JUNGLE GUTS

DURING MY LAST WEEK IN ECUADOR

I didn’t even get wet. Equilibrio Azul moved the boat for Sea turtle capture and census into the house since it had become too expensive to pay for it to be guarded from the pirates in the harbor. While some members of Equilbrio Azul shopped around for a smaller boat, we spent the week working on an ecological education project called Eco-Club with some of the kids in the town of Puerto Lopez.

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Isla De La Plata pt. 3

 Both myself and Jen, the other volunteer with me on the island, had neglected to bring some form of alarm clock with us and so we had to take shifts staying up the whole night and patrolling for sea turtles. Our only way to tell the time was the clock on Jen´s iPod. But Jose Luis, a permanent member of Equilibrio Azul, was supposed to be coming with my alarm clock. So one night  I used the iPod to stay awake by listening to that new Rihanna. I spent several hours doing a pretty bad dutty wine all over the dark courtyard of the house. Jose Luis did not come the next day, nor did he come the day after that. Thanks to me the iPod was now  dangerously low and soon we would have no way of telling the time for patrols.

By the 6th night we still had not seen a sea turtle nesting but while out on the 11 o’clock patrol we came across what looked like quad marks in the sand. Turtle tracks are painfully obvious. My eyes followed the marks up the beach.

“But there’s no…. Hellooo nurse.” 

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Isla De La Plata Pt. 2

On our second day on the island we went snorkeling to capture Green sea turtles. When this didn´t work we hung some bits of fish over the side of the boat to lure them toward us and then we´d pull them on board to take their measurements and tag them if they didn´t already have tags. I´m probably stating the obvious here, but it´s so much nicer to see an animal in their natural environment while learning about it than just too see it in a captivity, I would never have noticed that Green sea turtles have serrated beaks and they just look more handsome and greener in the turquoise water. When we would bring them up on the boat they would flap around a lot with their flippers, stop for a moment to let out a heavy sigh, and then continue smacking their appendages against the deck.

     All of our other work on the Island was done at night and I neglected to bring a book with me. For this reason, I had much time to ponder. In my ponderings I realized many things. While sitting on ocean cliffs throned by boobies, I realized that Staples (the store) was called Staples not only because it sold staples but because it also sold the staples of an office. I realized that I wanted to interview porn stars about their views on climate change. I composed endless amounts of ¨best of¨ lists. What were the five best video games of all time?  What, would I imagine, were the spirit animals of all the boys I´ve slept with? I also composed a ¨if you could only have one mix tape of music for the rest of your life and no other music¨ mix tape featuring My Bloody Valentine, Dolly Parton, and Khia among many others. I also spent a lot of time thinking  about super heroes and the Black Widow in particular. The tropical dry brush landscape of the island reminded me of  Final Fantasy XI  and this gave me an epic feeling. But we still hadn´t seen any Sea turtles.

Isla De La Plata Pt. 1

Last Thursday I set out for Isla De La Plata, a small  island of tropical dry brush  about 40 km off the coast of Puerto Lopez, Ecuador. The plan was for myself and two other volunteers (as well as a handful of more permament researchers)  to spend each night combing the beaches for nesting Green sea turtle moms. The idea was that we would take the sea turtles´ measurements for census and tag them on their back flippers if they hadn´t already been tagged. Also, if the sea turtle was laying eggs too close to or below the tide line, we would move the eggs to a small hatchery that Equilibrio Azul (the organization I´m volunteering for) had started on the beach.

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