El Residente
6 Adventure by Chicken Bus by Janet LoSole
Part 2: Turtle Patrols "The following is excerpted from the book, Adventure by Chicken Bus: An Unschooling Odyssey Through Central America".
A
s part of a hands-on biology lesson for our children, Jocelyn, 8 and Natalie, 5, my husband, Lloyd, and I had arranged to volunteer with an organization called ASTOP (Asociación Salvemos las Tortugas de Parismina) which is engaged in saving endangered sea turtles. We had chosen this group, in part, because their website declared, “Costa Rica… announced a law in 1999 that strictly banned sea turtle poaching and the sale of turtle products. A decade later, thanks to ASTOP, poaching has dropped from 98 percent to 38 percent.” The group is located on Parismina, an island sandwiched between the ocean and the Rio Parismina on the Caribbean side of the country. Traveling there meant
backtracking from Limón to Siquirres and transferring to a bus bound for Caño Blanco. From there a launch would ferry us the short distance to Parismina. In Siquirres we waited for the bus at a soda while drinking gallons of iced tea to combat the heat. The image of an egg frying on the sidewalk came to mind just as an old man with greasy hair tucked into a faded cap and a stubbly, grizzled beard wheeled past, balancing his grimy Styrofoam cooler on his adult-sized tricycle. “Huevos de tortuga. Huevooooooooooooos!” he called out. I jerked my thumb at him. “Lloyd, he’s selling turtle eggs!” Sadly, most of the egg vendors we saw that day were old men and appeared to be poor. Technically illegal,
