El dia con las tortugas - el pueblo de Mazunte

A few weeks ago, we jumped on a bus in PE and went to Mazunte, a little community on the coast, about an hour away that has two claims to fame, as far as we can tell. One, it is a sort of eco-hippy-groovy-yoga-free love destination for the dred-locked masses. Two, it is also the site of a pretty cool sea turtle museum and restoration facility.

Historically, an unimaginable number of sea turtles (see photo below) once used the Pacific beaches of what is now Mexico for laying eggs in the sand. There were some 6-8 species that used this area. They spent most of their life ranging widely in the ocean. Then, like salmon, they return to the same beaches where they hatched to lay a big clutch of eggs at night, bury them, and return to the ocean.

Leatherbacks are the biggest variety, and they can grow as large as 800 pounds! See NGS photo below - leatherbacks are the largest, widest-ranging and deepest diving turtles in the world; they have been on the planet for 100 million years (!!) though are now at risk of exinction...

The people of this area took advantage of this incredible fecundity: collecting eggs and turtles for food. As human population has risen recently, the turtle population has dropped (sound familiar?), and now many populations are in serious trouble. In the last several decades, there has been a growing awareness of the need for change, for protection, for restoration, and for encouraging people to stop eating eggs and turtles.

We spent the day at the museum and then at the beach. Across the coast, these beaches are still used by turtles for laying eggs. They drag themselves out of the water at night, and leave before dawn.

A rather strange public education campaign - is this guy "turtle man" or is he into bondage?

L and J inside the museum.

Liesl with a turtle egg that washed up on the beach. We weren't quite sure what to do with it? was is still viable? Should we bury it? Some people that we talked to indicated that these floating eggs were still viable, but I am not so sure...

This is photo from the middle of last century on a nearby beach. Incredible.

At a local beach, a bunch of kids were jumping off a dock into the water...so we had to do it too.

Liesl finally takes the leap.

Here are some righteous hippies at Mazunte...OK, I confess, I found these photos on the web...