Tortuguero

We headed Northeast out of San Jose into Braulio Carillo National Park, largely a tropical cloud forest and it lived up to its name. We traveled from 6:30 AM until 10:30 on the roads, the last 32 km on a gravel road for about 2 hours. We did have a restroom stop on way with a butterfly pavillion, where I actually had time to see a Morpho butterfly at rest, rather than flitting about. They are the most spectacular butterfly of the region.  Then we transferred to a boat and travelled another 2 1/2 hours to reach Tortuguero (Turtle Region) National Park.

 Morpho butterfly

Four different species of sea turtle nest in this area, but the most famous is the green sea turtle. From 1920-52 the green turtle was hunted here and the numbers dropped dramatically. In 1952, Dr. Carr set up a research station to study the turtles. In a few years, the Caribbean Conservation Corporation was formed to study and protect the turtles. They began to tag, weigh, and measure the turtles and the park was created to preserve their nesting habitat. The turtles come back to where they were born, some property of the sand they were born in leads them back (if they are born in different sand after being laid, they'll go back to that new beach). The temperature of the sand determines the sex of the turtle - cooler sand produces males. 75% of the turtles are female. Only 1-2 out of 10,000 eggs that hatch survive long enough to reproduce. 22% die just getting to the water after hatching from birds, crabs, or the hot sun. Mating takes 4-7 hours, so the female keeps a store of semen to fertilize her eggs during the 4-5 months that they lay eggs, June 15 till the end of October. In that time, an average female will lay 600-800 eggs.