Mexico // Volunteering at the Sea Turtle Sanctuary in Chiapas

A couple of years ago we were backpacking through Mexico in search of a unique experience, something out of the ordinary travel itinerary. We had heard about a place in Chiapas, just across the border from Oaxaca, where volunteers are invited to help at the local sea turtle sanctuary.

This seemed a perfect opportunity for us to do something we had never done before, so we hopped on a night bus from the beautiful colonial town of Oaxaca to the small fishing town of Puerto Arista.

Puerto Arista

Puerto Arista isn’t really what you’d call a spectacular town, but that wasn’t what we had come for. After a good look around town – which took us literally 2 minutes :) – we grabbed a delicious breakfast at one of the local restaurants on the beach before heading out to the sea turtle sanctuary. To get to the sanctuary we had to hike a good half hour along the coast until we saw a sign that said ‘Santuario Playa Puerto Arista’.

Puerto Arista Sea Turtle Sanctuary

At the time there was only one employee working at the Puerto Arista Sea Turtle Sanctuary, a young Mexican whose name we’ve forgotten after all these years so to make things easier we’ll call him Pablo for now ;). Pablo explained us that the sanctuary was built to increase the baby sea turtles chances of survival.

Every year hundreds of sea turtles lay their eggs on the beaches of Puerto Arista, and once a new nest has been discovered the eggs were brought to the sanctuary and put about 25 cm (10 inches) deep in the sand.

There were hundreds of turtle nests at the sanctuary, and as soon as one little sea turtle stuck its head out from the sand that was the signal for Pablo to start digging out the rest of the nest.

Baby Sea Turtles

Once every single turtle from the nest was dug out, they were gathered inside the sanctuary together with their buddies that were born earlier that day.

Apparently sea turtles have an excellent sense of direction, because as soon as they’re born they instinctively head out to sea, no matter if they can see it or not. So when all the turtles were together in the little shack, they somehow knew where the ocean was and anxiously climbed on top of each other trying to get into the water as quickly as they could.

But the show didn’t start until the sun started setting! Then, our turn had finally come to help out. We loaded all the newborns in large buckets and wheelbarrowed them towards the ocean. At first we were gently unloading the turtles one by one but after a little encouragement by Pablo we were soon pouring bucketloads of baby sea turtles on the beach. These little guys are resilient!

Finally released from their one-day-captivity they all started crawling happily towards the sea. Thanks to the sanctuary’s efforts and our little contribution many of these little sea turtles get a bigger chance of survival as the journey from the nest to the ocean can be a tricky one (seagulls consider them quite the delicacy…).

In combination with a beautiful Mexican sunset it also made for an awesome photo opportunity! We almost couldn’t resist taking one of these cuties along with us on our trip through Mexico :)