It’s going to be hard to pack 1 week of volunteering on a turtle project in Costa Rica into a paragraph or two but here I go. There’s so much to a turtle project, much more than I realised - all of it fantastic! As well as being hands on with the turtles, I also painted a classroom at the local school, played football with the local kids and planted a couple of trees. Where I was based in Matapalo on the Pacific coast, the locals are pretty anti-turtle conservation and sadly poaching is a major problem. One of the main tasks there is to alter local opinion. By helping to improve the village amenities we are trying to build bridges and establish friendship and trust between locals and volunteers. All this with the view to bringing the local community on side and away from poaching.

So turtle work - A typical day could include learning how to dig and recreate nests, lugging sandbags about while building a sand bank, followed by a shift in the hatchery getting protective and watching for crabs that might dig down and destroy the eggs. All that followed by a couple of hours sleep and then a 10km midnight beach patrol! The beach patrols are hard, walking constantly in the heat which doesn’t relent after dark and a mosquitoes dream as no insect repellent allowed. So why do it? Well, it’s the only time the turtles come out of the water and if you want to see a turtle, measure, record, tag it and rescue it’s eggs before a poacher does, well you have to get up in the middle of the night!

I learnt a great deal about the turtles and surprised myself by how immersed I became in their plight to survive in my short time there. The turtle project is hard work but the camaraderie I experienced working with other volunteers and seeing our achievements is something I will always look back on with fond and proud memories.

• turtle
• conservation
• Pacific
• Coast
• experience
• volunteer
• i-to-i
• wildlife
• save