Toytles!!!

Toytles!!

So I slept on the beach again last night, in the hopes of seeing some baby toytles being born and escaping into the ocean, and impressing the World Wildlife Fund lady with my determined resolve to help Cape Verde protect one of their precious few natural resources. Only, I was so exhausted from hiking the day before that I slept through the entire night, and awoke around 5 AM to find 8 or 12 people in matching white T-shirts huddled around one of the older nests, all fondling my day old baby sea turtles! A million questions raced through my mind. How did they know to be here on this particular day? Had they spent the night here as well? Did they know I was here too? What were they doing to my baby sea turtles? Where did they get all those matching white T-shirts?

People who steal turtles or turtle eggs (it’s illegal here…although so is stealing sand from the beaches, and people do that all day every day) can make a ton of money selling them. Thinking that’s what was about to occur here, I brushed a few inches of sand off myself and walked over to confront them. Approaching, I internally preparing a brief but well-articulated lecture about the immediate and long-term value of preserving and protecting the turtles, about how the turtles have some sort of magical internal magnet that will guide them thousands of miles across the open ocean, some day years from now, back to this very same beach to lay their own eggs, and also about how much tourists Love to see shit like this. Upon arrival, I was greeted cordially by everyone, given a matching white T-shirt, 3 pamphlets about environmental awareness, and a brief but well-articulated lecture about the value of preserving and protecting the turtles, about how the turtles have some internal magnet that will guide them, some day years from now, back to this very same beach to lay their own eggs, and about how much tourists Love to see shit like this.

Then they explained that they are actually a group of Cruzinhans, funded (barely) by the Cape Verdian government, who’s mission it is to monitor and report on all sea turtle-related activities. They, rather we, at this point, considering that I now have my own matching white T-shirt) are even taking the turtles back to Cruzinha to attach some sort of microscopic ID tag to them. Turns out the government here does get some things right. Who knew?

Anyway, before long, they’re explaining that they’ve got an entire Turtle Day planned for the kids in Cruzinha, complete with a sea turtle talk to be given by the Minesterio do Something-or-Other, a meet-and-greet with the baby sea turtles (we get to hold them!), a march to back to the beach with all the kids, and then we get to set the little bastards free in the ocean. (The turtles, not the kids.) Finally, we were to wrap up the whole affair with a beach clean-up, then bring on the snacks and juice and stuff. (A note here: How all of this was thought up, planned, funded and implemented without me ever hearing a whispered word about it is beyond me. Keep in mind this is a community of less than 200 people, and this was a Major event for them…er, us. Possibly the biggest thing to go on in this community all year. Sorta like being in high school and waking up at the goddamn prom, with everyone already decked out fancy, only you never knew it was coming and aren’t really sure what’s going on.)

So anyway, contrary to my experience thus far with the Cape Verdian government and their best-laid plans, the day went off exactly as had been described to me, and was definitely one of my best days here so far. I made some new friends, all the turtles made it safely into the ocean, the beach was cleaned up spick and span, we feasted on treats, and I got a nifty-looking matching white T-shirt. So, without further ado, here are the pics!!

(Also, someone please send me some Bar-B-Que Sause!!!)