What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!

Boat to the conservation centre

Widecast is run as a conservation and research centre and is 45mins away from the nearest road. To get there we sped up a river in a small speedboat, looking out for animals along the way. Our first sighting made Sarah pretty happy - howler monkeys- but we also saw some river turtles and a huge lizard high up in a tree.  Once there we settled into our dorm and decided to make the most of cold showers and no electricity for a week. We also had to get used to the numerous residents around camp including some mangey (yet friendly) dogs, huge crabs and beady-eyed toads.

Bonnie, Katie and Ffion 

These huge crabs were everywhere...even in the rafters! 

Turtle training

Every night we were out on patrols which involved us walking up to 15km, on sand and in the pitch black looking for the turtles coming out of the water to nest. If you were on the later patrol which headed out round 12.30am you would end up walking till sunrise the next morning making it particularly exhausting, and really hard to sleep in the heat! Even though the turtles are usually around 150cm long they are quite hard to spot in the dark, usually their huge tyre like tracks are spotted then the turtle. Katie was lucky enough to see 4 leatherback turtles on her first night alone. Two of the turtles she was able to work, which means we take her eggs for the hatchery as well as taking the measurements of the female turtle. Being so close to such a huge creature is hard to explain but you become very protective of her and the eggs, knowing its your job to make sure they are kept safe from poachers.

Rescued Hawksbill turtle

Cleaning the beach

So while our nights were spent wandering along the beach on patrol (not spotting a single turtle since the first night) our days were filled with tasks around the camp, or relaxing in hammocks. We carried out a beach clean, washed out a new pool for the resident hawksbill turtle and even had some hatchery training. The hatchery at Pacuare is pretty impressive, and is where any eggs collected on patrol are relocated. It is manned almost 24 hours a day to prevent crabs getting into the nests and to ensure the hatchlings are released into the ocean as soon as they dig their way up to the surface. Our training involved crab removal skills (flinging them over the fence with a stick), and digging nests for the relocated eggs. This was a fun process and we were all  covered in sand by the time we had dug a 70cm deep hole with a boot-shaped base.

Collecting water for a turtle pool- it was a lot heavier than we thought! 

Cleaning the turtle pool 

Hatchery training 

Just keep digging!

The staff and volunteers unfortunately come into contact with poachers on a nightly basis and they can be quite intimidating. They have an agreement designed to keep everyone safe whereby the first to reach a turtle claims the eggs. The poachers earn a living from selling the eggs which means they are fairly desperate to claim them, and we even witnessed one run into the sea to claim a turtle before she had reached the beach. Obviously he scared her away, and this is very frustrating for the conservationists.

Despite the poachers the centre is a success story, and we were lucky enough to witness the biggest reward the staff members get- we watched a nest hatch! 20 tiny leatherback hatchlings dug their way up to the surface before struggling into the sea, and we were all there egging them on (in our pj's at 6am). Turns out there is something even better than snow to wake up for!

The sadness at leaving the turtle camp soon vanished when we spent the day white water rafting down the Pacuare river. Driving for a couple hours up into the hills, we stopped to meet our guides next to a calm and beautiful river. Luckily for us it didn't stay calm for very long as we raced and tumbled through the rapids. Our boat was either stronger or more coordinated than our friends bat and so while racing past them we named it The Black Pearl!

On more than one occasion Katie almost fell out of the boat, but after a seconds hesitation both times, Sarah decided to yank her back in. It still provided plenty of amusement, along with near misses for the whole boat as we flooded and bounced through grade four rapids. Between the rapids, we took the opportunity to appreciate the stunning river valley we were floating through, with an impressive gorge and even toucans flying about.

At one point we hopped out of the Black Pearl, just onto the bank and ate a yummy picnic lunch in the middle of nowhere.

Katie was almost a goner!

All ready to go!

Next on our thrill seeking adventure was zip-lining. We arrived and were strapped into a harness before we were sent flying through the canopy of the Costa Rican jungle. The course consists of 11 zip lines so that you fly from tree to tree, and we even did a Tarzan swing out over a valley from the top of a slope. The guys in charge of attaching us to each line were really nice but were also cruel enough to play a couple of tricks on us. After a line called crazy horses (where they pull on a wire so that you bounce along like you're ridding a horse), one of them slackened the receiving rope so that we dropped all of a sudden. Lets just say we weren't impressed. But after our hearts had stopped pounding it was time to climb into our full body harness...and they started pounding all over again. The last zip line is called Superman...so you can probably guess what happened next. We were attached to the highest lie in the whole place and sent flying ABOVE the canopy. It is very hard to describe in words and there are obviouslt no pictures, but just imagine zooming over the jungle for a kilometre. Even after skydiving, this was the closest exprience we've ever had to flying! After slightly panicking at the height, we realised how peaceful and truly amazing it was, so just enjoyed the ride before posing for a superman photo at the end.  

Quite happy after flying a kilometre through the air