Sea Turtles in Guanacaste, Costa Rica: Week 1

¡Hola tortuga aficionados! My name is Sasha and I am going to be your guide on the 2025 Global Seminar for Sea Turtles in Guanacaste, Costa Rica! This first week has definitely been action packed not to mention food packed. On the first day, a few of my classmates and I took off from LAX to Liberia on the red eye flight! 

Leaving the beautiful city below and landing bright and early in Costa Rica, the change was definitely unexpected. Luckily I got a window seat so I could witness takeoff and touchdown. Along your travels in Costa Rica I would definitely recommend grabbing a window seat in whatever vehicle you are in because the biodiversity here is crazy. 

There are so many different species here in Guanacaste including Howler Monkeys to wake you up at 5 am in the morning as your personal alarm clocks, bats, and a few large reptile and amphibian species casually around town. The first week we worked on learning how to do field research and as a reward, got to swim in the ocean afterwards. Costa Rica is very humid so a nice dip in the perfect temperature water is really refreshing after a long day of work. 

  Lastly, we got to know all the fellow students on the trip and also met our host families. The host families are super nice and I learned that I definitely need to practice my Spanish. I managed to communicate that I wanted to learn how to cook some of their delicious food for when I return back to the states and so the host mom taught me how to make tortillas which is a surprisingly easy thing to do. 

It’s hard to believe that it has been a week and this is only the tip of the tortilla on how many experiences I’ve already had while staying in the small fishing town of San Juanillo. We’ve already seen a few turtles and are waiting for any day now to see the massive nesting event known as an arribada. New updates to come in Week 2!