Refugio Nacional Vida Silvestre Romelia

I whole experience full of nature, wildlife and plants. I spent three months in the refuge and I learnt a lot. We had some tasks during the day as clean trails, collect wood. And on the other side, the surveys of the proyects: turtles, bats, birds and mammals. Besides, the most beautiful sunrise :)

This experience was excellent, since the road to follow and transport across bus and a ferry, and later arrive at little town with friendly people. The place is beautiful in middle of the jungle and the beach, the staff is excellent, they are like a family for the volunteers and care them a lot. The sea turtle program was good and the volunteers can learned about this animals and others like the monkeys, coatis, insects, birds, iguanas, horses, plants, many things. My internship was a excellent adventure travel there, in Costa Rica here is my house. All the people of visit there will love this site!!

I was in Romelia from June to September, seeing the whole process of turtle season from building the hatchery, sifting sand for it, getting our first sea turtle nests, guarding the hatchery through the incubation period, and finally setting free the little baby tortuguitas! It was an amazing learning experience for conservation and for Spanish! I spent the whole three months speaking Spanish almost exclusively, which just made my heart soar. Romelia itself is a remote location, and getting used to living without immediate access to wifi or electricity or hot water is a challenge in the first couple of days, not know what to do with your time! But it's so easy to get accustomed to the slow and simple life, connecting with nature, having time to breathe and think -- you'll definitely miss it when you get back to life in the city! I was at Romelia for my own research project in addition to supporting sea turtle conservation. I worked on my Masters research on coastal pollution, collecting, organizing, and logging in a database some of the trash that washed up on the beach. Using that information, I made some posters and created a video to advocate through a public campaign. The staff and volunteers were wonderfully supportive and were more than willing to connect me to people in the region. We ended up participating in the International Coastal Cleanup, too! If you want to come as an intern, know that you can take control of your own project, whatever it may be, and you'll have people who will support you along the way.