There is a very unique occurrence here in Costa Rica. Locally it is known as an “arribada” which means “arrival.” In this case it is used when turtles come on the beach by the thousands to lay their eggs. These particular turtles are called Olive Ridley sea turtles. There are only a couple of places in the world where this occurs.
Each month throughout the year, turtles gather off shore and then come on the beach around the third quarter of the moon. During the rainy season (July-December) is when the arribadas are larger and October is usually the largest. During this time, the turtles come out by the hundreds of thousands. As soon as I found out about this, I started calling to find when it would occur. We had a couple of false starts, but when I got confirmation that an arribada had started, we dropped everything loaded up the kids and headed for Ostional. I thought it would take us around 4 hours to get there. We left around 11:00 AM, stopped for lunch along the way, and did not arrive until around 5:00 PM. Wow, that is a long trip for one day!
Anyway, we stayed at a small bed and breakfast that sits on a hill overlooking the ocean. The sunset (as can be seen above) was spectacular that evening. Our host was very gracious (and from Utah no less), and told us about the activities there are in the area. He even offered to teach us how to surf. After getting settled in our rooms we headed out to the beach. It was now quite dark. We got directions from our host, and there were signs to mark the way. However, we still made a wrong turn, but did not have much difficulty finding the beach. Along the way, you have to cross three rivers. This was Matthew’s favorite part of the whole trip. The rivers aren’t very deep, there were small cars crossing them. For the photo below I went through the deeper part, just to make a more impressive photo.
You have to pay an entrance fee and a guide takes you around in the park. You are not allowed to take flash pictures, so I wasn’t able to get many pictures that evening. However, it was quite amazing! There are sea turtles every where. Our guide found a turtle that was laying her eggs and opened up the hole so we could watch.
The next morning we went back to take some pictures in the daylight hours. There weren’t nearly as many turtles in the morning. In fact there were more people there collecting the eggs than there were turtles. Since a large percentage of the early eggs laid are destroyed by other turtles coming up to lay their eggs, a certain percentage of the these eggs are allowed to be collected. Local Ticos are allowed to harvest and sell the eggs. The money earned is then used to improve the community. Here are some more photos from the next morning…
And we had a few visitors to our bed and breakfast!
wow!