If I ate a turtle egg - 4/9/09

Yesterday we were talking about eating eggs and someone made a joke about eating turtle eggs (big no-no) and how well that would go over with la Tortuga Feliz. This led to a comment that we would turn into turtles which soon brought us to a conversation about impressions of turtles when they are laying their eggs. When turtles are preparing their nests they have to furiously flap their flippers to find the perfect spot. During this process they are making these groaning/huffing sounds followed by enormous sighs. I know I should probably be amazed by the whole egg laying process but I generally find myself bursting our laughing because these noises just shouldn't be coming out of gentle turtles. Anyways, the turtle impressions left me doubled over laughing. This week is Semana Santa and during this week the families and friends of the people who live on the island (mostly poachers) come out in full force. During the walks the poachers and their entire families are everywhere, making it nearly impossible to collect nests and kind of ruins the calm atmosphere of the walks. It's also really uncomfortable watching a turtle be accosted by 10 people at a time. The problem is, there is a law of nonconfrontation between volunteers and poachers to avoid violence or problems so when we see a poached turtle we look the other way and vice versa. Even though poaching is illegal (punishable up to 2 years in jail) nothing ever happens. It's both good and bad.