Arribada

I love to surf but this Costa Rica trip was actually all about turtles. My friends have a home in the small town of Ostional which is world famous for the arribada. The arribada is like a turtle egg laying convention. It only happens at certain times of the year and the days that it happens on are hard to predict but when it's on, there are literally thousands of turtles crawling up the beach that they hatched from to lay their own batch of eggs.

The universe smiled on our visit, we just happened to arrive a day before the arribada was going to happen. How did we find out that it was going to be happening that night? We had an informant. The little boy lived on the beach and when we came down to look at the beautiful, black sand beach he told me the arribada was going to happen the next night. 

We went out to the beach in the evening and watched this turtle go through the whole process of laying her eggs.

The process begins with the turtle digging a hole that's between 40 - 50 cm deep. We watched her lay 113 eggs, bury them and then camouflage the area. When she's all done,  she heads back out to the ocean.  

The local people of Ostional are allowed to harvest 1% of the turtle eggs.  They are also the caretakers of the eggs that are not harvested and the protectors of the baby turtles that crawl out onto the sand. The people of Ostional  ensure that as many of the baby turtles make it to the water as possible. 

The eggs are ping pong shaped.  

They are also very pliable, not hard-shelled like chicken eggs.  So the locals are able to carry them by the hundreds in big sacks. The bags are tossed around and almost none of the eggs are broken.