adventure, needless to say we were a little tired the next day after so much walking and a patrol.

 

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Empanadas, projects, and broken things

I am putting in a turtle tracker for 2013!! Our hatchery is starting to fill up so it is time to start tracking how many eggs and nests are getting put in and starting the beginning of October we should start seeing babies!!

Caught these two getting frisky, i wasn't quick enough with my picture though

Our first night without any volunteers Steph and I decided to get creative with our food. We both love our empanadas but decided that we might try to make it with yuca instead of corn flower. Luckily, it was great success, though they might not have looked gorgeous they tasted delicious. I've turned to a diet of rice and beans and I am totally fine with eating rice and beans at every meal, so I feel kind of bad when we do get volunteers and they ask what is for dinner and I say rice and beans. Apparently, I eat too much rice compared to others visiting from European countries, I'm not very surprised. But, I think that I have my food soul mate with Steph, with the exception that she eats peanut butter, she like me does not like tomatoes because they are a funky texture!!! (I'm not on my own for not like peanut butter though, Luisa was not a fan either)

Mmmm yuca empanadas

Since my blog post on Monday, we had a big storm that night. Santos wanted to come and patrol with us but we had to wait for the storm to pass so it was safe to go out. That patrol ended up being a shortened one since Santos had to be home by 10 because he had work in the morning. It ended up being useless and not worth going out for the hour in the rain because I was going to patrol again after the tide started to go down.

The most stressful part was that right before we left I went to put on my watch and it was blank. I had replaced the battery right before I left and wasn't sure if the seal was still going to be waterproof when I did, however, I was not that concerned. I'm not sure what happened because my watch did not work for like 12 hours and when I went to show Steph what was happening it worked completely fine. Luckily, Lauren (someone I went to high school with) is coming down end of next week to be a research assistant so I am getting a new watch and a new headlight just in case.

When watch wasn't working.

The past two nights we were lucky that San Miguel has been so full because we got Maddie to help us with patrols! Steph and I were each able to take a night off with Maddie around.

There are also two extra studies that PRETOMA is working on this year that Maddie helped us set up. The first in a trash study in high, medium, and low density locations. The project is in conjunction with seaturtles.org, so it will be fun and interesting to see the results and help in a study that will be with a popular sea turtle resource.

The second project, which we have already started in the hatchery, is a climate control study. Maddie is tracking the temperatures of the hatcheries and popular nesting sectors on the beach and will hopefully conduct the study for multiple seasons to get an accurate representation on how the climate change is affecting nesting turtles and their nests.

I am personally excited to be participating in these extra studies even if it means a little more work. It will help keep us busy plus these will eventually become some pretty recognizable studies that I have helped with data collection on.

By the way, yes there was an earthquake this morning. It was a 6.0 and over 80 km north of me. I'm okay and it didn't feel that big, I think the only reason I felt it was that I had just woken up.

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