Fingers Crossed: Another brief update

Well, Playa Grande is for the most part the same ole' same ole'. Volunteers come, volunteers go, turtles comes, turtles go, and a lot of restless nights. However, some things out of the ordinary have happened lately. For instance, I just found out the Julianne, a fellow IPFW student with Frank, is coming on Tuesday! Kim and I are so excited because she really is AMAZING and it will be nice to have one of our friends from outside the station here. Also, my roommate from college, Jac is coming in about a week, so I am excited about that. The only problem is, I have so much work to do. I really just want to hang out with the two of them. Needless to say, If they want to see me, they are going to have to patrol with me.

I'm waiting on what I hope is the last of my plates to get here so I can get the fungus growing because it can take up to a month, which I am now a couple days shy of. I told Frank I needed to reorder supplies, but it costs way too much here for what I need (nearly 4x the amount it does in the states) which would make it more cost efficient to send out my samples than to identify them myself. Needless to say, I am preparing myelf to be dropping a couple thousand of my own dollars on my project to get some lab work done. Good thing I took out some extra in my loans and have a Research Assistantship because I'm pretty sure that is where all the money is going to go. However, I am afraid I am now stuck in panic mode for the remainder of my project trying to ID as much as I can so I limit the cost of lab work. VAMOS A VER!

Some flowers by the hatchery that are in season right now.

The last group of volunteers was awesome! It was a bunch of middle-aged women who have done so many cool things. It was also nice because they got along like old friends. One of the ladies is a nurse in Spokane. It was cool to have the Washington connection. Another lady decided she had enough of "the man" and quit her job to go on cross-country bike trips. I found that incredible, and wish if I were unhappy with my job I had the courage to quit and do what I want for a while. However, I don't have a real world job, or money, so it's not currently a problem (and working with turtles is awesome!)

Another one of the vols was a teacher doing a "live from the field" project through Earthwatch, which is something I think my mother would love to do. She was always skyping classrooms and writing daily in her blog. (Sorry, I don't have that time or patience). It was nice to have a real fun group of volunteers, because I often find myself stressed with splitting time between the beach, lab, and the volunteers. This time it didn't feel like work! We were also blessed with many turtles while they were here. There was one night where we had 5 turtles. One of the ladies had not seen one, so we woke her up in the middle of the night to come to a leatherback where there were no tourists and she showed up on the beach with her work shirt and night gown to count eggs. Pretty dedicated if you ask me. Although that is to be expeced from someone who worked at the EPA for 30 some years. Besides turtles, we were also visited by monkeys at the house while they were here, and now that I have my new camera, I got some great pics.

If you look closely, you can see the baby.

This is my favorite.

We also had a film crew, that is shooting a 12min documentary for The Leatherback Trust, come through. They seemed to make it more play time than work time, and left us with a bunch of cleanup to do before the new vols got here. We did, however get them to a turtle, and they were able to see hatchlings that hatched in our hatchery in the middle of the day. Apparently someone put the cover on the nest wrong and hatchlings had escaped and were running all over the hatchery when the volunteer came across them. We put them in buckets and released them at sunset so the film crew could get some good shots (and me with my camera). Unfortunately, 50,000 tourists came and ran all over (more like 25, but it was a lot). Some guy that lives on the beach didn't want to be told he can not have his dog off the leash running through the hatchlings. He yelled at us saying it was his home, he's lived here for 12 years, and he can't be told what to do...IT'S A NATIONAL PARK!!!

One of the cool things about being in a national park is you get to see cool life which is being conserved for the future, such as endangered leatherback hatchlings. He didn't care, instead he threw his dog's frisbee right in front of the hatchlings and turned to give us a smug look. I wanted to punch him in the face, I think he should be kicked out of the national park for that. Also it is important to note that dogs, by law, are not allowed, but with being so understaffed, it is rarely enforced. All we asked was that they walked above where the hatchlings were and put their dog on a leash for 2 seconds! You can see it in one of the photos below.

Someone had a little trouble orienting to the beach and preferred my foot.