Hello! I had decided to stay in Costa Rica until March to catch the Atlantic Leatherback nesting season, and had selected the project run by ASTOP in Parismina. Aside from the imposing, monolithic eco-machine known as Tortuguero National Park, the majority of the turtle conservation projects on the Caribbean were now expensive to volunteer at. ASTOP, by contrast, was a community-based project (upon which my program in Drake Bay had been extensively modelled) a...

Hello! After a drunken first night at the Flying Scorpion, Nicole and I got on the Indiana Jones dust bus back to the 'mainland' and on to San José. Nicole was flying home to the States, but I had to go to a few meetings at the Foundation and then on to Drake Bay for a few days to catch up with the community and do some work. This was the first time I had seen Drake Bay in the dry season and it was stunning. The roads were dry and dusty and there was much l...

Hello! Before leaving Costa Rica to do some travelling further North, I had decided to briefly volunteer at a couple of other turtle projects in order to get some experience of how the process was managed elsewhere. Also, I really wanted to see a Leatherback turtle nesting, and we were just entering Leatherback nesting season in the Pacific. I chose to volunteer for a couple of weeks at PRETOMA's most remote project of all, based at a tiny rustic camp situat...

Hello! I was really wondering whether to write anything at all about these six months of my life, which seems absurd since they have been so significant; but I have just written so much about this turtle program in the form of reports, articles, grant applications, facebook updates, professional blogs, emails, training presentations, posters and just about every other medium of communication imaginable, that I am unable to face writing more about it. As such...