We saw the turtles!

Tonight we did it! We drove through vast mud puddles, drove across two rivers (up to our headlights in brown water!), met our Costa Rican friend Carlos in Ostional, got some ice cream at the tienda, drove on to Carlos's house right next to the new soccer field in Ostional, parked, walked down to the beach past the turtle egg warehouse, and on the beach saw, in the course of our walk, many turtles! 

We couldnt take pictures (the flash would bother the turtles), but using a flashlight with red cellophane over it we spent a while watching a turtle dig a deep hole (close to a foot?) for her eggs. She was amazingly deft with her flippers, or legs, or whatever they are. Then we watched as she lay many eggs. We held one, and it wasn't hard like a chicken egg or a ping pong ball, which it kind of resembled (only covered in sand), but was instead a bit soft--it felt like you could smush it if you squeezed it at all. Then we walked on and saw about a dozen more, some of them coming out of the sea, some of them returning to it, some of them sitting in one place and, like the first one we watched, using their rear appendages to dig an egg hole. 

They were pretty big animals--at least a hundred pounds--and according to Carlos some of them get up to two meters long and 400 kilos. They have very intelligent looking eyes. We were impressed.

If you go in the morning, at dawn, you can get photos of them. Maybe another month. Simone wants to go back in fifteen days, when the babies from last months laying will be hatching and walking down to the sea for the first time...

On the way back we recrossed the two rivers (our neighbors, who went last night, couldn't make it back because the rivers had risen and had to go an hour and half out of their way, so we were pretty happy after we crossed the second one (and passed the place where, on the way out, we had seen some guys who'd gotten stuck in a deep, deep puddle and were waiting for a tractor). When we got back to Nosara and turned onto the (relatively) good road about a mile from our house, Nadia said, Wow, now these roads seem great. Then about 200 yards later we saw a huge puddle ahead, covering the whole road. As we slowed, we saw that the puddle was actually a river that had risen, and that the bridge the road went over, a bridge we had crossed a few hours before, was actually underwater. So we turned around and drove a slightly longer way home--thankful that the long way home was only ten minutes, instead of an hour and a half.

So now we're home. I'm getting up at six to go play soccer...