Crocodile and Caiman Hunting

    Crocodile and caiman hunting: wet, muddy, and soaked. No one would willingly want to be any one of those options, in the dark, wearing regular clothes, with rubber boots that should've been water proof, except there were holes in them. (Pura Vida!)

    But why would we do all of that just to NOT hunt for crocodiles and caiman. In fact, when it was our turn to go crocodile and caiman hunting, we found 2 juvenile caiman: one close to adulthood, and one that was quite small; which I even got to hold! All of this might sound exciting, or scary, but there weren't many times where we actually experienced catching caimans and getting chased by caimans. Despite the title, both the group I was in and the other group, didn't see a single crocodile and only saw caimans.

    Recognizing whether or not the giant lizard was a crocodile or a caiman was pretty easy since all we had to do was shine some white light at their eyes: crocodiles would have yellow eyes; caimans would have red eyes. Catching them however very much depended on the size of what you were catching. Us volunteers didn't actually do any of the catching, but we were tasked with measuring young crocodiles and caimans if they hadn't already grown 2 ridges on their tail. If they did though, all we had to do was tag it if it hadn't already been tagged.

    Now moving on to what mostly happened when I went croc/caiman hunting. Doing a quick summery, we went to a river first where we found and CAUGHT our only 2 caimans. The first one being already tagged, and the second one being a lot smaller so we had to do some measurements. I was even able to hold it, which the skin felt like a weird blend of smooth plastic, and bumpy surface.

    Instantly when going into the warm water of the river, some people had a sock soaking issue. Despite everyone wearing "water proof" rubber boots. Some people had holes in their boots that weren't patched up at all. I was VERY "lucky", and got the 1 pair of boots that EACH had a hole in them. Despite having the obviously inferior boots, it didn't really matter in the end as everyone would have to go through near waist high water.

    Once we had experience trekking through the cleaner, non-muddy water of the river, we went to the beach, which was at low tide, but not low enough for us not to get soaked socks. After a little bit of walking and wading through on the beach and through the water, we got to the truly muddy areas to go searching for crocs and caimans. Through out this whole adventure, there was this one moment where we had to cross a particularly muddy and deep section to get back to solid dirt. The thing was, there was a fully grown 2 meter caiman at least 5 meters from where we needed to cross. While everyone was crossing, the caiman went into the water and everyone went into a sort of hushed panic.

    Everyone was going a little bit faster through the water, while also avoiding pockets of mud that would suck you to the ground. Fortunately no one was hurt nor traumatized.

Well, that was my experience with croc and caiman hunting: miserable for my socks, feet, and pants; very cool and dopamine inducing for my brain. It was lots of fun finding a lot of caimans, lots of suck, finding mud everywhere.

Signing off,

Huy

    

The Turtles

Image: some of the reserva's baby sea turtles (different year)

Here at the reserva, the staff collect sea turtle eggs from the beach and keep them in a hatchery. The hatchery is essentially a greenhouse made of mesh material with sand on the bottom, where the turtle eggs can be buried. Every two hours of every day, groups of volunteers are sent to check on the sand above the turtle eggs to track any changes. They are supposed to hatch this week, so hopefully we will get to see some baby turtles before we leave. I have been sent a few times for the hatchery checks, but as of right now, there have not been any changes in the sand.

There are seven different species of sea turtle in the world, and Costa Rica has four of them. The hatchery at the reserva is currently holding eggs of the Olive Ridley sea turtle, which is the smallest of the four species in Costa Rica. It is also the most common species we find here on this beach. 

Why does the reserva take the eggs and put it in a hatchery? Why not just let the eggs hatch on their own in the wild? They do this for a few reasons. 

Firstly, there are many poachers who dig up sea turtle nests to use the eggs for their own consumption or to sell. We were shown some statistics, and it showed that there were 41 poached nests out of some 200 total nests on our beach in 2023. That year, the reserva was able to save 44 nests.

This picture was also taken at the reserva

Another reason that the reserva takes the eggs is to prevent the eggs being eaten from predators. This includes Jaguars, armadillos, crabs, ants, and humans. The hatchery is locked and surrounded by fences in order to keep out predators and poachers.

The final reason, and the most interesting in my opinion, is to breed more males. If the temperature becomes too cold, the baby sea turtles will be mostly males. If it gets too hot, there will be more females. As we all know, the temperature of the earth has been rising slowly, which means that there are more female sea turtles coming out. To keep the balance between male and female turtles, the hatchery is placed in a shaded area to prevent the sand from getting too hot. 

I looked this up on Google, and it said that if the eggs are incubated below 28C, all turtles hatching will be male, and if incubated above 31C, all turtles will be female. Very interesting.

This is another picture taken by the reserva. If we spot a sea turtle laying eggs at the beach, we will take measurements and check if the sea turtle is tagged. A fun fact is that a sea turtle will always return to the coastline it hatched on. Because of this, many tagged turtles return to this beach every year.

Written by Stephen J

Monkeys in Reserva Playa Tortuga

One of the animals they have at the reserve are monkeys. The job focused on the monkeys is walking through the jungle finding monkeys and once you find one you have to follow it for five minutes tracking what it does every 15 seconds. 

While I was on the monkey walk, we didn’t find any monkeys but we have seen them while we were doing various other tasks. One day during free time, while some others from our group where coming back from another job, we saw them in trees that were visible from our rooms. Another day during breakfast, they were right outside of the main entrance, and the last time we saw them, we where collecting the videos from the cameras in the forest and there were lots of them playing around in the trees.

When we were on our monkey walk, some of the things we were looking for were if they had babies with them, if the babies were on there backs, where they were (how high on the tree they are), and what they were doing. Some examples of things they could be doing are eating, sleeping, climbing, etc. and we had to update it every 15 seconds. 

From what I’ve seen capuchin monkeys are very playful jumping off of one tree and grabbing a branch from a near by tree while yelling as loud as they can. Other times they will be fighting like siblings or even running away from all the other loud monkeys to get a break. 

The two kinds of monkeys we were looking for were capuchin and howler monkeys. Both kinds have a life span of 15-20 years. Their main diets are also mostly the same with flowers, nuts, fruits, and leaves but capuchin monkeys also occasionally eat small birds and other things like that. I have only seen capuchin monkeys so far but hope to see howler monkeys soon.

-Hunter 

 

Bats at Reserva Playa Tortuga

Picture this: you're a fruit bat in Costa Rica, hanging from the holes in the center of leaves from a invasive banana tree. At night, you fly though the air, searching for insects and delicioso fruit.

Birdwatching at Reserva Playa Tortuga

Time flies by so quickly- today is already our day 3 volunteering at the reserve! In the morning, when it is still not too hot outside, we went for a birdwatching walk. Josue, a worker here took us on the walk and taught us a lot about the birds. Starting from 7 am, we went on a trail surrounded by plants and animals. 

We each got binoculars to observe closely at the birds, and Josue brought a camera to take pictures of birds. 

As we were walking, we could hear a tweet-tweet sound of Chestnut-Backed Antbird. They are small and black, and they usually stay in couples. Josue told us that sometimes if we copy their tweet-tweet sound, the male Antbird will come out to check the sound. 

We walked past a river where some rocks and logs are, to find some more birds. We were able to see some bigger birds: Tricolored Herons, Little Blue Herons, Snowy Egrets, and Bare-throated Tiger-Herons. Tricolored Herons looked mostly grey except for their beaks and legs. Little Blue Herons looked a bit similar to Tricolored Herons, but their feathers will change to white in winter. Snowy Egrets on the other hand are white at all times. Bare-throated Tiger-Herons are interesting because when they are kids, their feathers are brown, but once they grow up, their feathers will turn grayish-blue. We also saw some Kingfishers, which were small green birds.

Although we couldn't take any pictures, we were very lucky to spot a toucan flying. 

Later, we walked down to the beach. I found some footprints on the sand which would likely to be from a Heron. We were also able to find a Masked Tityra on a tree nearby the beach. It was mostly white, but had some black parts, and some pink around its eyes. 

We didn't see any on the birdwatching walk, but I saw two Macaws earlier in the morning on a high tree. 

I was surprised by how Josue knows so well about birds. And in the conversation during the walk, he told us that he was a local, and had been watching the birds since he was a kid. So, whenever he heard a sound of a bird or see it from far away, he knew what species it was.

I really enjoyed today's birdwatching. It was an amazing experience for all of us in Costa Rica. I never really had a chance to look closely at birds before, so I am very glad that we had such a chance. 

Thank you, Josue, for sharing your knowledge and time with us!

By Rika

Butterflies in Reserve Playa Tortuga

Caligos

As one of the activities today, we went to the butterfly garden. We cleaned the cages of the larvae, changed the plants that they eat, counted the larvae to make sure they were safe, and learned about the butterflies, their eggs, and their babies.

Sara, a worker at RPT, told us about the three types of butterflies in their butterfly garden: Morpho, Caligo, and Siproeta.

Morphos are blue, and their eggs are big. Their pupae are green, and the caterpillars have yellow spots.

Caligos have patterns of an eye on each wing. Their pupae and larvae look like dry leaves. Their eggs are white and small.

Siproetas

Siproetas have orange and white wings. The larvae are black with orange spots. Their eggs are really small and look like watermelons. Their pupae are light green and also have orange spots.

We petted the larvae, and they were soft. But the babies were delicate, so we used a paintbrush to move them while cleaning the cages and changing the leaves. We also gave the butterflies some fruit because they haven't planted enough flowers for them yet.

Every afternoon, the volunteers pick up the eggs. The eggs are very small and hard to find. Some of them are behind the leaves or between the leaves.

I really enjoyed taking care of the butterflies and larvae.

~ Yumi ~

Siproetas eggs

Gift Sharing

When we were staying with the Borucan people they shared so many gifts of knowledge with us about their culture and life style. We had less opportunities to share our knowledge and culture with them so we gave them physical gifts. 

Each of us scouts chose one thing that either we enjoyed or thought represented us. Yumi made origami for them, Rika made bracelets, Devon brought Legit Buildable fidgets, Steven brought a craft for them to make, Huy brought Rubix cubes for them to learn to use, and I brought Anmore stickers. 

As a group, before we left home we asked what there village could use and they said school supplies. We started raising money and collecting school supplies just a couple weeks before leaving and got more supplies than we could have imagined! We left for Costa Rica with a 70 pound suitcase of school supplies and almost $1000 Canadian dollars to give them. We were all very happy with the exited faces we got when we handed over the gifts and supplies. 

They also gave us some handmade coin purses made by a scouts mom. They are made by weaving hand-spun cotton thread, often dyed with natural materials, into small, pouches. We were very happy to leave with memories and knowledge but the keepsake coin purses and masks we got to paint ourselves were so nice. After all we did with them from learning how to make tamales, to swimming in a waterfall, we hope they had as much fun as we did.

  -Hunter