Hola Amigos

Have just returned to Bocas del Toro from a week on Playa Larga, a significant nesting ground for Leatherback and Hawksbill Sea Turtles of the Carribean Sea. We were in a remote and secluded spot without running water, electricity or refridgeration. Our contact with the outside world consisted of climbing up a tree to make a mobile phone call from our "Call Center". The boat took myself and Lisa from the ANAM headquarters in Bocas del Toro to the Isla Bastimentos. We were deposited on a stretch of beach after our speed boat driver skillfully navigated a treacherous reef to glide the craft through a narrow channel and onto the beach. We jumped out and carried our backpacks, food and bed clothing along 300 meters of the beach, scrambling under long-hanging branches jutting out from the wild jungle. Alvero, the scientist from Spain, showed us around what would be our home for the next 7 days. It consisted of a rudimentary fishing shack house and a palm frond kitchen, 2 cubicles (one a toilet the other a drain in the floor - we poured water over us to wash) and the tracks leading down to the Cayman infested lake behind the lodgings, the compost heap and the "call center" tree. Arceliou is the assistant from the local village (15 Km away throught the jungle by foot - no roads here!) has been volunteering here for 5 months a year for the last 5 years. He speaks Spanish and was very patient with our basic language skills. He built the kitchen facilities by traditional methods using palm fronds and tree trunks - a heck of a skill!

That night we went on our first mission up the beach in search of tortugas (turtles) and it was a hard slog through the unrelenting soft sand and 3 kms each way! The beach is rough and certainly not safe for swimming, it was treacherous rips and undertows, dumping waves onto the beach and pulling them away with tremendous speed. So, despite the heat, the best you could do was cool your feet. We were sandwiched between the dense green and impenatrable jungle full of snakes, spiders, scorpions and cayman and the crashing carribean surf, swirling and frothing wildly.

It was exhausting but rewarding to walk the beach each night in search of nesting turtles. I met my first on the third night and got to name her "Spiral", in reference to her tracks in the sand as she hauled herself out of her ocean to lay her eggs. Considering her immense size and weight, she acted with pure love, bravery and determination to pain-stakingly inch along the beach, dig a hole and deposit her precious cargo then disappear into the blackness from whence she came. Her eggs with hatch in roughly 50days and of those, only 1 in 1000 will reach mating maturity - that´s nearly 50 years until a turtle can reproduce. With threats like hunting, long-ling fishing hooks, pollution, habitat destruction and boat propellers in addition to natural predation, it is a wonder these maginificent species are still among us. Please, I urge all of those reading this to contribute whatever they can to turtle conservation either in Panama or in Australia as we are blessed with the same species (different populations) on our shores. Check out: www.turtleprotection.org/panama/the-project.html

Lisa, my fellow volunteer, were the only people aside from the scientist and the assistant, to participate in the project this week. We both laughed at how similar our circumstances were to a "Survivor" episode and feel our lives have been thoroughly enriched by the experiences of this last week. I will update this blog further as I received copies of the pictures taken on Lisa´s camera. My camera decided to pack it in the day before I came to the project.

That is about all I can manage for now, it is time for my "snap" as Alvero would put it. By the way, I checked into my hostel and went for a shower (still no hot water :-( boo hoo) and found a nice little stow away had followed me - a centipede from the "bathrooms" at the project! Ha ha, now to try to wash the funk out of my clothing after a week of washing in suspicious cayman water. Tee hee hee, what adventures there are to be had in Panama.

More to come, watch this space....

Love and light always

Emma feather