Trent the Peace Corps Surfer’s cell phone was shot for a while, so in order to discuss the coconut bread we are having made for the kids’ activities of the Festival de la Tortuga I had to actually go hunt him down in the next village over.
I got out onto the hard sand where the tide had just left it, took off my flip-flops, and sprinted off down the beach, headed slightly to the right of where the sun had set a couple of hours before. The moon wasn’t up yet; the stars were bright, but I couldn’t see much. I held my single-LED keychain light in my hand as I ran, ready to turn it on if I came across anything other than flat sand and sea.
I’m actually rather afraid of the dark… functionally afraid, so I’ll still do things like run a kilometer down the beach at night. It’s mostly just the zombies and sea monsters that scare me.
That morning when I had gone out to count turtle tracks there was what I perceived to be a massive ray washed up dead on the beach right in front of the village. Like eight feet across. Actually more like three feet. But it was big! And dead. But still scary. I wouldn’t get close to it, on principle.
Later, someone in the village skinned it.
Anyway, that morning and the morning before I hadn’t counted any nesting turtle tracks. Apparently they found mala onda in the full moon.
So there I was, running down the beach in the dark, paranoid about sea zombies, fingers gripping my LED light, when I saw that I was coming up on a shadow. Some newly arrived driftwood, I thought. Prepared to jump it. I pressed on my light to judge the distance but instead of a log I lit up a smooth-shelled creature with bright white skin holding together its head and fins as it crawled awkwardly up the beach. Just for that split second, it scared the crap out of me.
Then I switched into turtle mode, put my light out, and crouched. Mama turtle had stopped crawling. I was sure she was going to turn around and head right back into the sea, as frightened by me as I was by her. But she started swishing her fins again, leaving that unicycle-with-a-tractor-tire line of tracks and when she had gone another several feet I drew a circle in the sand behind her to claim her as mine.
It took her a while to find a good spot up at the top of the beach to put her eggs. I sat on a log a few feet away to wait. She kicked sand around while I twisted my neck back and forth keeping an eye out for zombie parlameros.
She finished digging her nest and settled in to lay. The last time I’d found a turtle on the beach at night I’d been with a local friend, who had dug a hole down behind the turtle, a tunnel into the bottom of the nest, to begin taking out the eggs as they were layed. I wasn’t sure if that’s how I was supposed to do it, but I was eager to get out of the dark and the tunnel seemed like a faster way to go. As it turns out, that’s how it’s done generally anyway, by parlameros and turtle volunteers alike.
While I sat and waited, some 4-wheelers blazed by, stopped at my turtle’s tracks, saw the circle, and continued on. I felt like a real parlamera. Hell yes!!
I wish I weren’t afraid of the dark. I can force myself to relax for a few moments and just feel the starlight and the sea air and the sand, but then the paranoia seeps back into my mind. I can’t help it. Perhaps I just need more practice.
What I experienced despite the fear, however, was awesome. The turtle, Olive Ridley, parlama, large and heavy, breathing deep every time she dropped two eggs at a time into the nest. I kept my arm down in the tunnel behind the nest and could both hear her breathing and feel the soft ping-pong ball eggs thud against the floor of the nest. I got covered in sand. I got oozed on.
I have learned that Guatemala sand and mama turtle ooze are glorious things, even when felt through a fear of the dark.
The moon finally came up orange and big, and the parlama mama put her last couple of eggs, sighed, and started filling in the nest again.
I felt bad that the nest was empty. Her ping-pong eggs were all already up on top of the sand next to me in a pile. While she laid she had sort of been turning around and she could have seen the pile of her eggs, not where she had put them. I felt bad about that until I realized she probably had no idea what a turtle egg looked like.
Even if she could smell that something was not quite going as planned, she finished filling the hole while I collected the eggs into the front of my T-shirt. I would like to thank Threadless.com. My fear of the night did not fade with the dark even as the moon rose, and I regret not staying to watch her return to the ocean. I was too scared. I put on my sandals, said thank you, held the eggs close to me and continued 200 meters down the beach to the trail that leads off to where Trent lives, with the promise of electric lights.
We put the eggs into a worn clear plastic bag, about seven and a half dozen. High fives. Snickers bars. We walked back to El Rosario, where I went and grabbed the hatchery key from my house and Trent checked out the beach towards La Barra to see if other turtles were coming up.
We buried the eggs in two nests of 39 and 50 eggs, the obscure numbers due to a minor miscount and poor math skills between the two of us.
Upon finishing up reburying a nest:
“Did you say the magic word?”
“There’s a magic word?”
“Yes: Nascan tortuguitas!”
“…That’s two words.”
The last four nests in the hatchery were found by us; Trent found one right in front of his house a few nights before. That’s pretty cool. And we released some babies that had just hatched while we were there burying the nest I’d found.
At some point I remarked that I had not woken up that morning thinking I was on a collision course with a sea turtle.
