Lending a Hand In Playa Las Tortugas

Locals remember that as late as the 1970s, the beaches of Playa Las Tortugas would be littered with thousands of Olive Ridley and leatherback turtles each night during nesting season, which runs from July through November in that region.

But the creatures from the era of the dinosaurs were routinely slaughtered for their meat and their shells, their eggs sold as aphrodisiacs in bars. By the time the Mexican government banned turtle kills in 1990, it was almost too late.

Today, workers and volunteers who patrol a five-mile stretch of beach in front of the Playa Las Tortugas villas spot about 1,000 nests each season and gather about 100,000 eggs, most of them from Olive Ridley turtles. Flores Peregina says more research is needed, but he estimates that only 1 percent of the turtles released will survive to maturity. The Olive Ridley's lifespan is believed to be up to 60 years.

The camp is one of 48 official turtle camps in Mexico supported at least in part by the Mexican government; ecology groups patrol another 200 beaches sprinkled around the Pacific coast.

Flores Peregrina has been patrolling the beach for 15 years, at great personal sacrifice. For six months of the year, he lives, apart from his wife and two sons, in the rustic cinder-block building that is the primary structure at the turtle camp. Until 1999, when American developer Robert Hancock bought the property, the building where Flores Peregrina lived had no electricity or running water.

In the 1990s, when the Mexican government cut funding, Flores Peregrina nearly single-handedly saved the turtles of Playa Las Tortugas. He kept the station going by cutting and selling coconuts growing on Hancock's property. Today the station is funded by the government, by Hancock and by the Latin rock group Mana.

Flores Peregrina patrols from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. daily no matter the weather. Twice, he says, he's been hit by lightning. The first time his tongue was paralyzed for days and his whole body tingled, like an arm that's fallen asleep. The second time he couldn't sleep for three days; it was as if he had an internal battery that had been overcharged, he says.

Flores Peregrina survived, the property manager at Playa Las Tortugas told me, because he's doing God's work. He is a tortuguero -- a man who takes care of turtles.

I first meet him at 9 p.m. at the research station, where he and an assistant are waiting on the beach with about eight other visitors staying in the villas. (Neither tortuguero speaks English.)

Within minutes, Flores Peregrina spots an Olive Ridley sitting motionless just a few yards away. Although the Olive Ridley is considered a small sea turtle -- weighing up to 100 pounds, compared with the 1,000- to 2,000-pound leatherbacks -- it's nearly the size of a car tire.

We quietly walk along the shore behind the mother turtle, whose hard, shiny shell is colored various shades of rust. After a few minutes, Flores Peregrina motions us forward.

Won't this bother the turtle? A few minutes ago, yes, it would have, says Flores Peregrina. But she's already started laying her eggs. At that point, the turtle is in a "zone," and nothing will deter her from finishing the job she's swum hundreds and probably thousands of miles to accomplish. (This does not change the general advice that you should stay away from nesting turtles and seek them out only with a trained guide.)