every night we would ride on the back of a truck to the beach and patrol a zone for several hours looking for turtles nesting. the sky was so pretty with so many stars that you can't see here. you could see the southern cross and the north star in the same sky! we saw a bunch of shooting stars too. the turtles were huge and amazing too! they look so robotic like something from jurassic park just cause they're so big. Each turtle takes like 1-2 hours to nest and you really get a sense of how much dedication these animals put into their eggs. The most memorable moment for me is when we encountered a turtle with a short left rear flipper (they dig their nests with their rear flippers). the right one did ok, but there came a point when the left one couldn't reach the sand so i had to get on the sand and help the turtle dig a nest. It was really rewarding for me :) We also tagged the turtles with internal PIT tags and external flipper tags. It was really cool cause now there are a couple of endangered turtles out there that can be traced back to me :)
The people there are all really friendly and funny too. They all have such interesting lives and stories that they would share with us as we went out to work with the turtles. I really like living in countries like trinidad. it reminded me of rural taiwan. small town, intimate, tropic areas. While there aren't many luxuries, it's so easy to get in-tune with nature. You never forget where you came from, and adventure is always at your door step.
here's a link to all my pics:
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| Trinidad Pictures |
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