Boldly Go: 01/01/2014 New Year's in Ostional

It's been a while since we've written. We admit it. Before we jumped into this adventure we read many blogs by other volunteers from earlier times to try to get a feel for what we were diving into. Often we noticed they only posted once a month or even less than that and we said we would be posting ALL THE TIME. And then we came and discovered we'd have to pay in internet cafes for every hour and photos took a long time to upload and then we stopped writing. But, now we're going to start writing again, so if you're keeping up with us through this blog, sorry...keep reading...we now have WIFI :)

During the time we haven't been writing and for our New Year's 2013 trip, we visited another volunteer in his turtle haven, Ostional. This was my first experience being up close and personal to turtles, and I will never forget it. The beaches are part of the Ostional Wildlife Refuge in the Nicoya peninsula on the Pacific coast. There are two tour guide groups staffed with locals who know their stuff! We highly suggest taking a tour while you're there as you'll get to understand how the turtle eggs are being harvested and protected. Ostional is known for olive-ridley and kemp's sea turtles. Every month around the full moon there are "arribadas" or turtle arrivals where turtles swim from all over the world back to Ostional to lay eggs on the beach. You can watch this whole process at night (using a red flashlight of course) or early in the morning. We decided to opt for the morning arrivals because it's easier to take pictures.