Ostional Day 2

7-24-11

                The next morning we woke up at 7 to eat breakfast. Afterward we had a sort break before we began the interview process. We decided to go to a nearby dairy farm where monkeys had been sighted in the past. We couldn’t go see the monkeys without paying an entrance fee, but instead the offered us the chance to learn how to milk a cow. As a milk lover I was quick to jump on board. They had all the cows paired up with their babies drinking on one side and a farmer drinking on the other. Milking a cow is actually a lot harder than it looks! You need to have a lot of strength to get the milk to come out. I managed to get the hang of it, and before we left they gave us a cup of fresh milk with the cream still in it to drink. I was in heaven. If I ever become a farmer, I will be a dairy farmer and live happily making cheese and yogurt for the rest of my life.

After our sojourn to the farm we began our interviews with the town’s people to get their opinions of the works that the refuge and development association have been doing. The information we gathered would be used by the Biologists to create a more effective community involvement program.  Karen (principal translator) Dat, Kelsey, Rebecca and I (second translator) interviewed two families as a group. The first turned out to be negative toward the program, of which they were not members citing small town favoritism and politics. They also seemed to be less informed about the project than the video led us to believe. They were somewhat forthcoming, and we broke the ice by talking to them about a Costa Rican squirrel that they had found fallen out of its nest. The next family was headed up by a man who was not a native to Ostional but was in favor of the program. Three members of his family were volunteers and worked with the turtle industry. He was much friendlier and seemed to know more about the program and contradicted some of the politics cited by our first subject. However, his one complaint was that the community was limited to only taking the eggs during the first 36 hours of the Arribada (it must be at least 200+ turtles for them to work). He also mentioned that our host Guillermo was one of the enemies of this idea. What we found out later from our professor is that Guillermo is also an outsider that he was the head of the community association for several years and made the restrictions on harvesting eggs stricter and pushed poachers more. Due to this his house was set on fire (while he and his wife were inside) by members of another community (not Ostional) that wanted access to the egg harvest as well but couldn’t partly due to his restrictions. The responses were intriguing in that they indicated that while the community likes the project and has seen its benefits,  they still viewed the 15 year old program as an outsider that was somewhat imposed rather than something they chose to do (in contrast with our next field trip to Alta Mira).

After we finished the interviews we had some free time to spend on the beach. We all changed into our swim suits and headed out into the water. The currents are very strong at this beach and so you don’t swim out very far into the water. Mainly Karen and I just played in the waves and the sand. There were also several cool pieced of drift wood that we used as props for our photo shoot (Dat had an amazing camera…). We swam for about 2 hours then sat and watched the ocean for 30 min before lunch. After lunch we had to head out straight away, since the drive would take about 5 hours. We thanked Guillermo and his wife for their hospitality and then headed back down the 20 miles of dirt/gravel road until we could turn onto the main highway.  On the way back I noticed how the whole region just had the feel, and atmosphere of the beach, parts of it really reminded me of the drive we take most years to get to Garden City Beach in South Carolina. What added to this was when we stopped for ice cream (at POPs) and it was another open air BBQ restaurant across from a Shell gas station, with several large plastic cows in front, just like the ones at a putt-putt place! I got a familiar feeling again once we were back in the mountains of the Central Valley I felt like I was on my way to Boone.

We made it back into San Jose by dinner time (successfully missing the one way bridge traffic in both directions!). Randdie and I caught up about our different weekends and we hung out with our host family. Tomorrow is a day off from school, yay for sleeping in! 9AM breakfast here I come!