Salty Air and Sea Turtles

By Kelly Palmateer

The heart-warming individuals in the yoga retreat that I traveled with, and myself, worked closely with the volunteers of each of the programs. The passion and determination these volunteers had was inspiring. For six days, we walked the beach every morning at sunrise to look for turtle tracks to new nests that had been dug the night before. And we found a lot! We would measure the width of the tracks to determine which type of sea turtle it was, because believe it or not, there are many different kinds of sea turtles. We would then study the nest and set a marker next to it with the date in order to keep track of when presumably those cute little hatchlings will want to come out. After we found all of the nests from the night before, our volunteering was put on pause and we were able to sit back and enjoy the magic this mesmerizing island has to offer. We spent our days doing yoga and snorkeling under the pier, swimming among hawksbill and green turtles in the crystal clear waters. We also went for an incredible hike up to an old lighthouse with a view that was simply indescribable.

Most days as the sun would set into the Caribbean Sea, we would have a sunset yoga session on the sand. The tranquility we felt as the sun set and the calm waves would roll in, will never be surpassed. After the sun would set every evening – and as a side note, the sunsets from the West end of the island are some for the books, by far some of the most spectacular sunsets I have ever seen – so after the sun would set, we would prepare to walk the beach for a couple hours in the dark, hopeful to see one or two, or even three sea turtles appear from the turquoise waters and make their way up the dunes to begin digging. We thought we almost saw a few every night, but when we got closer to what we thought was the sea turtle, we learned it was just a shadow of a rock just underneath the shoreline. We were disappointed many times, unfortunately. We never did see a sea turtle come up to the beach at night, but what we witnessed one night at sunset was life changing. As we finished one of our sunset yoga sessions, we got a signal from one of the volunteers that one of the nests was actually hatching! We all ran quickly over to the nest to see what was going on. It didn’t seem that much was going on when we arrived at the nest, but within minutes, the sand in the middle of the nest began to bubble and move around and then – a baby sea turtle head popped up through the sparkling grains of sand. It was a miracle if I have ever seen one.