Puerto Viejo

We came down to Puerto Viejo again for the day...we have a little longer to spend here today. So last night was my first real volunteer activity. I was scheduled for a beach patrol from 8 to midnight because they were expecting a certain female turtle to come back and nest last night. Apparently after they find a female nesting... they expect to see the same female in the same area nesting 14 or 15 days later. Unfortunately we didnt find her last night but i guess on a patrol this morning someone found the nest she laid last night a little further up the beach instead of down where we looked. It was definately interesting though...our leader and some girl who was volunteering for the day talked the entire 4 hours in spanish about 10 words a second. It was long and we waded across a small river at the beginning so i was soaking! Apparently there as been a caimen spotted there (spectacled caimen might be spelled wrong but i think is a croc or gator). Anywho it was rather long and we didnt see anything too exciting so that was a bit disappointing. Cass got the hatchery shift from midnight to 6 in the morning! So she definately had a long night guarding the hatchery.
When we got back from puerto viejo yesterday they did a nest exhumation. So all the volunteers followed Phil (the head biologist of the project) and went to a nest which had hatched a few days earlier to see what happened with the rest of the eggs (it was a leatherback nest). Apparently the mother laid it too close to the forest roots and one of the eggs got a fungus which infected the other eggs...and also just the roots took too much nutrition or something so they couldnt finish developing. Some eggs were broken and turtles made it but there were about 20 eggs that made it to stage 4 out of 5 i think and died. he buried 4 eggs that he thought still had a chance and was devasted when he broke open one of the eggs and the baby was still alive. He was really upset...clearly it was sad and he said the baby stood no chance. im sure difficult for him when he devotes his life to it and accidently kills a turtle he means to save.
Plans from now: We think this is good experience and all but we asked our volunteer coordinator if we could get involved in a turtle project on the Pacific coast where the olive ridleys are supposed to be nesting now. We are making plans for other places we want to go and things we want to do but spending some time in Panama is definately on our list now. It has been raining the WHOLE time here on the caribean and we also hear the pacific is usually a bit nicer. Well thats all for now...i cant believe how much i have had to say in this little while!