Playa Buenavista

i feel like im staying at a resort except we get to play with turtles on top of it all. theres about 18 volunteers here most of whom are german for some reason, and we're all in on big open-air house thats approximately 3 steps from the sand of the beach. and on the beach which is a few km long we are basically the only sign of civilization. so we have this huge tropical beach all to ourselves. we work a few hours doing maitenance stuff during the morning before its too hot, then have the rest of the day off to relax, read, tan, swim, surf, etc. and then we do all of the turtle stuff at night. there are two patrols throughout the night that walk the beach to see if any mom turtles come to nest, and there are constant shifts of volunteers monitoring the hatchery in case any nests there hatch. the idea is that when a mom lays her eggs, we find the nest, collect all the eggs, redig a new nest the same size in the hatchery, and put the eggs in. this is so that animals and people can't get to them. then when they hatch we take them in a bucket to where their original nest was and release them to flap their way back in the great big ocean. and they are frickin cute. the only downside of it all is that it messes with your sleep big time, but so far its been a lot of fun. theres no electricity so after dark its all candles, and we have to carry in any drinking water and food, though luckily i haven't had to do that yet. Its nice though im getting nice and tan and all of you guys are freezing your butts of in the snow of seattle. go figure that i'd be here the one time it snows feet at a time though! getting to experience that is one of my dreams! i can't really complain at the moment though. i get to watch the tropical beach sunsets every night for over 2 weeks after all. alllllright i gotta go cuz we have to walk back before high tide or theres a river that gets too deep to cross. so enjoy the cold! talk in a week, gus.