las tortugas

The second group went out with the biblioteca móvil today. The truck went to a different community, and a much smaller group of children greeted the volunteers.
This group was more reticent but also more attentive, and the play and storytime were a great success. The kids made crafts with us again, and were especially enthralled by Christina's excellent outloud reading.


Though it was difficult not to go out again, some of us stayed behind to learn more about how the stationary biblioteca works.
Jane showed us how the library stays organized and shared many simple tricks she uses and passed out a few sample materials. Some of her supplies are ordered from library supply catalogs such as Brodart, while some she designed herself and had printed in Managua. All of this was vital information for anyone wanting to start a small library in a developing country, where resources like the Internet are not always available. She's a ready expert on how to start a sustainable library on a preliminary budget of about 300 dollars.

We also went on a tour of San Juan del Sur, the leisure time excused by the fact that we were hanging posters for our book festival on Saturday.
We hung them up all over town, especially in places frequented by the local (non expat) population. A group of eye doctors was giving out prescriptions and eye glasses, and we passed out many posters there. When we were down to our last two, we started talking to people on the street, asking if they had children and telling them to come participate in our free activities and poetry contest.

Vive Sandino - This mural overlooks the park where our festival will be held.

We went into the other building Jane owns, a condo project with San Juan's only elevator.
On weeknights, Carol can be seen in the lobby teaching English to nicas. Much of the population here speaks at least a little bit of English, especially those involved in the tourism industry. Many Nicaraguans want to work in tourism—and learning English seems to be the best way to get there.

Lunch in El Gato Negro, and English language book store with great drinks and vegetarian food. One of us, yet again, could not resist buying another book, this time a book of essays in Spanish about the Nicaraguan dialect, including a long list of proverbs and sayings. If you know her you can probably guess who that was.

All but three of us then went on a zip line canopy tour, which some reported to of the best experiences of their lives. Instead of putting pictures of everyone sipping across the sky, here are a couple of the mothers in our group. We're sure their kids would want to see this!

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Caitlin and Jane put in an elaborate order for dinner at El Timon, curated by at least four waiters with different notebooks (and different results), and they saw another beautiful sunset from Jane's house before we all went to dinner.
The food was excellent. We ate camarones, ceviche, fish, and lobster, and drank Toña to our hearts content before having to dash out at 7 for what may have been the most surprising and spectacular bit of tourism we've engaged in yet: a late night tour of La Flor protected turtle preserve. Hundreds of thousands of turtles lay eggs and are born on this beach every year. It is protected by armed guards who count and care for the turtles.

Turtle count for the past several years

Bright white lights blind and confuse the turtles, so we were given small red flashlights to use sparingly on the beach. We drove in a truck for about an hour, in the same direction we took the book mobile yesterday, and stayed at the beach until nearly 2 in the morning. We saw a couple tiny baby turtles, about 2 inches long, before being told that we were in for a great treat: a huge leather back turtle was coming ashore to dig a nest and lay eggs. We waited silently in the dark for what seemed like an hour as she made her way over the sand until she had reached the dry part of the beach before the tide line. There she turned around and began to dig with her flippers. We waited until she was done and had begun to lay her eggs, which is when the turtles go into something like a trance, enabling scientist and tourists to get up close. Then we were able to go right up to her, touch her back and look into her face (with our little red lights). Her back was smooth and hard. Each egg was a little bigger than a golf ball.

Only about 5 leatherbacks are seen nesting on this beach every year, so what we witnessed was quite special. She was 1 meter 30 centimeters long and 1 meter across. Our guide had never seen one before! The guards came to collect the eggs of this very endangered species so that they could hatch them in a protected area back at the guardhouse.

We watched her lay the last of her eggs and cover the hole , flapping her flippers in the sand like a child making a snow angel. Then she made her way back to the water, leaving an S pattern in the sand and entering the waves in the exact spot she had left them.

While we were walking back across the beach, we stopped to see if we could see any more babies, and had the intense pleasure of watching 25 tiny little turtles come crawling one after another, one on top of another, awkward and squirming out of the sand. They were adorable, and we all got to hold them in our hands. We shone the lights ahead for them to follow, and led them slowly toward the ocean.

We didn't get home until very, very late—but it was very, very worth it.