The Costa Rica Tales
“GRAAAAUUGGHH!” I screamed upward as another wave of salt water drank away my voice in a sea of inaudible bubbles. Clutching my toes to the Costa Rican sand and my palm to a I burst through the surface once more like a hunch back whale cursing the sky. It was January 5th 2006 Nancite beach, I was one of thirteen students of University of Delaware studying abroad this winter in Costa Rica for wildlife conservation. Earlier that day we had hiked 10 miles to this tiny excluded beach side research station and to our astonishment several nests of the endangered olive riddley sea turtles were hatching early after arribada and scuddling toward the ocean. However unlike the millennia prior when thousands upon thousands of sea turtles hatched at once and overwhelmed their predators on the scramble out to sea, the dozens of frigate birds and black vultures that swarmed this beach could seriously damage the already dwindling population. So quickly, our class armed ourselves with sticks and stones to scare away the increasingly brazen birds and protect the olive infants on their way back to the ocean.
Our job was to protect them up to the water’s edge, but then every time the sea turtles poked their heads up for air, the keen eyed scavengers would swoop down and pick the moral out of the water. I grabbed some rocks, sticks, and nunchucts fashioned out of rope and two wooden clubs and crashed out to sea. So there I was lung deep in the ocean flailing wildly, screaming every time a bird swooped to spook it to higher elevation. If the bird was out of reach I through rocks across its bow (never hitting any them of course). When I ran out of rocks I through the sticks and when I ran out of sticks I through the nunchucts. Finally, I took off my shirt and spun it over my head like a lasso spraying the birds with salt water, and still they swarmed and picked of the turtles out of reach. The rest of the class was in hysterics on shore at the sight of my white gringo body glistening in the setting sun and flapping in the evening wind. One called out “you can’t save them all, Ben!” “No, your right. I can’t save them all. But I can save a few.” And as the next surge ripped my tee shirt from my grasp to soak its whitecap on its gallop out to sea, I decided what direction to point my now shirtless ship of life. There is an army of vultures in the sky. Politicians, lobbyist, loggers, farmers and citizens just worrying about the next green morsel to pop its head out of the surf never worrying there may Monday be no morsels left.
Costa Rica Rocked. for more tales ask the man himself: Ben Alexandro