Costa Rica

The beach at Playa Grande, which lies within the Marino Las Baulas National Park, provided an awesome opportunity for our family to hone their surfing, boogie-boarding and castle-building skills (or lack of skills!) during the day. But shortly after sundown each night the beach was closed and the true beauty of the national park designation revealed itself. Las Baulas National Park is the prime nesting site on the Pacific coast, and one of only a few remaining nesting sites in the world, for the massive Leatherback turtles. Slightly less endangered and somewhat smaller Olive Ridleys and Blacks (confusingly sometimes called Greens) also make their nests in this park.

When planning our visit to Playa Grande we thought we would catch the end of the Leatherback nesting season which is supposed to go until the end of March, but we were a bit dismayed to find out on our arrival that fewer Leatherbacks had come this year, and those that had nested had moved on a month or so earlier than usual. We were pretty disappointed, but were too lamely focused on our own bad luck to consider the poor turtles!

We regrouped and figured that if we were smart with our time and were very lucky we might get a chance to see one of the other types of turtles nesting and possibly see the hatching of some baby turtles. We all frantically crossed our fingers and signed up for a night-time turtle tour. These tours are run by guides who formerly harvested the turtle eggs and sold them to restaurants. Their nest hunting skills are now put to better use and the newfound tourism revenue has encouraged the locals to support turtle conservation efforts. A 30 minute bumpy jeep ride delivered us to another beach where there were reported nestings happening that night by Black turtles. We were not allowed lights of any kind (hence the lack of photos) and we had to stay very quiet while waiting and watching.

As nightfall arrived a mother turtle painstakingly hauled her gigantic body up the beach until she found a suitable spot to begin building her nest, and we left her in peace to do so. We would check on her after she was done digging the nest and was ready to lay her eggs. Once our eyes adjusted to the moonlit darkness we noticed a few sets of tracks coming from the water's edge. (These resemble the tracks from a very large tractor tire) so we knew there were a few other mothers laying at that moment. We waited on the sand for about an hour and despite their excitement the kids did a great job in staying silent and waiting to launch their hundred questions until we were safely away from the quiet of the beach and headed home. Instead we silently laid on our backs and gazed up at an unbelievable night sky so full of stars that it filled us with awe. During this time several other turtles had stealthily crept up from the beach to nest or had headed back to the ocean after laying their eggs. Two cute little coatis, which are similar to raccoons, ran along the beach.

Once a suitable spot was found, it took a mother turtle about an hour to use her back flippers to dig a hole close to one metre deep to lay about 100 eggs. The guides told us that there are usually 30 billiard-ball-sized fertilized eggs and the remaining eggs are ping-pong-sized, un-fertilized eggs. On the night of our tour things seemed to suddenly go haywire. The silence was broken by many Walkie-talkies going off and guides running around with their red, night-vision flashlights. Apparently those cute looking coatis we had spotted earlier had raided one of the newly laid nests!

The entire nesting process, though fascinating, looked entirely EXHAUSTING. But wait, there's more... These mothers nest every 15 DAYS throughout the 3-4 month-long nesting season and THEN swim all the way to the Galapogos Islands for a well deserved break. And IF they are able to avoid danger while out at sea (many die each year in fishing nets or from oil pollution!) they will return to the same beach (if there hasn't been too much beach development!) in a year or two to do it all again! Until they are 80. Years. Old. Good grief.... the nesting was amazing to witness but I silently but very sincerely thanked Mother Nature that I'm not a female sea turtle!

Several weeks after the eggs are laid the baby turtles are ready to hatch under the cover of darkness. The beach at Playa Grande reopens each morning at 5am so we tried our best to adjust our sleep schedule so that we were waking up very early each morning in an attempt to witness the final moments of a hatching. On most mornings we had the entire beach to ourselves except for a few other turtle loving tourists and a researcher from the marine biology station who would scan the beach for evidence of nestings or hatchings. Here's Mirren posing one morning beside some tracks left by a mother turtle the night before.

One researcher we met was very informative. She was trailed by several American high school students who were visiting and shadowing her research for a week, (our kids: "OMG! I'm totally doing that when I'm their age!"). We learned from her that the temperature of the sand strongly influences the gender of the baby turtles. If it is higher than 29.5 degrees Celsius the turtles that hatch will more likely be female. Male turtles are more likely to hatch when the sand temperature is lower than 29.5 degrees. It was definitely on the higher side at Playa Grande so any newly hatched turtles would very likely be female.

One morning we noticed several Olive Ridley baby turtles (about the size of the previously mentioned billiard ball) trying to crawl out of a hole in the sand and make their way to the ocean. They were a little late to the party... The tide was quickly receding so that their journey to the edge of the ocean was now much longer than that faced by their siblings who hatched several hours earlier. To our kids' distress, two baby turtles were already dead in the nest by the time we arrived, either from exhaustion or overheating. The biologist gave us the job of trying to scare away the circling birds while the live babies tried to crawl to the ocean. The kids got to name one of the Olive Ridley baby turtles and chose 'Oliver' in honour of their cousin! Here is a short video of two turtles reaching the ocean and facing the surf.

The following morning as we walked along the beach at dawn we noticed several sets of miniature tracks heading to the ocean from another hole in the sand. There was one baby Leatherback turtle still making her way to the ocean! The kids immediately stood guard and chased the birds away. Norm captured this turtle's attempt at the epic journey from nest to sea. His sincere apologies go out to our family's film students, Teagan and Tyrell, as his camera work is more than a bit dodgy (especially at the end when he completely turns the iPad).

Our biologist friend came back and this time took the baby Leatherback back to the research station with plans to release her that night under the cover of darkness, to avoid the daytime birds and improve this Leatherback's chance of survival. During hatching and crawling to the ocean the texture and composition of the sand and the beach location gets imprinted into a turtle's brain and she will only return to the same exact location to nest in 25 years time when she reaches sexual maturity. The Leatherback turtles are too endangered for the researchers to sit back and watch as nature unfolds. Only one in one hundred Leatherback eggs produce a turtle that will reach adulthood! The biologist checked the nest and the tag told us that the nest was laid exactly eight weeks earlier. She let the kids name the baby Leatherback and this time they chose Negra Bella, Black Beauty, which was a very suitable name. She was positively stunning and we felt so grateful to have had a very minor hand in her start in the world.

Would she be one of the lucky ones to survive? Again, we all frantically crossed our fingers. Except this time it was not for our own chance to witness something as amazing as a sea turtle nesting or hatching, instead we were all desperately hoping that these majestic creatures who have existed for millions of years will find a way to survive in an ever changing world.

In Playa Grande we went to the beach twice every day. We would go for a fun swim in the morning, and to refreshingly cool off again and watch the sunset after a boiling hot afternoon. We were living the life; in Costa Rica that is what they call Pura Vida.

On the second day, Daddy, Ailsa and I took a surfing lesson with JJ from Frijoles Locos Surf Shop. We were told that it is easy to look like a professional with your surfboard on the sand, but a lot harder to look good in the water. So, here we are looking pretty good!

JJ first showed us how to 'pop up' on the surf board while on the beach. In the water you have to paddle and then push up with your hands while you scoot your feet to the middle of the board. Then you have to bend your knees and keep your feet across the board to balance. The instructor helped us catch the right waves and told us when to try to get up. It takes most people a few days to get up on the board, but we did well and all got up on the first day. I got up on my first try! We decided to rent a surfboard for the week.

I told Fraser what to do, so he tried surfing too!

When we were not surfing we swam and played on the beach. We used a boogie board to catch waves. The waves were normally 0.5 - 1.0m high, but some were almost 2.0m! When we did not have the boogie board we tried to jump over the waves or swim with them. We had to be careful and watch for riptides, but we learned what to do in case we got caught in one and pulled out to sea.

The tide would rise 2m twice a day. Playa Grande was so flat that the beach was very wide at low tide - lots of room to play! We made a fort out of driftwood as a meeting place and to give us shade. We saw a blonde lady pull it apart one morning. She looked like a teen-ager from far away but when I saw her up close she was old and had wrinkles like my Mom. We called her the 'Party-Pooper' and made up a dance about it.

Over two weeks on the beach we collected so many shells. Ailsa, Fraser and me each kept our favourite 25 shells to bring home. Mommy collected a pile that had little holes in them to take home to make a garland for the Christmas tree. Daddy does not like carrying the bags with the shells because he said they are too heavy... another Party-Pooper.

During our first week at the beach we met two girls from Ontario, Keiry and Kaia. ("Hi Guys!") We played with them and made sand castles each day until it was time to watch the beautiful sunset over the Pacific Ocean and say 'good night'. We really loved it here and want to come back in a few years with family and friends - when we are a bit older and can surf a bit easier. Do you want to come too? Pura Vida!

We left Il Castillo by river boat at 5 am. It took about three hours and one more boat but we finally arrived at the Costa Rican border and got in line and waited. And waited. Then we took two more buses to get to La Fortuna and found a hostel (a PURPLE hostel) to spend the night. There was a grocery store nearby which for the first time since we entered Central America stocked a bunch of brands that we get at home in Canada. They had nice olives, non-uht-milk, good gluten-free pasta and Welch's grape juice. How exciting! We ran up and down the aisles like crazy people and then we had a feast!

The next morning we ate cookies for breakfast (unheard of!) and hoped on a jeep-boat-jeep to get us across Lake Arenal and on to Monteverde. We could see the volcano on the side of the lake.

There are loads of adventure activities to do here. But maybe most exciting for us was meeting new friends. Daisy and Millie from Devonshire were so much fun to play crazy games with and also to sit and watch the sloth move very slowly on the tree behind our hotel. They had been travelling for one month longer than we had and we quickly became friends! ??

We went zip lining with the Original Canopy Tour and we got to do a Tarzan swing and climb inside a hollowed-out, ancient fig tree. It was so much fun. We could very clearly hear a hard to spot bird, called a quetzal, but we could never find where it was.

The next day we went to the Reptile and Amphibian Centre and got to see lots of snakes, frogs, turtles and spiders up close. Some of them were very poisonous. See if you can spot the frog in the next photo. (If you cannot see it, I will leave a hint just below the photo - but no peeking!).
(It is hiding just under one of the leaves, but you HAVE to look very closely)

That night we went on a night tour to the Children's Eternal Rainforest.

We saw lots of different animals including: a tarantula, a porcupine, a sloth, a coati, a side-striped-palm-pit-viper, a bunch of different ants and a headlight click bug - no kidding, that is its real name. Our guide told us the amazing story behind this part of the rainforest. This reserve was started when children in Sweden in the 1980s sold chocolates and sweets to raise money to buy land in Costa Rica to preserve for the plants and animals. When they started it cost $100 an acre. He told us it can now cost close to $1,000,000 to buy an acre near Monteverde. But they managed to buy over 55,000 acres and it is the largest privately owned reserve in Costa Rica. I thought it was really amazing that children could do something so important by just raising money a bit at a time. Check it out: http://www.acmcr.org

We are now heading to Playa Grande on the Pacific coast for some sun and time on the beach. ☀️