But I’m not leaving yet.
Already for some time, I´m spending my days behind the (rather big flat) square computer screen. That, with the usual surf, cycle and run breaks. However, I already put my board and bike on the local Ebay. I would like to keep the board but I would have had to check it in twice (2x$100) since I have a 5 day stopover in New York on my way back. Still, let me know if you´re interested, I got quite some reactions already, it´s a real good deal:
http://costarica.en.craigslist.org/spo/1717841213.html
I couldn´t really care about the bike, I´m looking forward to riding my Cannondale which I have back home and I actually don´t have to care about my bike here anymore since they stole it few days ago.
Toch jammer dat ze niet van je spullen kunnen afblijven, ik was net serieus ´in training´.
I just started preparing for the summer cycle season by cycling every other day up and down some ´hills´.
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However, the bike is not the only involuntary donation I made to Costa Rica, I also ´lend out´ my:
Armani shades
Board shorts
2 (almost 3) of my favorite shirts
Northface backpack that had in it:
-Leatherman tool
-Driver’s license
-Canon ixus digital camera
..and I don´t know how much money (not much)…and lots of things I can´t think of right now or I still don´t miss and believe is out there somewhere in my messy room…
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Like I mentioned before, Central America is quite dodgy. I met young guys and girls working in hostels because their passports, credit cards, money, everything they had with them got stolen, gun point or threatened with machetes. No money for a ticket to fly home. Sooo many first-hand stories about burglaries, robberies, scams. Europe and Asia are a lot safer. Although I did quite a large involuntary donation in Asia as well some time ago.
Anyway, hope insurance at least compensates for material loss, I would rather have my stuff back though.
Still, I shouldn´t complain, people don´t like, I wrote quite a lot this time and I would like you to make it to the end, so,
to be honest.
Life is really easy right now.
Typically I wake up at around 5, turn around, get up at around 6, or 7, put on some shorts and lay a clean t-shirt in my neck (too hot to wear it). Blend some papaya, pineapple, banana or whatever is near and start drinking large cups of black Costa Rican filter coffee and walk bearfoot all day.
Hmmm…
Do I make this sound better than it is?
No
This is the peak of the dry season; even here in the Caribbean it’s all dried up now. Still a bid humid but I am finally able to sleep without a mosquito net.
Life is good without mosquitoes.
And no more long tiring days carying heavy things to fish places that are impossible to fish.
But I´m actually more busy than ever because I´m working on a new scientific publication! I´ve got ten years of virgin data to work with, never been touched by any statistical package before. So far it´s fun because the first analysis results are really promising! They all show what I would like to see. But I know hell is waiting. How to fit 10 years of data in only ´mas o menos´ 8 pages??
All day long I´m switching between pdf files to read tons of peer reviewed papers on the subject, do statitstics in Excel, Canoco & SPSS, visualize in Adobe Illustrator and back to ms word (back to the waves).
The title will be something like; ¨Habitat preferences and human induced infuences on tropical stream fish assemblages in the Talamanca region, Costa Rica¨ . It still all sounds too large, have to keep narrowing it down, have to keep narrowing it down.
Meanwhile I´m also using my -by the prof. so called- ´Abracadabra´, (Read: Canocial analyses¨) to improve the biological integrity systematics. He is a bit old fashioned in terms of digital solutions.
Abracadabra:
But enough of the blabla now, I still owe you some pura vida…
First:
(¡¡¡)¡¡¡ --- L e a t h e r b a c k t u r t l e s!!! --- !!!(!!!)
After the wild Oran Utan, Lions & Leopards, Rhino´s & Elephants, Manta rays & Manatees and many…many more…the Leatherback can be scratched off the wish list…
The organization I work for, -ANAI-, is mother of lots of spin-off projects. One is the Turtle program in Gandoca (Widecast).
Since the Prof. is still well respected there as one of the founders I could join a ´turtle patrol´ for one night (normally would have wind up paying lots.
Like in Indonesia I joined to patrol the beaches at night to scare off poachers and -if necessary- relocate turtle eggs to a hatchery.
Sea turtles make their nests at night; they dig a hole and lay about a hundred eggs and according to NEMO et al 2003, turtles can become over 150yrs!
All around the world it is believed that sea turtle eggs are like Viagra, I guess any egg won´t hurt but especially leatherbacks are endangered because of this dogma.
They aren´t too smart as well because sometimes they make their nest in a place that’s not really suited since like it´s unstable beach or its below the flood line or something. Anyways, the eggs will then be relocated to a hatchery.
I had only one night to see Leatherbacks (you really only see them when they come ashore). The patrolled beach area was separated in sector A, B and C.
Of these sectors, B, almost always got the most turtles and I wind up doing sector A…
The last 4 days they haven´t had any turtles in sector A, my patrol is from 8pm to midnight.
However…!!!, after walking up and down the beach one time we spot one!!! She already had about finished digging her hole so we had to hurry, we have to get the eggs since she made her nest in a place where a little creek enters the sea. The colder fresh water would -if eggs would hatch- only produced males.
Above 29 °C females are born, below that, males are born.
After a turtle started digging her nest she can´t be bothered by anything anymore so we put the plastic bag in the hole and catch all the eggs.
When she´s finally done one of us relocate the eggs to the protected hatchery and the others turn around to resume the patrol and right there when we turn around there is another turtle crawling up the beach.
Everybody down, LIGHTS OFF!
It takes her awfully long to find her nesting spot and still we decide to move the eggs. This one is bigger, she digs for ever and reaches about the maximum nest depth, 73cm, straight down. Pretty amazing for a turtle.
All of a sudden again, everybody down, LIGHTS OFF!
Another leatherback, again bigger!, comes crawling up the beach, straight towards me. It finally stops only two meters away from me, turns around and starts digging her nest. Now, since the other turtle, by this time, started closing her nest, I´m getting buried in sand from two sides.
By now it’s getting close to midnight and that´s the time of the changing of the guards. We leave the new turtle for the next patrol group and start walking back over the beach. I´m carrying the plastic bag with 132 Leatherback turtle eggs in it, in the dark, trying not to stumble, when all of a sudden, in the distance, we spot another massive vague black creature crawling up the beach, it must have been twice the size as the one in the picture. They can become over 2 ½ meter long, the one I saw must have been over to two meter, imagine, longer than me. We walk in a bow around not to disturb it a report it to the next patrol.
Anyways, amazing experience! Lucky me! I´ve seen many many sea turtles before but the leatherbacks are something else. If we don´t hurry up polluting our planet they might even survive.
I could only take pictures with red light & no flash so I start with a picture found on the web to show you a proper leatherback turtle, then continuing with my own red vague pictures.
Laying eggs
Measuring carapace width
Lenth
The hatchery
This years stats (I love stats)
The station
The next day it was back to work for another jungle fishing expedition to…
Yorkin, Panama!
Still, passports unnecessary, we cross the border hiking through the jungle, swimming across rivers, horses again to carry the heavy load. Some rivers we sample snorkeling since they are really too far away/big to carry two shockers & batteries equipment etc .etc. The smaller creeks we still electro-fished.
Le grand finale: On the last day we did the rather large river. We caught some record breaking fish this time! That was fun! Huge fish and some extraordinary large shrimp as well. Ethically as we are we all released them, question marks raised by the locals…
Fun as it was we still had to work with the local kids, which so far had been fun.
But these kids.
They were the most, rude, irritating, dumbest creatures ever! We would have been much better off without them but part of the work is to increase awareness etc etc.. blabla, I´m about to drown these little basterds.
No, really, it may be the most important part of the work, teaching the kids, parents, visit the schools, etc. We normally wind up with plenty of useful help but this time, ´NO BUENO!´.
For the hundredth´s time: ¨Matthias?, … Matthias?, …Matthias?¨ ¨Si.¨ ¨Que, Matthias¨?¨What what?¿?¿?¿¨
Or better..., 6am, just woke one minute ago: ¨Que is eso Matthias?¨ ¨Porque? y que es eso? Porque? ... ...
Porque can´t you just *#$*off! …(did I mention I quit smoking)
Anyways, here´s a bit of Yorkin:
Again a very special experience. Also funny how I was having a song in my head after 5 days without hearing any music and the first song I hear back in civilization is that stupid song.
Still, I missed out on quite some rock n roll weekends so after two months of early nights it’s about time to climb back on the horse and be sorry of what I did the night before…
´t was tenslotte koninginnedag…!!! Had graag net zoals gewoonlijk met een telefoon, Spiegel en koffer met servies door Amsterdam ge….
Then, in the category animals this time:
My fish!
I had two; P and Ez. They enjoyed their Buena Vista Fish Resort, until P decided to suddenly return physical after having a outer body experience wandering on the floor next to the aquarium. I closed off the top with plexiglas and duct tape and still P somehow managed to escape (??¿¿). I found P still alive, looked after him for 3 days until he finally had to give up on life and left Ez behind lonely with the deception of escaping the Plexiglas fortress.. Data analysis showed they are very tolerant to waste, so I tried to resemble their natural habitat with some beer cans.
En nog een rare snuiter..
Na een klein weekje zweten en zwemmen in the jungle stink je als een...
De vogel
Right now I just got back from a great surf at my favorite spot. It´s so easy to surf it, nunca frustration, (except for having to hitchhike and taking the bus again since my bike got stolen). And it’s never crowded and I never knew why, I always wondered why all the locals only surf Cocles while Negra is much better but I might have an answer to that now. When I got into the line-up this time they told me they just saw a shark. No way! Sure it wasn´t a turtle fin, there are lots of turtles here this time of year… no man, just keep looking over there and you´ll see it.
He was right, only after they had left and I was sitting out there all by myself in the surf -waiting for another rush- there I saw it, a little fin sheering trough the water brrrrrr, shivers on my back. It was getting close to dusk anyway so I rode the next wave back to shore.
Pura vida
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