Week 23: Road Trip to Salvador Bahia, Day 3: Arembepe

We found a home to rent from an American through the website Vacation Rentals By Owner, and website run by Homeway.com. The home was located on a beautiful, practically private beach in a gate community, and we were very pleased with the location and the price. With our family of eight, it is often hard to find suitable, let alone affordable rooms, at a hotel, and we have found some nice places in good locations through these websites.

After two long days of travel, we decided to stay put and enjoy the beach. The only thing we really had to do that day is do some grocery shopping. The thing we should have done was put on more sunscreen before spending hours out in the sun.

One of the reasons we decided to visit Salvador at this time of the years was to be able to see the baby sea turtles. January is in the middle of the hatching season, and at several locations along the beach we saw PVC poles marking the locations of nests. Every night, we looked out over our beach to see any hatchlings making their way to the ocean, but never saw them.

A few minutes after we started playing in the sand and catching little crabs and searching for shells, when Abby came running up saying she found a turtle. Of course, I didn't believe her because it was the wrong time of the day, and it just couldn't happen. Well, the little turtle she found must have been late out of the nest and had been injured by a bird. We cleaned it up, made sure that everyone got to hold it, and then we took down to the water and let the waves take it out to sea.

That afternoon, we went to Arembepe, a small beach town just a few minutes drive from our house. There we went grocery shopping and visited the Projeto Tamar facility and visitor's center. Projeto Tamar has locations all along the Brazilian coast tracking and preserving sea turtle nesting sites and feeding areas.

For us, it was interesting seeing the exhibits and comparing the various sizes and types of sea turtles. The highlight of the visit was definitely the hatchlings. Every evening during the hatching season, the workers at the Projeto Tamar stations release a batch of hatchlings that were rescued from a nest. These turtles had not made it out with the rest of their siblings during the night. The rescue and public education efforts of Projeto Tamar have led to an increase in the numbers of nests and numbers of turtles going to sea over the last 25 or so years.

We returned that evening for the releasing of that days hatchlings. Those little guys make a direct line towards the ocean. They are determined and struggled through obstacles like human footprints. It's amazing that something as big as a sea turtle can start out so small.

We also observed them opening a nest. The remaining turtles and eggs were counted. The ones that survived were then released to crawl down to the ocean. Later in the week, we visited the larger Projeto Tamar facility in Praia de Forte, but we preferred the more intimate and personal environment and smaller crowds at the Arembepe station.