Costa Rica Continued...

Day 3 started with a trip to Gandoca, to visit the WIDECAST Latin America leatherback sea turtle project. Gandoca is the southernmost town on the Caribbean coast, just a stones throw from the border with Panama.  The turtles here have been protected since the 80's and poaching of the eggs has dropped to almost none.  In the same time period, the project has brought in hundreds of volunteers per year while generating tens of thousands in income for the local community.  (Learn about volunteering here).

On our visit, we took a relaxing boat ride around the Gandoca lagoon, seeing three species of monkeys (howlers, capuchins, and spiders), as well as lots of birds.  After that, we visited the egg hatchery, where the nests are protected until the hatchlings hatch and are released to the ocean.  We had just missed several nests hatching the night before but did see one little straggler hatchling.  The kids in our group helped to smooth the sand to make the way for the hatchling a little bit easier.  For dinner, we held a big dinner for both our friends from the US and Gandoca, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of me and my wife meeting while working in Gandoca in 2000.  In the evening, we took a short walk onto the beach looking for nesting leatherbacks.  While we didn't see any, we did see a couple of green turtle hatchlings, the first of the season in Gandoca!

The next day, I peeled off from our group with photographer Neil Osborne and videographer Paul Miller to visit a unique wetland in northern Panama called San San Pond Sak, an indigenous name combined with a bit of English.  This important wetland is home to approximately 100 manatees (viewing platform pictured) and an impressive local organization called AAMVECONA (in Spanish) works to study and protect both them and leatherback turtles nesting on their beach.  In our short time there, we only caught a couple of glimpses of a manatee but came away educated on their threats and natural history and plan to bring groups there in the future.

Next update coming soon-

-Brad Nahill