Sunday, October 31, 2010

Halloween and Torgugas!











This is the best Halloween I've ever had. Yet it was in Costa Rica with 90 degree weather, lots of sunshine, and carved watermelons instead of pumpkins.
Friday was the school Halloween party, and Ashley and I won Most Creative Costume. Suds and Shower. It was a blast. We made a fool of ourselves but it worked.

Saturday and Sunday I experienced the most amazing thing in my entire life. Mike, Kelsey, Tony and I took another adventure to Playa Ostional. It is a few hours away and we had to forge a few rivers to get there. Sea turtles are the most amazing creatures ever! They literally should be the national symbol for women. They are incredible examples of the strength females have. This type of turtle spends only a dozen of its years or so laying eggs, and she will lay about once a month during laying season. First she has to get her big booty up the shore using her 4 floppy flippers. (And most of them go WAY up onto the beach!) Then, do what looks like a breast stroke with her front flippers and digs a hole. She then proceeds to use her back flippers to dig down and scoop out a smaller but deeper hole to lay the eggs into. She then uses her back flippers and covers up the eggs, and while covering she rocks her body to 'pack' in the sand. After that, she rotates and uses flippers to smooth out the top sand and heads back to the ocean. I sat by a few during the process, and you can just hear them wheezing and taking deep breathes of exhaustion. Some take 5 min to get back into the water, while some take closer to 20 min.

Sitting under the millions of stars and next to this amazing creature made me really appreciate the things Mother Nature has given us. It's a shame only 1 out of 500 eggs will make it to adulthood. This creatures are soon extinct if we don't work to protect them. It doesn't help that there are hungry dogs and vultures picking off the exposed eggs.

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