La Tortuga Feliz - Costa Rica

We have been staying in the turtle sanctuary which is amazing. www.latortugafeliz.com. It is in the middle of nowhere. You have to take a taxi from Bataan to a little river and then take a small boat for 40mins to reach the island. The scenery is like something out of Jurassic Park. Any second you expect a T-Rex to come out of the trees and eat you.

The guy who began the project is called Paul. He is a really inspiring guy. He has only been working on the island for 2 years but already the project has accomplished great things. In the last season they managed to sucessfully hatch 10,600 turtles. The year before no new turtles survived on the island so they are doing really well. During the turtle season volunteers patrol the beach 24 hours a day to prevent poachers from stealing the new eggs or killing the turtles for their meat/shells. The turtle season finished a few weeks ago so now the work involves preparing the hatchery for the next season. This consists of digging tonnes of sand out of the huge hatchery so that it can be filled with new sifted sand for next season. Very hard work in the heat but after work we sat in hammocks and read a lot and just had time to reflect.

The wildlife here is just incredible. I have never seem so many different birds and other creatures before. In the 6 days we have been here we have seen spider monkeys swinging from their tails in the trees, sleepy sloths, toads, eagles, vultures, crocodiles and turtles - plus a few cockroaches and millions of mosquitos. At night the whole place comes alive with sounds. Last night we were sat playing cards by lanturn light because there is no electricity here and I felt what I thought was the dog around my feet but when I looked down it was an enormous crab. Needless to say I screamed my head off and now wear my boots at night.

We are in Bataan now which is the closest town to the island. We are catching a bus back to San Jose today which will be very strange as we haven´t seen any cars or electricity for a week. From there we are going to La Fortuna where there is an active volcano and after we head to Monteverde where they have a cloud forest and you can ride on zip lines in the canopies.

We are due to fly out of Panama City on 30th November. It is hard to believe we are leaving central america already. The time is starting to go by very quickly. There are so many things we would like to do, but we don´t have the time.

Hope everyone is well. Let us know how you are when you have a minute.

Lots of love

Tigs and Ben xx