La Arrivada

It starts as a whisper. A vague allusion to what is to come. Tracks multiply down the beach. Turtles, the solitaries or more affectionately termed crazy ones, began wandering slowly up the beach at odd hours of the day. Great hulking shapes occupy the sand in the heat of noon, driven by the primal need to lay. The Arrivada, the Arrival, is here.
Four nights into our stay, halfway through the dry season, when the beach and streets remain largely unpopulated and the shadows are scared away by the suffocating blanket of the sun, we witness one of nature's many unexplained miracles. The Arrivada occurs roughly once a month during the wet season, between the months of June and December, and on average once every month and a half to two months during the dry season. Hundreds upon hundreds of turtles migrate to the beach at the same time to lay eggs. Our work hours change from four hour shifts to unending eight hour shifts. We are tided through the great waves of turtles by bottomless cups of dark Costa Rican coffee, hold the milk and sugar. Sleep comes to us in fits during the day or the brief two hour breaks that usually take place around midnight. There is truly no rest for the weary.
The scene is chaotic, quiet, beatific. The bright white lights of poachers sweep over us, attracting the turtles and there valuable cargo. There are literally thousands of turtles, of slow moving mounds illuminated in the stark brightness. Large, mobile rocks that occupy or once sandy beach. Egg poaching is one of the main sources of income in Ostional. Legally, locals are allowed to poach the eggs for the first 36 hours of the Arrivada. Logically I can understand this, if the people don't take them, most of the nests are destroyed by dogs, vultures, or one of the other thousands of turtles that scatter themselves in a futile search for an area onoccupied beach. But my heart still goes out to the turtles. They never even had a chance. How could they ever make it against such incredible odds, battling people, animals, birds, even the heat. Sweat slides down my cheek. My skin weeps.
Our group of three continues down the beach, passing the markers we set up that afternoon. One meter, two meters, three meters. Turtles, turtles, turtles. Finally, our group leader Eric alights upon a huge Olive Ridley near the waves.
"This lovely old lady right here, she's the one for us." Eric approached the turtle with his usual unrestrained humor and enthusiasm, until he stopped short behind the her. We moved in closer behind him, timidly, cautious of anything that would cause our normally buoyant friend to literally stop in his tracks.
"That is definitely a shark bite."
The whole left backside of the turtle was missing. Pale, pulsating turtle flesh undulated slowly with the phantom motion of active muscles underneath a jaggedly broken shell, edges sharp and terrible. My first and only thought, this is insane. I gripped the clipboard tightly and began to write down observations, but I could hardly see pass the missing quarter of the turtle. We went through the motions, watching the turtle struggle to dig a nest with one flipper, recording length and width, trying not to stare at the missing limb. As though it would be impolite for us to fixate upon it, like someone with a physical disfiguration that you are intensely curious about but you don't want to point out or talk about out of courtesy for their feelings.
After counting a total of 131 eggs, a record for my stay in Ostional, we moved on. Slipping into the early hours of morning, disappearing with the darkness, the turtles came and went crawling over each other and running into us with little more warning than a soft grunt, titanic collisions that barely rocked the sand. Although their journey was pointless, their labor fruitless, they continued on the beach and the world kept on turning. With all the potential those three nights held, the world kept on moving and nothing really changed. The tracks were washed away by the tide.