Simply the fact that it’s 10 pm and I’m sitting at home in front of my laptop instead of working in the hatchery or walking on the beach shows that the sea turtle nesting season has come to an end – again.
Now it’s time to show you what we saw, felt, did and experienced over the past few months – in pictures who hopefully speak a thousand words each.
As I covered the months January and February in my previous blog post already, I’ll start with…
march
Let’s start our post with some doggo cuteness overload. We received a new family member: Gulasch! He was so shy, calm and sweet at the beginning. A little baby to melt your heart. Who would have thought he would turn into the freaking crazy daredevil he is today…
Another great thing that happened in March was our volcano trip – halfway up the San Cristobal volcano (Nicaraguas highest volcano btw) and then up the Casitas volcano where we were rewarded with spectacular views. This was our well-deserved mini adventure holiday before I had my surgery in April.
May and june
Since there are now awesome pics from April (I stayed most of the time in bed in recovery), we continue with May and June. That’s when the first rainfalls set in after a long 6-months wait and we spent our time chilling, working on the property, getting crafty and creative, making plans for the future and having fun with our fur babies.
july
July is always a very exciting month for me. The first nesting turtles arrive and that’s when we get everything ready, repaired and cleaned for our biology, geography and environmental sciences interns.
It became clear pretty quickly that this year would become challenging, at least weather-wise. Because the El Niño phenomenon was about to hit hard, provoking higher temperatures and lesser rainfalls than usual.
Indeed, in July we received our first sea turtle nests which we bought from the local egg collectors. But before the interns would arrive, we took the chance to have another mini vacation in León, where we visited the world-famous volcanoboarding destination, the Cerro Negro. But as we are already in our 30s and feel well too old for that kind of stuff, we skipped the volcanoboarding tour and just did the whole loop by foot 😀
AUGUST
Wow! We had such a great team in August (and September). First to arrive was Nele from Germany, who endured the first two weeks solo, before a group of four more biology students arrived: Celine, Muriel, Alexa and Paul.
Those five were delightful and the moments we spent with them made me feel really proud and confident about MEMANTA, reminding us once again why we’re doing this and why we’re not doing it all by ourselves – it’s so joyful to meet these people from afar who donate their time, energy and money to make the world a nicer and happier place.
Also the hatchery started to fill up with more and more nests from the Olive Ridley turtles – some of which we were lucky enough to encounter ourselves instead of just buying the nests from the local egg collectors.
SEPTEMBER
Our interns were so full of positive vibes that they not only worked every day for 5 to 6 hours for our sea turtle project, but also did their own small projects throughout the day. Everyone was in charge of something:
- Nele built some cool stuff from tires AND elaborated a nesting map of our beach
- Paul took care of the temperatures in the hatchery
- Muriel built a new garden and filled it with veggie seedlings
- Celine got crafty with all kinds of things and decorated the living space
- Alexa made some cool new videos for our You Tube channel so please check them out!
Of course there were also a few rewards for their hard work, including tasty food, unforgettable “fiestas” and explorative trips to the surroundings.
Also, my favourite “chica” Annika came back for a three-week visit! She dived right back into the work as if she had never been gone and it was so great to have her here, so I dedicate her an own section with two of my favourite pics 🙂
OCTOBER
In October we saw two new faces: First of all Fabian from Germany who was already at the end of this studying career and then a little bit later Nuría from Switzerland who had just finished school and was at the very beginning of everything.
October was a really nice month – thanks to el Niño we had pretty good weather and more and more nests started hatching. I always say that October is one of the best months to come to MEMANTA because you get both mama turtles and baby turtles (who need around 7 weeks to develop inside their eggs). People are hesitant, however, to travel during that time because they don’t want to face biting insects, damp clothes and heavy downpours.
Well, you definitely need to be an adventurer at heart if you come to MEMANTA!
In October, we also did a pretty funny, experimental tubing trip in the estuary and we visited the yearly sea turtle festival nearby.
november
November was a crazy month for us. Milena came to visit once again and we welcomed the last intern of the season, Elena, from Switzerland.
Together we did some fun boat trips and visited our friends from our partner project “Meeresschildkrötenschutzverein Nicaragua” who have been the main nest sponsors over these last few years. As every year, we visited each others’ project sites and enjoyed listening to Simone’s stories while taking care of their babyturtles.
Meanwhile, the rainy season came to an end after it hit hard one last time. The Olive Ridley turtles became fewer and fewer and our night patrols became increasingly boring, until we stopped doing them and simply kept guarding the hatchery at night.
However, Venecia’s lovely Green turtles showed up for a promising season and delivered more nests than usual, so our hatchery filled up once again pretty quickly. By the end of November, we had relocated 140 nests altogether.
december
December started with lively and positive vibes but we all knew the end was near and soon it would start getting lonely again – with Elena’s departure there was only me left at MEMANTA, but fortunately there were much calmer days ahead so the workload was manageable.
We still received Green Turtle nests from time to time and kept releasing nests from both species.
We also said hello to a new member of the MEMANTA family: Rio the horse! He was a kind donation from Milena and now he’s getting tamed and prepared for the upcoming turtle season when I can hopefully ride him to look for nests on the beach.
The switch from rainy + turtle + volunteer season to dry + no-turtle + lonely season is always a bit challenging but you get used to it. You start to have a regular sleep schedule again, wake up early in the morning to water the plants, take care of stuff that has been on the waiting list for months, spend a considerable amount of your time on the internet and gain back all the weight you lost.
The dense jungle slowly turns into a savannah, the midday heat gets unbearable, the beach turns into a picture-perfect tourism destination and suddenly there’s so much time on your hands that you go crazy over it. But will I be laying in the hammock and staring at the sky? No way!
Because that’s for sure – there will be a next season, and the preparations for it have already begun.
MEMANTA 