Lucie & Rhys´s Honeymoon Adventure: Week 35 - Cahuita, Pacuare Nature Reserve (Costa Rica)

We spent the first 4 nights of the week in Cahuita as we had time to kill while waiting for our volunteer placement at a turtle reserve to start. Cahuita is a little village on the Caribbean coast with a small but beautiful national park. The village itself is quieter and more untouched than Puerto Viejo and most businesses are still owned by locals instead of being overrun by expats.

The first full day in Cahuita we decided to head into the national park and walk the first 3.5km of the 8.3km trail (the only trail) that wound its way through the jungle parallel to the beach before cutting inland to the ranger station at the northern entrance. After 3.5km we reached Punta Cahuita, the peninsula and sat and ate our picnic there while a monkey tried to steal our crisps. On the way back down the trail we came across one of the rangers who pointed out racoons and snakes, so obvious when they point them out but invisible to us before hand. We bumped in to James and Fleur and sat on the beach for a bit before heading back into town for beers on the waterfront.

After moving hostels to a much nicer place with a lovely little tropical garden area, we headed into the national park again the next day (unlike the high entry fees to parks in the rest of Costa Rica, this one only required a small donation so we could go in and out as we pleased). The aim of the day was to walk the full 8.3km trail. Again we bumped into Fleur and James who had also come across a ranger and we joined them for a small tip. The ranger was incredible pointing out sloths, snakes, hummingbird nests, bats and all manner of other creatures every 2 metres along the path. We joined them for the first part of the walk to the river crossing where the ranger left us and the four of us continued to Punta Cahuita and onwards to the northern entrance. The trail was an easy walk, very wide and flat and after another picnic on the beach near the end of the trail we retraced our footsteps, leaving James and Fleur on a deserted beach, back into town.

The following day Rhys had a computer day and stayed in the hostel enjoying the peace of the garden. After lunch I headed back to the park for a short walk to the river crossing to see if I could spot a yellow pit viper without the help of a ranger (no luck) and to chill on the beach with a book to make the most of the sun.

Our last day the weather had turned and it was too overcast to be a beach day. Instead we stayed at the hostel watching TV and organising things so we were ready for our week at the turtle reserve. We ventured out for dinner in the village and to marvel at the motorcycle club in town for a party, it was like a scene out of Sons of Anarchy.

At 9am we were at the bus station to meet with James and Fleur for a bus to Limon, the largest town in the area and not somewhere that you’d want to stick around. After asking around for a bus to Matina and realising it was too late for our connecting boat we ended up haggling with a taxi to take us all the way to the port just outside Matina. We got there early and ate our sandwiches in a little lean-to shack on the edge of the canal waiting for the boat. The boat arrived spot on time and we started the 30 minute journey to the Pacuare Nature Reserve where we’d be spending the next 8 nights.

The reserve was established by the Endangered Wildlife Trust, a British charity and covers 1,050 hectares of tropical rainforest. The land was acquired 25 years ago and stretches for 6km along the Caribbean coast sandwiched between the beach and the canal. The stretch of beach is the most important nesting ground for Leatherback turtles in Costa Rica. The reserve has two stations, a large station in the south that has facilities for high paying guests, school and other groups and a smaller station in the north that is much quieter and more ‘rustic’ with no internet access and limited electricity in the kitchen area. We were so impressed with the set up when we arrived, the location was beautiful, right on the beach surrounded by lush forest complete with ocelots and a jaguar and the rooms were clean and fresh. The food was delicious and fresh, although mostly vegetarian and by the end of it we were completely sick of eating beans and rice for three meals a day. After a night in the south station to settle in we were off to the north station for 4 nights after which we were due to return to the south station for our last 3 nights (we actually left two days early but I’ll leave that saga for next week’s blog).

The day to day running of the reserve is left to the two biologists, Alvaro and Isabel with Jess looking after logistics with a number of research assistants at each of the stations. Our daily activities were pretty much structured around meal times, breakfast at 9am, lunch at 1pm and dinner at 6pm. By far the most important activity was the night time beach patrols.

The north station had two shifts, one at 8pm and one at midnight, each running for 4 hours and involving walking up and down 2.5km of wet sand in the pitch black trying not to trip over drift wood. Me and Rhys patrolled together with an assistant, we went on one midnight shift and one 8pm shift at north station and we were lucky enough to come across four turtles. The first thing you see is the tracks up the beach, like a small tractor has emerged from the sea. Following the tracks you get to the turtle who goes through a process that can take up to 2 hours, digging a body pit, excavating a nest, laying the eggs filling in the hole and camouflaging the site. When the turtle is laying her eggs she goes into a trance and doesn’t notice that you’re there which gives you time to note down her tag number (and tag her if she doesn't have one), measure her length and breadth (which involves straddling her – not easy when their shells are over a metre wide and are a metre and a half long), check for injuries and tumours and last of all count the eggs and triangulate the nest position. The last job once the turtle has made it back to the sea is to cover her tracks, they make such a mess and it’s easy for poachers to see from the sea so you have to try and disguise it a bit which involves throwing and moving a lot of sand about in the dark, fighting off sandflies.

Watching a turtle of that size was an amazing once in a lifetime experience. They’re so prehistoric looking and so powerful and determined. Leatherbacks are the largest living turtles and are critically endangered with poachers after both their eggs and meat. Adults average 1–1.75 m in carapace length, 1.83–2.2 m in total length and weigh 250 to 700 kg. The males never come ashore again one they reach the sea the first time and the females come back to land to lay every 10 days during the season, although not always to the same stretch of coast. They subsist almost entirely on jellyfish (I can’t find anywhere to support Alvaro’s claim that they only eat jellyfish gonads!!) and very little is known about their early years, their lifespan or statistics on hatchling survival.

Other than the evening patrols our jobs as volunteers ranged from sorting out the recycling to clearing driftwood and vines from the beach to make it easier for hatchlings to reach the sea. We helped to measure cliffs to see how the beach was changing for someone’s research project, triangulated nests that were due to hatch, cleaned equipment, watched assistants relocate nests that were two near to the sea and excavate nests that had hatched earlier in the week (or that the dog had dug up) and washed the buildings. The day time jobs weren’t difficult and barely took any time, generally we did less than 2 hours of work and spent the rest of the time playing cards, swimming in the sea, paddling the boat across the canal for a cold drink at the bar (the only building for miles around), reading and watching/playing volleyball.