TLF - La Tortuga Liberation Front

Late yesterday afternoon, we jumped in the back of a collectivo (a pickup truck with a canvas roof over the back) and rode 10 minutes west of town, jumped out at the road to La Playa Delfin (Dolphin Beach) and walked 2km to the Tortuga Camp on the beach where some dedicated souls  - families, individuals, have worked for six month stays every year to care for the sea turtles  - protecting the adults when they haul themselves up on the beach to lay their eggs, and then to care for the eggs once they are laid so that they are not poached or damaged. (people here have eaten turtles and their eggs for many generations; bad habits are hard to break..."they" that the eggs are an aphrodisiac (more hollow marketing, to be sure).

Actually, today, most people are NOT hunting and eating turtles/eggs, but a few remain, and the tortuga guardians are doing everything they can to protect the sea turtles and rebuild their populations - many of which are endanger of extinction.

These turtles below are golfinos, one of the more secure populations. This year, on this stretch of beach, just 18 "laud tortugas" landed and laid eggs - these are the gi-normous-up-to-800-pound-leatherbacks. Amy had previously been to this site in hopes of volunteering and released the first hatch of leatherbacks this season.

Anyways, we hiked out to the beach, chatted for a 1/2 hour with the guardian, who is also a dad and husband (with his family there) and then released these tiny, fragile creatures that had hatched the same day into the roaring surf and immense ocean. Like salmon, survival to adulthood and reproduction is quite low. It was a quiet, beautiful, moving, humble 'liberacion de tortugas'.

We were joined by a few tourism companies that brought clients out to witness this rite of nature as well. Everyone was quite friendly and moved by the evening.

Scrolling to the bottom, there is a short movie of our family's return trip to the highway - the guardian volunteered his 13-year old son to drive us all, at the same time, on their 4 wheel drive ATV.

Here is the camp  - very simple, low budget. The people here are really committed to this work. Always beautiful thing to see. (The photo of the family-caretakers didn't come out well...)

These are the organizations with whom this shoe-string operation is partnering.

Jeremiah and Liesl are greeting all the tortugas, hatched today, before we send them off to the ocean.

There were probably two hundred hatchlings that we released. We are coming to the end of the their season, so their numbers are dropping. Some nights, there are apparently many hundreds. The caretaker described a beach an hour to the east where, at their peak, thousands of turtles arrive nightly. Lots of traffic coming and going...

They keep the nests together - these are all the brothers and sisters from a single nest.

Liesl and tortuga (Liesl is the big one with the green t-shirt)

After the turtles lay their eggs, the guardians, who are roaming the beach all night, carefully dig up the eggs and re-bury them at camp. Gestation in the ground ranges from 45-60 days. They hatch together, emerge from the sand, and head toward the ocean. Here, at camp, they are collected and released together in the evening, to decreased predation and increase survival.

There were about 20 visitors this evening - families, couples, etc. The guy in the foreground was a really nice Puerto Rican who was visiting Mexico.

The Bogaards liberating these tiny creatures.

Adios (this word is a contraction of two words - a (to) and dios (god). This surely seems the appropriate farewell - into roaring surf and an immense ocean.

this is a shot of our ride to back to the highway - L and J on the front rack. A and J on the back rack.

Here is a short movie, sideways, of our ride to the highway. The 13-y-o boy was more than happy to drive us.