Costa Rica Day 17: Everything seems pointless now

Last night's patrol was really disappointing. I was hyped in hope to see some turtles and walking on the other side of the beach where I haven't ventured. But Elmer only walked there once and back to the hatchery to rest for forever. I was just sitting at the hatchery feeding mozzies. That wasn't very pleasant wth was he doing mate. :( it's such a waste of my time I'm just sitting at the hatchery I might as well go home? There's already people on for hatchery shift. I'm only there to rest for about 20 mins, not for almost 2 hours. Zoe and Callie who patrolled the other side of the beach came in to the hatchery twice already lor. Anyway we all went back at 4am. Not a very productive patrol night. Idm not seeing a turtle if we did our jobs like walking down the beach. Maybe he's very experienced and can know the turtles' behaviour by reading the currents and weather. But still, I wouldn't mind just having a walk down the beach.. some exercise is better than sitting there for nothing and just feeding the mozzies. 

Had about 3 hours of sleep before waking up for breakfast and some morning activity at the station. Yami (station cook) was supposed to talk to us for some discussion. It was "learning opportunity with Yami" on the activity sheet. But it did not happen because she wasn't too comfortable speaking to us. We ended up pushing tomorrow's activity to today. It was on ecotourism.

We were asked to name the difference between a tourist and a traveler. Thinking back, I've been an ignorant tourist for the longest time. Most of the time when I traveled, I'll just go by what google tells me. Visiting tiger temple that infringes the wildlife, possibly drugging the tigers just for silly tourists like myself to take a selfie with them. Visiting the seaworld where they keep wildlives in their own world of bubble. I would want to visit attractions suited for tourists' sightseeing like the Big Ben, the great wall of China, forbidden city, or even tiger temple or the snake show thing in Thailand. It's also really hard to find a balance between authenticity and reliability. We are all familiar with big names like NZ Hackett Bungy jump right...? If we wanna support the local community, doing bungy jump in chiangmai with a local company isn't the best choice. It's super dodgy. They even put the NZ Hackett logo on their t-shirt. But when I went to NZ and did the bungy there, I found out that they did not have any subsidiaries in Thailand.

Tourists usually have higher expenditure as compared to travelers who stretch their dollar to the maximum by minimising on personal luxurious wants (good food/drinks/buffet/shopping).

Tourists see the local culture in the country whereas travelers experience.

Tourists look while travelers learn.

There's no harm in being tourist. I very much would prefer to be a tourist if I'm on a vacation just for relaxation. I don't wanna tire myself out by stepping out of my comfort zone experiencing and adapting to new things. That would definitely defeat the purpose of a relax vacation right..

When it comes to ecotourism, things get really tricky. Many times as much as we want to, we just don't have the outlet to get information of what not to do in the country to avoid jeopardizing the environment and causing negative impacts.

Even like here in Ostional, who the hell would know that only red lights are allowed on the beach? White lights would scare the turtles away and they won't wanna come onshore to lay their eggs. Most torches are white. The red ones are not as common and they cost a hell load more. Even with the most hardworking travaler, it's hard to get such information from the internet or travel books because these places are not so pops for tourism and hence not so efficient in communicating their messages across. Speaking of that, even volunteers can be really annoying (more on that later).

We also discussed the positive and negative effects of ecotourism. Those are the obvious like money, jobs, increase awareness blah blah while negatives can be ignorant tourists leaving carbon footprints or polluting the environment, or commercialisation (like phuket/Bali).

I've been more aware of wildlifes through this project and would look out to be a tourist who does not leave any/minimal negative impacts to the country I'm travelling to. It's definitely not easy because commercialised tourism industry can be very sneaky sometimes.

Anyway, lunch today was good! Digna made something new! It was tortilla made of maize corn flour and some vege thing made of broccoli.

Beans, rice, broccoli zucchini thing & corn tortilla

Really Yumz. The pina (pineapple) fresca can fight with the soursop fresca on my fave fresca list!!!!!! Why so yumz. Esp in this ridiculously hot weather (I swear this is 100x hotter than Thailand), having 2-3 glasses of ice fresco is something to die for!!!


Did laundry omg had to freaking handwash everything sianballz. After that went for hatchery shift and skipped beach clean-up thanks to Daniel. Hehehe. But anyway, we did some work when a group of them came to excavate the black turtle nest! I helped to shovel the sand for the guys to sift the sand clean and replace the old sand from the nest. It was tiring man. Hahaha.


Ok so this happened at the hatchery during excavation. There was this new group of volunteers who came in on Tuesday, mostly from Canada. Not sure who this girl is and where she's from but she came with the new group.


She was there at the hatchery to see an excavation process or the baby turtles. She sat in a square next to the black turtle nest. Ok still never mind right at least never disturb other nests. But wthbbqnnd!!!! She was leaning backwards on my poor turtle nest whose cannister was already out of shape!!!!!!!


Daniel was already giving the biatch face to her. And when she stood up and wanted to follow Callie out of the Hatchery to count the eggs, SHE FRIGGIN STEPPED INTO ANOTHER SQUARE OF BLACK TURTLE NEST!!!!!!! Daniel pointed middle finger at her. Now the cannister is like wavy rectangular shape rather than the normal round/abit oval shaped cannister. SO MUCH FOR COMING TO SAVE TURTLES EY?! SHE POSSIBLY JUST KILLED TWO NESTS OF BLACKS.


And she washed her feet before going out of the hatchery. Hmmm, isn't it common sense? We are keeping the hatchery free of outside sand and particles so have to put our legs in the bucket of water before going in. But going out.... You don't have to mate!!! Outside there are rotten eggs, bacteria, stones, woods, dried leaves, crabs, etc etc so you dont have to wash your legs!!!


Omg cannot!!!!! What was she wearing siol. Just bikini top with a ripped or super off shoulder crop and showing her round tummy!!!! I really kenot.


I understand that we are just volunteers who might be clueless of everything but st least try to observe around and ask if unsure? How can anyone go into a hatchery and see an excavation of a nest and after I told her be careful there's a nest behind her stop moving backwards and still had the freaking guts to ask me, "oh, where are the nests?"


ARE YOU BLIND OMG. I posted a photo of the hatchery before right... Isn't that quite obvious whejre the nests were...


I've silly mistakes like putting my pizzas in the garbage at the station. But that was because I didn't know all the food should be disposed in the kitchen. Nobody told me food is not allowed at the station. Wade said he mentioned it, but he always mention things casually and told the people to pass the message around. I suspected I wasn't around when he mentioned. This is a more acceptable mistake right? I might just attract some dogs into the station but not seize the chance of the eggs developing into baby turtles. I just can't.. if I'm not just a volunteer, I would already have shouted at her and ban her from the hatchery. Just go and mind your Laura (olive ridley) business! These are the two projects going on at the moment. And some politics (inevitable everywhere) are telling me that the two groups of people don't really agree with each other on the way we work around the projects. We are on the same beach after all.


Ice cold fresca please haiz it's just too hot. I can do hot coffee in Melbourne's summer but it's another different level here.



Sincerely can't wait for this project to end and embark on the adventure tour!

The blacks that didn't make it out of the sand with the group. Found them during excavation.

Slacking @ the hatchery and waiting for the sunset

Favourite moment of 3-6pm shift