Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory

It's been awhile since I went to Louisville to do lots of baseball, bourbon, and cave related things. But I also went to the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory. As any good baseball fan, it was kind of fun to geek out over bats being made, especially for players I've seen in action. And if you know me in real life, you know I have an addiction to baseball and baseball accessories.

The museum is really cool, and they have a lot of fun bits of history. Like bats that belonged to Babe Ruth, and Joe DiMaggio, and the 2011 World Series Champion St Louis Cardinals. You can't take pictures in the factory part, but it was really cool to see how the bats get shaped, stamped, and painted. If you are in the area and like baseball, I definitely recommend checking it out!

The largest bat I've ever seen... outside the museum

George signed it?

St Louis Cardinals' bats

Gotta love the Great Bambino

Working in a Costa Rican sea turtle hatchery

This is a guest post by the always lovely JR, my companion on many adventures, including: Acadia National Park, baseball at Fenway, weekend trip to Austin, and Costa Rica! While we were in Costa Rica, she worked a shift in the sea turtle hatchery at the research station, and I asked her to write about the experience. Enjoy!

One evening, volunteers were in short supply so RV and I got split up and I volunteered for hatchery duty to spare my poor blistered toes for an evening! I was paired with M, who was a newly arrived 19yo from Germany. She was staying at the station for two weeks and then was volunteering in a hospital in Costa Rica for four weeks after that.

If you were not patrolling, or had the night off, you were in the hatchery. Shifts in the hatchery were from 6pm to midnight or midnight to 6am, so a little longer than patrolling. The hatchery is a large fenced in area above high tide, but below the berm. The area is twice as long as it is wide, its situated parallel to the water’s edge, and it is divided into a grid of squares. Whenever they found a turtle on patrol, the eggs would be collected and brought directly to the nursery where they would be buried in a surrogate next. The nests started at the southern corner and were placed every other grid square to make sure you didn’t accidentally dig into the neighboring nest when you were digging the hole. When RV and I first got there, 49 nests had been saved, which filled up two full rows and started on the third!

the hatchery, in daylight

During a shift at the hatchery, there were three main duties: Deterring poachers from visiting the hatchery with our mere presence while patrolling the 200m of beach closest to the hatchery every 30 min and chasing off any predators trying to get into the nests every 45 min. Now 200m of the beach is not that far, but we would be slightly remiss if we did not find any turtle coming ashore to next that close to the hatchery! And the beach in the area of the hatchery had actually had quite a bit of turtle action, so it was better safe to patrol it since we had the time to do it while on shift at the hatchery. As for chasing off the predators, it was essentially sand crabs trying to burrow into the nests to eat the eggs. So with the aid of a red lighted head lamp and a good stick, you had to chase the crabs away and fill in any holes that they had started to dig. And some of these crabs were not small! They were pretty quick and would wave their claws up at you angrily if they got cornered! If you can picture the crabs on the pipes from Finding Nemo, you can pretty much get the idea! Creepy, but kind of funny at the same time!

nest covers, to deter crabs/insects/evil things

So you think you would be pretty busy? Wrong. It takes 6 min to patrol the beach and about 12 min to check all the nests, so you had 20 minute breaks left open to sit in your lawn chair and chat with your shift buddy, or enjoy the sound of the waves or stare at the moon and stars….and struggle to stay awake! It’s easy in the beginning; you find plenty to talk about, but its 6 hours…the conversation will die down, unfortunately. Unless you’re a talker…I, however, am not!

As boring as the task may be and no matter how sleepy you may get, it is not a job to slack at! You and your shift buddy are there to ensure that these little eggs make it through the night (well, as much as we had control over, anyways)! Poaching is a serious threat to sea turtles on the Costa Rican coast and every nest that is brought to the hatchery, and not taken by poachers, is helping them survive! Poachers would walk by, everyone knows their poachers, but nothing can be done unless they are caught red handed by the Coast Guard, which can’t patrol the beaches every night. There are 50-100+ eggs in each leatherback sea turtle nest, and 53 nests the night I was on hatchery duty, so we were watching over approximately 2650-5000 eggs! Now granted, not all eggs are viable and only a portion of the eggs even hatch, but I am a firm believer that every little bit helps! --JR

one more hatchery photo!

It starts like a horror movie, but ends with sea turtles

This is a post about my recent trip to Costa Rica!

It's day #1 in Costa Rica, and JR & I are about to embark on the journey to Pacuare for a week of sea turtle volunteering. The organization we are volunteering with has an office in San Jose, where we are headed for orientation/introductions. So we get up, check out of the hostel, and K the hostel driver gives us a ride to the address. But it's not really an address, it's more like "go 200 meters north of this really vague location, then go 50 meters east of that, then there's a green house." On the way there, K has to pull over, call someone, and proceed to get what I can only imagine are more specific and/or descriptive directions to a place with no address. We do eventually get there, and K heads on his merry way.

We meet D, aka the welcoming committee. He shows us a presentation about the project at Pacuare, and about sea turtles in general. It was pretty informative and complete with lots of color glossy photographs with circles and arrows (but no paragraph on the back of each one). At this point I was getting really excited to see sea turtles, even at 7am, and looking forward to the upcoming adventures. After our orientation, we find an ATM where we get more colones for the trip, and then head to the bus station (via taxi) to get our 9am bus to Bataan. Once we are in Bataan, we will meet a rastafarian man at an ice cream shop near a soccer field. We think that seems pretty obvious, so we head out.

At the bus station about to head to Bataan

At the bus station, we buy our tickets to Bataan, and it costs 2880 colones, which is roughly $5. Pretty cheap for a 2 hour bus ride! The ride is pretty, and passes through mountains, and is pretty quiet. The random stops are not labeled, so each one is a guessing game of "is this Bataan?" Turns out the bus route ends in Bataan so that ended up being fairly easy! When we do get to Bataan, we aren't sure that we're in the right place but the rasta man finds us, and he knows my name, so he must be the right guy. 

There's another volunteer meeting rasta man, now named R, and she's also from the States. So the 3 of us (me, JR, and our new friend T) wait in the ice cream shop while R fetches the taxi. We watch Animal Planet en espanol, while we pretend to ignore this guy who is being weird, and wait for R to return. He does return, in a pickup truck that we assume is the "taxi", but really looks like a buddy of his with a truck. They seem nice, so we throw our backpacks in the bed of the truck and hop in. Besides, they knew my name without asking so somebody did tell them we were coming and it's not just a random guy trying to steal us. Right?

Exhibit A: Things you don't tell your mom about #1

Off we go, without so much as a word, and head to this boat launch we've heard about to begin the water transportation part of our journey. We end up on this super bumpy gravel road and ride for about 30 minutes. We pass a LOT of bananas (yum) and people walking and enjoy seeing Costa Rica from the back of a random pickup truck. It is a random pickup truck, and a totally bizarre situation for 3 inexperienced girls from the States, but we figure there's 3 of us and they seem nice so we'll be fine. Eventually, we arrive at the boat launch, and get ready for the boat ride to the project. 

On the boat at the launch, before the ride to the project

The boat seems mostly water tight, and is a pretty blue color, and R seems to know what he's doing so we just hang out and wait while they prepare the boat for the ride. They tell us its a 45 minute boat ride, which isn't so bad since I always spend time on boats, and it's a totally new environment, and that's always exciting!  Once we're on the boat, and R gets us moving, we head down these canals and eventually into a river. 

Canal in Pacuare

on Rio Pacuare, with R in the background & happiness in the foreground

After 45 minutes, we do arrive at the project. It's really a dirt docking area with a small wooden dock, and cool looking structures nearby. One of the research assistants, D, meets us at the water edge. She seems really nice and welcomes us to the project. She shows us around, we drop off our bags, check out the not-so-bath-or-room bathroom, and get settled in. We arrive around 1 so we've missed lunch at this point and are pretty hungry, but there's not much we can do at that point about it. So we set up our mosquito nets on the bunks and get ready for our patrol training at 4pm. 

My bunk at the project

The common area has 6 hammocks and several picnic tables, so we head to there and read for awhile. There's random people napping in hammocks, and wandering around, and going to/from the beach. Nobody really says much to us, but I later realize that it's just the nature of the project. Everyone comes and everyone goes and nobody really makes a big fuss over new people. So we sit, and read, and relax, and then we have patrol training. 

Patrol training is quite literally training for the night patrols. We go over protocols for light usage (don't do it), camera usage (don't do it), and clothing choices (always dark clothes). Then, using the model leatherback turtle, D shows us how a nesting turtle is processed. In this case processing means collecting the data, eggs, and measurements from the turtle. They PIT tag the turtles, which is really common technology in fisheries, but everyone is in awe of how cool it is. We also get a tour of the facilities, complete with a rescue center that has a hawksbill sea turtle in it. 

concrete leatherback, smaller than average size

Dinner is around 6pm, and it's delicious. Mostly because the lady was a wonderful cook, but also because we were starving. So we totally devour the food (or at least I did). Our patrol shift meets at 730, and we're supposed to be going with a guide + a research assistant. After dinner we go back to our room, relax, and then at 730 we meet at the picnic tables, which is where all patrols meet. There's two guys sitting there, waiting for volunteers. The project uses local guys to lead volunteer groups & research assistants up and down the beach, because they are used to the conditions, know the beach, and know each other so they are full of valuable information. Our guide for the night is V, and we've been told he speaks no English. And I only speak minimal Spanish, so that's a challenge. The research assistant that is supposed to join us doesn't show, and at 745 our guide V just says "vamos chicas!" 

So what do we do? Naturally, we follow V off into the darkness down the beach. Naturally. 

It was weird, following a random guy because he said "vamos chicas", but I feel like everything and everyone was who they said they were, so we must be fine. Surely some random guy that has nothing to do with the project didn't conveniently know exactly what time to show up to whisk us away to the darkness. Right? 

The patrol shift we were on is the longest stretch. It requires a long (2-3km) walk to the edge of our beach section, plus several kilometers of back and forth patrol in our section, and then the long walk back to the research station. It's a really long walk, in sand, in the dark, and when we were already pretty tired, but we definitely power through it because we might spot sea turtles!

Mid-April is leatherback nesting season, so we've been told that's mostly (if not all) of the species we will see. Leatherbacks are massive, and the idea of seeing such a large turtle is really exciting to me. They are harder to see than you would think, especially under the cover of mostly darkness. We walk for awhile, and pass a few poachers, and eventually we stumble upon a disturbance in the sand. 

The disturbance is the trail of a nesting leatherback! 

different turtle trail, but this is what the disturbance around a nest looks like

She was huge. And we watched her for 20 minutes move up the beach, dig around, scoop sand, move some more, readjust... and then not nest. She decided this place wasn't going to work for whatever reason, and then made her way back into the sea. 

We ended up seeing 2 more turtles that night as well. The second one wasn't in our section, but was nearby, so we walked over. She was laying, but a poacher had beaten the research team there. The poachers & researchers have an agreement: whoever gets there first gets the eggs, but the researchers can take measurements, tag the turtle, and collect other data for any turtles. So for that turtle, the poacher got there first so he got the eggs, but the research team still got to measure and tag the turtle. The third turtle we saw was on our way back, at like 1am, as we were rushing down the beach trying to beat the thunderstorm back. We walked right up on her, but she either didn't lay or it had already been poached, so we continued back. 

We were so excited to see a leatherback on our first night, let alone 3! It was positively amazing. Totally worth the crazy taxi-bus-boat ride and all the walking. It was a crazy day, and a crazier night, and an absolutely phenomenal experience. 

Costa Rica 2013

I started to write way more informative posts, but I wanted to first put together a summary of our recent trip to Costa Rica!!

We landed in San Jose, Costa Rica, on a Wednesday. I got in several hours before JR, so I hung out at the airport and enjoyed not being on a plane. I also got really hungry, got hassled by cab drivers, explored all the available bathrooms, and understood about 2.7% of what was being said around me. JR arrives (yay!) and we locate a wonderful bench to wait for K, the hostel driver, to come get us.

at the airport still but excited to see each other!

The next morning we begin a week as sea turtle volunteers. It starts with a visit to a green house with a turtle on it, then continues on this weird journey that involves a bus ride through the mountains, a random ice cream store, a "taxi" ride in a pickup truck, a new friend, a boat ride, monkeys, and eventually arrival at the project!  More on that soon, don't worry. 

on the trek to Pacuare

The research station was really cool. There were several cabins to stay in, and JR and I had half of one to ourselves. The cabins are really just rooms with bunk beds. The bathrooms are separate from the other structures, and contain neither baths or rooms (or real walls). However, outdoor showers are totally the best so it was great. Since it's basically an island, there's no electricity and only minimal lighting for the outside eating area. Everything worked off of solar panels, and it was basically like camping but with a really saggy bed instead of hard ground. The beach though was gorgeous!

Pacuare beach

Patrols were pretty exciting. It's 4+ hours every night of walking the beach, which is a challenge because its sandy and its night time. We conveniently (and accidentally) planned our trip during a full moon so we had really good visibility most nights. The first night though was super dark, and it was just me, JR, and D our local guide who spoke zero English. So that was a pretty interesting first night. However we did see 3 leatherback sea turtles that night, so it totally paid off to follow him into the darkness just because he said "vamos chicas." 

Sunrise on Pacuare beach after a late night patrol

The research crew was great. They were helpful and welcoming and really fun. The other volunteers were really cool too, and from all over the world. Also it was almost primarily women volunteering/working, which I was surprised by. Women from the UK, Australia, Germany, the States (mostly just me & JR), Spain, the Canary Islands... It was a good mix. Most of the other volunteers were there for weeks, which I think would have been too much time for me. It was really great spending a week there, and it was VERY relaxing hanging out in a hammock in the off time, but I get too bored with the same thing everyday for too much time. 

Although this hammock was awesome. 

After a week on the project, we headed back to San Jose. We were satisfied with our efforts to help save sea turtles, tired of eating rice & beans, and ready to see more parts of Costa Rica. Our finals 2.5 days we explored San Jose, took a really awesome (and super long) day trip to the Arenal area, and went zip lining. 

teaser photo of Arenal

Also we saw a sloth. Costa Rica is great! Next time I go (and there will be a next time) I want to go to the Pacific coast and spend more time in the Arenal/Monteverde area. Definitely need some cloud forest time on my next trip!

Back in the States and all about baseball!

I had a GREAT time in Costa Rica! There will be many posts about it. For now though I'm busy cheering on my LSU Tigers baseball team! More posts soon!