“¿Quién habla mejor español?”
Three blank faces, and then I say, “He’s asking us who understands the most Spanish…wait…I guess that means it’s me.”
We’re in trouble already, but we don’t know it yet.
Thus tonight’s activity. After slowly starving on bus after bus all day, we have checked in to the Barca del Oro and ordered just about everything on the menu, in between bites inquiring with gestures about the turtle walk tour and how to sign up for it. We hand over a fistful of cordobas to the hostel manager, and in return receive three slips of paper written in a language none of us understand. As we’re finishing up our meal a slim young man comes and sits at our table—he will be our guide tonight, and speaks no English.
It’s another one of those conversations where I am leaning in with my head tilted to the side, face scrunched up in concentration as I try to decipher the carefully enunciated syllables this patient man is speaking. I learn some new words, tortuga (turtle) and suerte (luck). As in, if we are very lucky we may see the big turtles, but it is the end of the season and most of the turtles have already fulfilled their instinctive imperative and made their best effort at avoiding extinction. He tells us that we are assured of seeing the baby turtles, however, as the eggs are collected and cared for until they hatch and then released.
He warns us, “Usted va para cinco kilómetros, hasta que veamos una tortuga. Y cinco kilómetros mueven hacia atrás. Es una manera larga. La primera parte es fácil, la manera detrás es muy difícil.”
I am translating as best as I can for my two companions who understand even less Spanish than I do. “He says, we will walk a long way, and maybe we will see a turtle. He says the walk back is… more difficult?”
Leia asks, “Did he say five kilometers?”
“Maybe… but that’s not so far, it’s only a couple of miles, right? How hard can it be?”
Like I said, we’re already in trouble.
We meet back at the restaurant a few hours later, having napped only a little bit. We are exhausted already, a new word I learn when our guide sits down next to me and asks if I’m tired, which I don’t understand until he mimes out collapsing with weariness. Cansado.
We’re off—there are a few other gals from our hostel who are also going tonight. They have flashlights, we don’t; mental note before next trip, get a damned flashlight. And then remember to pack it. We walk onto the beach and then wade into the tidal pool where a small canoe is waiting to paddle us across to the island. The water is only a foot or so deep right now, but the tide will come in later and we’ll definitely need that boat on the way back. Our guide has two friends with him, his brothers as it turns out, one a teenager and a young boy. We pass the park caretaker hut with it’s friendly lantern, paying our admission fee and then heading off down the beach.
It is a truly beautiful night, with a full moon glimmering off the waves. I could probably read a book by this moonlight. We stroll down the beach carrying our shoes, who cares if we see turtles really this experience is transcendent enough already, slowly walking down an unspoiled stretch of sand with the Pacific thundering to our right, water that stretches unimpeded for thousands of miles until those waves hit Japan. I am opening up to the night, soaking it in through my pores, closing my eyes and pushing my face into the wind to smell the salt in the air, my muscles adjusting a tiny bit to the slope and the drag of the sand with every step on the smooth sand as the tide is going out.
That’s why walking or running on the beach is such good exercise, because you have to work harder, even if just by a little bit, for every step on this uneven and sometimes treacherous surface. And we keep walking.
And walking. We chat with the other tourists, who are not winded. Neither are we, yet. No turtles yet, but the kid brother has scampered off ahead and returns gleefully brandishing a crab. We all gather around and inspect the crab with our guide’s flashlight. The kid is holding it carefully, making sure it’s pincers are clamped to its sides and impotent. We shine the light in its eyes—that is one angry crab. It’s body is about the size of my palm, and if looks could kill that crab would have brought on the next Ice Age. We laugh about the crab’s useless rage and then release it. And keep walking.
Our guide tells us, not much further. Not much further until what he doesn’t say. The light is still playing on the water, the salt is still in the air and the waves are still rebounding back towards
We see the flashlight waving ahead, he’s calling us forward. He’s stopped. Did he find a turtle?
No. This is just the end of the island. We’ll stop here for a while. There’s a thatch hut further up with some stools and we make for that, but as soon as we arrive our guide warns us that it is riddled with mosquitos. Probably loaded with dengue fever, malaria, and every other disease you don’t want to get. Fine, we are past the point of caring and flop on the sand accepting the inevitable grit that will work it’s way into our underwear. We are panting now, and our water bottles are empty. That was indeed a long walk.
We are told that on the other side of this narrow island, to our left is a lagoon, but we can’t go there because there are…did he really say crocodiles?? I wonder if we will canoe back the length of the island on the lagoon, that would be fun. Or when one of the park’s four wheelers will roar up to take us back. Neither of these things will happen.
It is a lesson that I should’ve learned by now, that the only way out is the way you got in, and the only things that are going to carry us back to our hotel to collapse are our sore feet and trembling legs.
Let’s just get it over with.
I stride off ahead of the group. Fuck the ocean, fuck the turtles, I am concentrating on eating up the ground in front of me as fast as I can. The teenage brother walks ahead with me, laughing in words I occasionally understand about how crazy I am and how fast I’m going. I wave him off, I am trying not to be rude but if I stop I won’t get up again. I ask him if he has any water—no. My mouth is completely dry now and cramps are starting to shoot through the big muscles in my thighs. I stagger to a halt and fall on the sand, drawing in harsh breaths that cut at my throat. My friends are somewhere behind me and I’m sure they’re suffering just as much as I am if not more, but I can’t go slowly to stay with them or I just won’t go. Back up.
The tide is coming in now, we are walking higher up on the beach in choppy dunes, the grade even steeper as my left foot is striking the sand at least an inch or two lower than right. I walk backwards for a while to try and even out the strain. The teenage kid can’t get enough of that, he is running ahead and then looping back to stay with me laughing all the while. I see a light far ahead down the beach—the caretaker’s hut! The end is in sight!
Being able to see the finish line gives me that extra jolt of energy that I needed, and I plow ahead. A slight curve in the shoreline obscures it for a moment, now it’s back, I’m drawing closer, thank god this trial is almost over. I ask this teenage kid if there’s water there, he doesn’t think so but maybe. I head for the light… just go towards the light… la luz, la luz…
I stumble to a halt a few meters away. Here, on this protected beach in a national reserve, a few locals are camping out by a bonfire. It wasn’t here when we walked past the first time. I stop, swaying, my feet plunged into the sand up to my ankles to keep me upright. They stare at me and I stare back, devastated. I swivel abruptly and march past them without a word or a friendly gesture, I am far past caring about social niceties.
The teenage kid is worried about me now, he’s not laughing anymore as my distress becomes clearer. I am tearing each gasp of air down into my parched lungs, weaving across the sand with my head down, there could be a giant turtle right next to me and I wouldn’t know or care. I string together enough Spanish words to explain that I thought the light was the end of the beach, and to ask him how much further. About a kilometer, maybe a little more. I would cry but I don’t have the moisture to spare for tears and it would accomplish nothing anyway; sitting down to cry would only delay the moment that I have to get up again and keep going so what’s the point.
Every step forward is a push, bringing me closer to the end of this tortuous walk but not enough and not fast enough. I see another light but the last disappointment was too much, I just look at it dully and plod on. There’s someone sitting higher up on the beach in the darkness and I trudge past. Wait, the teenager is stopping me and pulling me back, don’t stop me I need to keep going, he’s waving frantically trying to tell me something…
That’s the caretaker on the beach. The hut is a few meters behind him, it’s light shielded. We’re here. And the bucket he’s cradling is full of baby turtles ready to be released to the waves. I’m far ahead of the rest of the group, and he motions me over to him. With gestures I finally understand, and reach into the bucket to pick out a turtle. They’re tiny, about three inches long. I cradle mine in both hands even though one would be enough, watching its teeny flippers paddle helplessly as I place it on the sand. We turn the flashlight off because it confuses them, they go towards the moonlight on the water. I watch my little turtle trundle over the sand, implacably struggling over each small chop in the sand, every centimeter of ground gained in clumsy battle with the physics of the little thing’s biology, those flippers are meant for water not land but it’s unstoppable and it’s making progress, however slowly. It reaches the waterline and is swept back several feet by the first rush of foaming surf, overturned, fins waving as it tries to right itself and eventually does and turns back towards the light on the water and back into the surf.
This time it makes it, one tiny, defenseless creature consumed by those thousands of miles of open water. It will almost definitely perish before the moon shines on the ocean again.
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