Last Tuesday, Sean and I took a boat trip out to Witch's Rock and Ollie's Point - two famous surf breaks near(ish) to Tamarindo. They're hard to get to via land, because apparently you have to drive about an hour into a national park where the roads are bad. And if a Costa Rican tells you that roads are bad, they are really bad.
We got to Witch's first, and it didn't look very big. But since a few people had warned us that this wave could be quite heavy, Sean wanted to go and surf it for 15 minutes first before determining whether it was going to be ok for me to surf it.
As everyone was jumping into the (really, really warm) water, the boat driver said that he was going to go to a nearby beach for a few minutes and come right back. "I guess I'm going with you guys," I told him. We motored over to this other beach, and the driver's two friends jumped out onto the shore. They started walking back and forth, and I joking said to the driver "Están buscando tesoro?" Are they looking for treasure? "Huevos," he answered. Eggs.
After 10 minutes of beach-combing, the two Ticos got back on the boat with a backpack full of turtle eggs. I could see the round bulges in the fabric - there must have been at least a few dozen eggs in there. One guy showed me an egg and let me hold it. It was about the same shape as a chicken egg, but the shell is so soft that your thumb can dent it in, almost like paper.
As we returned to Witch's, the driver asked me not to tell anyone about the eggs. "Just your boyfriend," he said, which I thought was kind of funny. But I agreed to this (and obviously I'm breaking my promise now. If you do something illegal just please don't tell me, especially if it's harming a species of very cute animals.)
I don't know what the status of these particular turtles is, but I'm pretty positive that harvesting eggs from a national park is illegal. So, if you are ever in Tamarindo and you go on a surf trip to Witch's or Ollie's, keep this in mind. If your boat driver brings other friends with him and they disappear for a while, you should be suspicious of this.
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Stealing turtle eggs, that's so wrong. Even if you reported those guts, what would happen though? I always smile when Chinese tourism board labels an attraction an UNESCO World Heritage site, other than being able to charge more for entrance and make more money, very little is about getting the protection it deserves. Can't blame the talking heads at the UN for trying I suppose?
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