Turtle patrol

We said good bye to Merida to go east of the Yucatan peninsula, to the called Riviera Maya. Our destination was the little villa of Akumal (land of turtles in Maya language), a little north of the Tulum ruins.


welcome to Akumal

We rented a nice condo, beach front, with a beautiful view of the Mexican Caribbean. This village mostly hotels and condos is located all along Akumal Bay and Half Moon bay. Even though the amount of accomodations, the extension of the community allows to have a feeling of serenity and tranquility. Also, in this place you can see an interest for care of the environment, they try to make efforts of recycling and separate garbage, even in our condo-unit there was a can for waste and other for recyclables.

But our big interest to stay here was about the "Sea turtles". Summer is the season for female sea turtles to come land, make their nests and go, they deposit hundreds of eggs in the deep holes they carefully dig. Personally I was expecting the girls to had the experience of watching a "wild life event" in real time.


click on the logo to learn more about CEA

For the turtle purpose we contacted Centro Ecológico Akumal (Ecological Center a.k.a CEA), they make a tremendous job with the Sea Turtle Program (more than one species go to these beaches for nesting). As a non-profit they welcome volunteers on their projects as well as tourists (like us) to go with them to their every day walks along the beach in search for the turtles. If the tourist group is lucky enough they can witness the hatching of the little turtles, or turtles laying eggs. Of course the CEA people make their work measuring the turtles, collecting data and marking nests and turtles.

Our "turtle adventure" began around 9:30 p.m, after watching a video in the CEA office, about the Sea Turtle program, is important to educate the visitors, the tourists and locals as well. It was a warm night with a beautiful moon (full or almost full, I'm not sure). We walked a lot on the sand behind our young "guide", until we found another volunteer waiting for a Turtle to finish her nest, she was covering it with sand, every body sat around in silence, no pictures with flash are allowed, since it scares and distracts the animals. We waited about 15 minutes in excitement and saw how the volunteers took notes about the event and helped the female find her track back to the sea. It was amazing how they try to reach the waves again strong and with no interruption until they finally get into the ocean. It was wonderful that the moon cooperated with its glare as we could see very clear all the event.

this picture was taken by CEA


click on the picture to learn more about Sea Turtles.

We put in march again, our guide received news on his radio and alert us that another turtle was ahead. We walked and walked until we found her. The moving scene was again there. Bidane started to think about it, and she said, Turtle, eggs, baby turtles, IT IS A CYCLE, THE TURTLE CYCLE. She was very excited to find out, although she cried when she learned that that very moment was the only one the female turtle would be in contact with her eggs, and she won't meet her little ones. The guides explain us the type of tracks the different turtles make on the sand, so if they are not there when the turtles lay the eggs, they can find out the species because of the tracks.

After our turtle patrol night, we found out nests are all over the place, we found one nest just out side our condo, we found others along the nearby beach. One morning Aitana spotted tracks on the sand and after seeing them closely she concluded they were from a turtle that made her nest the night before, with no witness but the moon.

Bidane showing the nest right in front of our condo.

Aitana showing sea turtle tracks.