Tortuguero

After a big day and night, I had a pretty chill New Years Day. After a leisurely lie in, I had coffee with some of the crew from last night at the hostel. Then it was time to have a poke around Tortuguero.

Tortuguero quite literally translates to ‘land of the turtles’ and derives its name from history. Back in the day, native inhabitants did their thing; living with nature and managing it quite nicely. Part of their diet were the turtles that came to lay their eggs on the sandy beaches of the area. Enter the Europeans who decided they wanted some of that sweet turtle action themselves and muscled in to exploit entire turtle populations. At the same time, they quite liked the idea of ripping out as many trees as they could offload which put additional pressures on habitats. The net result of both practices being some species coming close to being wiped out.

These days the whole area around Tortuguero is a National Park. The canals and beaches are closely managed by rangers to ensure the animals within its confines are protected. The local people of Tortuguero are largely involved in the burgeoning eco-tourism trade and turtle populations are encouragingly increasing. Which in turn is good for tourism. I mean, you wouldn’t want to go somewhere called ‘land of the turtles’ if there where no turtles…

I booked a canoe tour of the canals for the following day and found somewhere to chill for a couple of hours. Back at the hostel was fairly quiet so I just had some drinks with one of the travellers who was leaving the next day. Then an early night for me as I needed to be up at 5am for my tour.