Little paradise
By Jaimy de Vries
We went to a remote place at the beach close to Poneloya. It was an adventure to get there, but a lot of fun! It’s located on the beach, it has palm trees, hammocks and its own restaurant with a cocktail bar. Besides how nice that all sound, it gets even better…there is lots of turtle activity there too. And I just love turtles. We got surprised we were the only tourist there. It’s a great place and we were wondering why it is so quiet? We couldn’t find the answer. It was amazing and we had seen so many turtles. It was our little paradise! We are thinking about coming back someday.
Interesting transportation
We went to Turtle surf lodge, a lodge on a very remote beach. I read about this place on a blog and it sounded interesting and the reviews were outstanding. We went there ourselves what was quite an adventurous ride. First we took a chicken bus what is cheap public transportation used among locals. A chicken bus is an old school bus that’s usually pimped up with graffiti and lights. We were the first ones in the bus, and that’s quite a con, because the bus only leaves when it’s full. So eventually we waited 45 minutes till the bus was completely full. It was not possible to fit any other person in the bus. It was funny to see many sellers coming into the bus to sell food and drinks. This turned out to be a normal thing in central America. It was a nice cultural experience. After a 30 min drive we reached a small town called Poneloya. From there we asked for a boat transportation to cross the river. This was easily fixed for just 1 dollar. When we arrived there was a horse carriage ready to bring us to the hotel. It was a fun little ride through the jungle. So cool!
Boats to cross the river
The horse carriage was waiting for us
Our private paradise
When we arrived it was so quiet. I asked if there are other tourists here and it turned out we were the only ones. The only people here were the workers, on an average day there were four people working. I don’t understand how the hotel earns their money. But hey, we don’t mind! They have their own restaurant here and the food was great! We had chicken burgers, Alfredo pasta, chicken fingers with salad and fries and they had good fresh lemonades and cocktails. It wasn’t even expansive, the prices were very reasonable.
We started with lunch and then took a stroll around the area. It’s amazing here, like a small paradise. We had a beautiful view over the sea and a private beach with beach beds and hammocks. There were also lot of fun games to do, like beach volleyball, jenga, table tennis and chord balancing. There was one cat and two dogs owned by the hotel that walk around. They were so cute! They also have a small turtle hatchery here, but they said they don’t expect their turtle eggs hatching soon. There is another turtle hatchery close by where we can walk to said the owner.
Greeted by cute pets from the hotel
Our Amigo Maui, enjoying his daily pets
Super nice lunch
The view of the hotel, picture by Surf Turtle Lodge
The view of the hotel, picture by Surf Turtle Lodge
The rough sea
Rough sea
We decided to head out to the other hatchery called: Sos Nicaragua. While walking we were impressed by how rough the sea is. They call it in the Netherlands the “stille ocean”, what means the quiet ocean, but there is nothing quiet about this ocean. We saw huge waves that klatches down on the beach. It doesn’t look like a safe place for a swim. And it turns out to be correct. They warn you for dangerous currents. The owner told us a story about a girl that died in the sea ten years ago. She came here often and was a good swimmer. It was not her first swim in the sea. But the current got her and once she was saved out of the water they couldn’t bring her back to life. We did went into the water till our knees. That was already a lot of fun and you could feel the power of the sea.
Good work!
When we arrived at the turtle hatchery we spoke with a volunteer. She explained us a bit what sos Nicaragua does for the turtles. They walk every night on the beach to look for nestling activities…they do this at night in the hope they’ll be faster in finding a nest than the poachers. The poachers come here every night in search for nestling activity, to grab fresh turtle eggs and sell them at the market. If the volunteers find a new nest, they dig out the eggs and put them safely away in their hatchery. Some volunteer organizations buy the eggs from the poachers to put them in their hatchery…but this is expensive and lots of volunteer organizations don’t have that money. Donations help. After 45-50 days the turtles come out their eggs and dig their way up. The volunteers check the hatchery many times a day. If they see baby turtles, they grab them and put them in a bucket. They bring them to the beach to release them. When they smell the salty water they take a run for it to get in the sea where their big adventure will start. It is hard to survive, being so small and with so many predators. Only 1 out of 1000 will survive to adulthood. We asked if we could see baby turtles that are released on the beach. They said it’s not possible, because they need to release them quick once they hatched. It’s to make sure they don’t dry out. Of course we understand that. They said that if we are around or close by and by coincidence there are turtles that just hatched, we could join them with the turtle release.
We walked back to chill at the hotel. We talked to the owner, watched the sunset and had dinner. Everything here is so relaxed…so tranquillo. At the end of the afternoon a group of tourist that did volcano boarding arrived here to hang out and making this place a little bit more alive. We actually saw the people we met on the bus from Guatemala to Nicaragua
Beautiful sunsets. Picture by Surf Turtle Lodge
Beautiful sunsets
Lucky coincidence
At night we went out for a walk on the beach up to the hatchery in the hope to see some nestling activity (mostly this happens later at night). While walking on the beach we needed to be careful. We saw many crabs coming out of their holes. There was a wooden bench close to the hatchery. We sat down there and enjoyed the view of the sea enlightened by the moon. After half an hour we saw some movement at the hatchery, it turns out there is a nest that just hatched. We could join a volunteer and biologist releasing them in the sea. “Yes!! What a luck!”. First they pick out a good spot at the beach where the sea is less rough. Once there they made a stripe in the sand with their finger to mark the spot where the waves end. Then they picked up the turtles very carefully because their shell is so vulnerable and put them behind the stripe. We could help them too. First we washed our hands because it’s important you don’t have any cream (sunscreen or mosquito repellent) on your hands…this is harmful for the turtles. The turtles were so cute!! These are Olive Bradley turtles. There are also leather back and green turtles here, but it’s not nestling season for them.
We could only see the turtles with a red light, because a white light is too bright and will scare them off. The same counts for big turtles wanting to nest on the beach. When you scare them off they go back into the sea and can’t nest their eggs. The little turtles took their time, they were tired. It’s because it’s night time. It took maybe one hour till all of them were finally in the sea. The volunteers must have a lot of patience to do this twice a day. But normally the turtles would run into the sea and it would take 15 minutes in total. But this is usually at day time. It was a great experience and we were so lucky that by coincidence there was nest hatched.
Releasing the turtles
Cute little turtle
All in line for the “race” to the beach
What a luck!
We walked back to our hotel, took a shower and just got into bed when suddenly one of the hotel workers knocked on our door: “dos grande tortugas!!”. We quickly got changed and walked outside. We saw one big turtle in front of the hotel enlightened by the moon. You saw her footprint from the ocean and she just dug out a nest. The worker quickly dug out a small hole behind her to see het hole and fresh eggs. Another worker went to the hatchery to dig out a hole there, so once we collected the eggs they have a save place. The worker shined a light on the nest so we could see the turtle laying her eggs. We touched an egg, it’s like a soft golf ball. The worker grabbed all the eggs and put them in a bag. Then he brought it safely to the hatchery where little turtles come out in about 45-50 days. After that we shined a little light on the turtle to see her burying her “eggs” ( they were already gone by then). We saw a poacher walking by and checking out the turtle, he knew he was too late. Luckily we were on time. We waived the turtle goodbye and had a conversation with the worker about turtles nestling and how the situation is with the poachers. Then we went to bed. It was a surprisingly good night!!
Mama turtle laying her eggs
Mama turtle “burying” her eggs
Las Peñitas
The next morning we woke up early because we booked a tour. The hotel said it was a tour to see a turtle release. It costs us 25 dollar, quite expensive for just that, but we knew there would be more to the tour than just a turtle release, but we had no idea what. We let it be a surprise! We were brought to Poneloya where a women picked us up to bring us to las Peñitas. There we met Roberto, our guide. He explained us we are going on a boat tour through an amazon area with lots of birds and where crocodiles live. Cool! We’re also going to stop at a turtle hatchery. We were the only ones so we got a private tour. The benefit of travelling low season. First we went to the hatchery. It was a big one with more than 200 turtle nests. There was a nest that just hatched and we could see the release. Because of protocol we couldn’t help to do it. There was a big difference seeing the baby turtles go into the water at daylight instead of at night. They were very quick this time. In just 10 minutes they all reached the ocean.
Private tour because of low season
Beautiful amazon river
The hatchery
Releasing the turtles
Bon viaje tortuga’s!
Afterwards we went further into the amazon. We saw lots of birds, mostly great white egrets that you see everywhere in central America. And a new one: a blue leather egret. We also saw other animals like the Halloween crab and Iguana’s. The most incredible animal was a big crocodile. These are American crocodiles that can reach up to a length of 4 meters. And we did saw one! Around 2-3 meters, the biggest one we’ve seen so far. In Florida we only saw relatively small ones. It was cool to see him swim away. It was a nice tour, definitely worth our money, where we’ve seen many wildlife!
Mangrove tree’s
The halloween crab
A big crocodile!
Afterwards we went back to our remote hotel and enjoyed a big lunch. We didn’t had breakfast so we were quite hungry. Then we chilled, had some nice fresh cocktails and took a little nap in the hammocks. To freshen up we went “swimming” in the sea. Because the sea is dangerous, due to strong currents and big waves, so we were only standing and jumping on the waves. Sometimes the waves swept us off our feet, other times we needed to run because of a big wave coming. It was fun! We were playing like kids. Afterwards we had sand everywhere!! But luckily there are fresh showers every where at the property. After lunch we said goodbye and went back to Leon.
It was an amazing couple of days and we miss it already! Jaron and I agreed that if we need some destress from home, we go to this place: our little paradise!
