Turtle Wisdom -- A lesson from a Dinosaur

Costa Rica: a country without an army; biodiversity, unique to the global health, threatened with extinction; pure living is the national motto; holds a treaty of friendship with every nation; where butterfly farming replaced coffee and banana farming to increase exports of native crops; yet still, only 5% of the forests remain intact. Of 4 million people, 3 million live in San Jose, the capital. San Jose, in the center of the country, and in the center of the city is the National Theater. The National Theater was the first place in the country to have electric lights; San Jose was the third city, after Paris and New York, to have electric lights. This is not your typical image of Central America. It is a place both foreign and yet not so different than home. More of a place for a journey into myself and my own world than a vacation, I realize, often wondering why I bother to travel at all.

I entered and left Costa Rica a bit exhausted, and bit anxious. Getting to Florida to see my mother was a constant preoccupation from weeks before I left, trying to condense my vacation into a few days. If there is one thing you can never have too much of in Costa Rica, it is extra time. Costa Ricans are fairly laid back, and outside of San Jose the country is laced with narrow windy roads leading to ecological wonders of rainforests, cloud forests past the formerly forested areas converted for export crops of bananas or coffee. (Later, I would learn the coveted coffee of Costa Rica – as many of you know, my top choice for coffee – comes at the expense of the precious forests of Costa Rica.) Thus, reaching your destination often takes several hours on a bus in humidity, heat, and often rain. All trips start and end in San Jose. Consequently, there is no quick trip in Costa Rica (if you want to avoid the tourist packages) and perhaps is a way to keep people coming back as there is always something you didn't get to see.

We exit the airport through TV crews waiting for the arriving football team. Behind them I spot the Interbus sign with my name on it. The friendliness and relaxed attitude of the Interbus service employees is a sharp contrast to the SuperShuttle driver in LA who passed us twice on the corner when picking us up at 4:30am and grumpily insisted paying by credit card would take thirty minutes. The Costa Rican welcome continues at Hotel Aranjuez, a place that would become my home-base for the next week. We are shown through lovely verandas to our humble but clean and comfortable room. Free coffee and internet service awaits us as the lush garden drips with fresh rain. I am a bit sad that we will be leaving early the next morning to start our week's adventures.

But not before enjoying the feast of a breakfast on the patio. Just as presented on the website, the morning greets us with platters of homemade baked goods, juicy tropical fruits, pinto de gallo, coffee, fresh juices, and various other scrumptious treats. We eat quickly then catch our cab to the bus station for a bus to Cariari. This station is cleaner and safer than the ones I am used to in the Coca-cola district. Painted a bright yellow, it is already bustling at 8 a.m. We get our tickets, rest, purchase a pair of nail clippers I forgot to pack, then get to the bus about 10 minutes before leaving, obviously the tourists who don't know any better as the bus is full and the only 'seats' are on the back steps. It is only a two hour ride and standing, I get a better view standing and my achy back is more comfortable as I am able to move around and stretch. The bus passes the outskirts of San Jose, the Denny's and American Hotel enclaves, then climbs into misty mountains before descending again into hotter and more humid lowlands. We finally end up in Cariari, an obvious transit town where tourists only pass through to get somewhere else. In the midday heat we have to transfer ourselves and bags five blocks to the local bus station. After sipping some coca-cola out of cool sweating glass bottles, a sensation that reminds me of similar hot days the first summer I visited Hungary when I was five, we cross back to the station just before the afternoon downpour begins. The bus windows fog as the heat fills the bus. The rain slows enough as we depart to allow people to open the windows. After a short while, the bus turns onto a narrow, bumpy dirt road. Sitting in the back affords another great view of the mostly banana fields along with way, but, with each bump, my head is tossed against the window frame, to be avoided only by bracing my hand as a cushion on the frame or by leaning forward. An hour later, we reach the now muddy path to the boat. I am lucky to get a seat in front. Until about five minutes into the ride when the rain begins again, my face like the windshield of a moving car in the rain. On and off, the rain follows us down the hour and a half ride through the Tortuguero rain forest depositing us into the even muddier Tortuguero Village, an island on the Carribean Coast.

With ominous clouds above and gusty winds, we navigate our way to our hotel. Walking paths replace what would be streets in any other town. In fact, the only vehicles we see on the island are ATVs. Our hotel is located only a few hundred feet from the opposite coast of the island. This could be an ideal location if not for the hurricane looking sky blowing foam from the caps of the waves onto the black sand beach. Since we are not Costa Ricans, but tourists, we have our schedule and head off to book our tour for the turtles that evening. Now with time to kills, we enjoy a lovely fish lunch, shower and rest.

In the stormy dark of night, we head follow Daryl, our guide, out onto the beach of the Tortuguero National Park to hopefully find a turtle that has come ashore to lay her eggs. Though used to night hikes in Griffith Park, there is no city light pollution here and, this night, no light from stars and moon thanks to the thick cloud coverage. Walking behind our guide, I follow tiny phosphorescent spots released by the sand with each of his steps. Though windy, the humidity keeps the night air fairly warm. We do not have to walk far before finding a turtle. The next 30 minutes, though, are mostly just waiting on the beach as Daryl tells us all he knows about the turtles and their mating and reproductive habits. Meanwhile, the turtle is off digging her hole where she will lay the eggs. We cannot watch or she might leave. I guess once the hole is done and she is laying the eggs, even throngs of humans gawking will not cause her to scurry back into the ocean. I marvel at the oddness of this habit of this strange animal, the human, and wonder how we would react to turtles coming to 'observe' us giving birth. Then, our turn comes to go and see the eggs dropping into the nest, like liquid golf balls. More fascinating is watching the turtle use her hind flippers to bury the eggs. This is as maternal as she will become. At some point, a rain cloud passes by, leaving us drenched. We stay, loyal to the turtle, loyal to our investment in this spectacle. Besides, any of us would be lost to navigate the dark beach without our guide. Particularly because a power outage has left the village as black as the rest of the island. Here we are with our turtle, a ritual practiced for millions or billions of years. A living dinosaur, as Daryl glossed on about the mysteries of these creatures. I came all this way to see this, but wonder, really, how it changes me and my view of the world. That night, the wind keeps me awake allowing me to dwell on my feeling that I should be in Florida with my mother, not gawking at a mother turtle who leaves her young to fend for themselves on the beach. In the next bed is my travel partner who seems to be as far away as my home in Los Angeles and my mother in Florida. Perhaps, this is preparation for the impending loneliness I fear, a loneliness I thought I had conquered, this upcoming year.

"I would be surprised if she lasted a year," the doctor said that one day when I finally spoke to her on the phone. The truth I needed to hear. How could I make all wrongs right in one year?

Turtles will lay four to five thousand eggs in their lifetime and only about two will survive to be reproducing adult turtles. Their survival is up to them alone and somewhat luck and fate. And then, they always come back to this beach. They always come home, even if just for a few nights a year. That is natural for them. I wonder about how many turtles survive into non-reproducing adults and what their function is in the turtle world.

Our bonus for the evening was watching the CCC (a conservation group dedicated to protecting the turtles) came to tag and measure our turtle.

The next morning we are up early again for a tour of the national park through the canals. On this tour we are told one type of bird mates for life. I forget which it is. For up to thirty years, they could be together. But, the tour guide adds, they only are together for a few months a year, then go their own way the rest. Thus, again, in nature, aloneness seems to be a natural state and need, even in lifelong partnerships. Balance and acceptance of both seem to be the key.

We finish off the tour, grab breakfast, pack up our belongings and then prepare for our half day trip back to San Jose and cozy Hotel Aranjuez, where will be staying in the 'apartments' across the street.