Getting up-close with turtles at Costa Rica’s arribada
On the paradise beaches of Costa Rica, thousands of sea turtles make their nests in one of the world’s greatest wildlife spectacles. Welcome to the ‘arribada’
27 January 2016
Around 60,000 turtles visited Nancite in 1999, but by 2001 the figure had dropped to 17,000. Very little is known about the arribada phenomenon, but naturalists believe that fluctuations may always have been the norm and that large numbers of turtles will periodically abandon a beach to let it lay fallow so that they do not contaminate it with their own rotting eggs. Where they go to when they leave Nancite is another part of the mystery.
With odds of a thousand-to-one against a turtle surviving to breed, the seven eggs that we ‘replanted’ were virtually meaningless. But after experiencing this humbling night with these wonderful creatures, it felt good to do whatever we could to stack the odds even a little bit more in their favour.
The best time to travel on the Pacific side is during the dry season, from December to April. The height of the nesting season for olive ridley turtles falls in September and October. On the Caribbean slopes, the drier season is February to June.
