I met my friend Juan Carlos on my first of three days in Monterrico. He was younger than me and worked selling fish to my hotel. We saw each other often; his house was right outside my bathroom window. After a few conversations, he invited me to go looking for sea turtles with him in the evening. We agreed to meet at 8pm, after it got dark. I was nervous about my decision to go off with a strange man in the dark, but I considered how amazing finding an actual nesting sea turtle would be. Before I left, I put on a one-piece bathing suit beneath my clothes and slipped something sharp into my pocket "just in case".
The beaches of Monterrico are arguably more beautiful at night. There were thunderstorms on the horizon, the surf was higher and louder than it had been during the day, and twinkling lights from shrimp boats off the coast were the stars of the evening. Best of all, the daytime heat had cooled to a comfortable night breeze.
Juan Carlos immediately picked up on the romantic possibilities a night like this could offer. He started hinting that I might like to move to Monterrico to stay with him—but it was too bad I wasn't at all interested in living what he called the 'good life' with him. I did, however, learn a lot from Juan Carlos. We saw crabs and lightening bugs and the huge home of the man who owns Gallo beer, whom Juan Carlos told me apparently is a huge supporter of sea turtle conservation and raises them himself for release. Other people passed us silently on the beach, also looking for the elusive turtles.
We must have walked more than a mile before we gave up and headed back towards my hotel, El Mangle. It was then that Juan Carlos's trained eye spotted an irregularity in the sand that was a huge sea turtle's tracks emerging from the ocean. He used his flashlight to follow the tracks farther inland than I would have guessed, where another couple was already with the turtle herself.
He made me wait while he asked them if this gringa he picked up could sit with them and witness the turtle make her nest and lay eggs.
It turned out this local couple wasn't interested in the amazing act itself. They wanted the eggs to sell, knowing they'd become soup in the fancy restaurants of Guatemala City. Juan Carlos assured me it was the law to hand over a portion of their captured eggs to CECON's hatchery for conservation, but I had a feeling this wasn't true. I wondered if I could offer them enough money so they'd give the eggs to me, but I reasoned that a gringa walking around with a huge bag of turtle eggs would either be in danger or big trouble. Juan Carlos explained that many people in the village had to resort to this during turtle season as there weren't many ways of making money. Looking around, I understood that part of it.
The sea turtle, a huge beast and bigger than any dog I've ever owned, was bewildered at our presence. She was exhausted as she laboriously scooped sand with her flippers to cover where she thought her eggs were, even though they were already being toted away. I patted her and said I was sorry for how she had just been robbed.
Juan Carlos let her work for awhile, but he finally pushed her off her nest with his foot. She struggled to keep on covering and hiding her nest, but he knew what she didn't and helped her back into the sea. She waited patiently at the water line for a wave to come and carry her off. As soon as the water touched her, she became an entirely new creature: elegant, quick, and alive.
I expected to see an endangered creature give miraculous birth to a nest of babies that would all count in helping the effort to save their species. I had no idea I would encounter the illegal and silent abuse of a scared and helpless animal, done openly but under the cloak of night. Juan Carlos wanted to be kind, and maybe he wanted something romantic, and I wanted to see sea turtles. I think both of us were sad that the night didn't turn out the way we had expected. We walked back to my room and said goodbye.