The tortoise and the hare

Saturday June 5 was the day of the environment. Humberto, who works with Costas y Bosques for EcoBiotec, planned a minga and charla in the town near me where he’s working. He asked me to come and give a talk. So we went in the morning and picked up trash in the streets and on the beach. We started out with about 6 people but more joined as we went. Then Humberto showed a video about sea turtles and I gave my talk about endangered species, sea turtles and trash, and how we can reduce the trash in the streets. I wrote a little poem about turtles and trash since I’ve found that people are more inclined to learn something if it makes them laugh and it rhymes.

Other than working I’ve been running on the beach lately, which is combined with tide pool gazing and beachcombing. There are a series of rocky points along the beach with sandy stretches or flattened rocks in between. At a few of the points the sea has carved arches out of the rocks with caves into the cliffs underneath. I’ve found crabs, snails and some small fish in the tide pools but not the abundance of animals I remember from the beaches in Manabi. Today when I was looking more closely at a new area I found one big chiton and thought that was more like I remember, so I searched a little more and found one sea hare grazing around in a pool. Sea hares basically look like big snails without their shells, only cuter. I was so excited to find it that I crouched down and said hi. Which is silly, of course, since the sea hare would clearly only speak Spanish.