Cozumel and Sea Turtle Rescue 2017

Tommy talking to Tony the Turtle before he got released

By Tom Neal
Bigfoot Trails Basecamp | Independent Adventure Media

Part of our August 2017 cruise adventure from New Orleans to Cozumel and Progreso.

We stepped off the ship in Cozumel with plans for two different excursions.

The ship offered a “Save a Sea Turtle” experience, and we had also found a private tour for a glass-bottom boat and snorkeling over one of the beautiful reefs.

Only one of those plans really mattered in the end.

We met up with the bus for the Save a Sea Turtle experience.

Holy crap.

This was a MUST DO if you’re going to Cozumel, and it ended up being the highlight of the whole trip for me.

I would like to sell everything I own, move to Playa del Carmen, catch the ferry to Cozumel a couple times a week, and volunteer with these guys helping save turtles!

There were about 20–25 people on the bus. We were broken into smaller groups, and each group was assigned a nest.

Then we went to work.

We dug through the nest looking for the poor little stragglers who couldn’t dig their way up to the top and get out to sea during the night.

Some turtles get turned around. Some get trapped. Some just don’t have the strength to finish the job.

When we found them, we placed them in a basket and carried them down near the water so we could set them free.

We also dug out the eggs from the nest. We counted the eggs that had hatched, the ones that hadn’t, and even uncovered eggs from previous years. The information they collect matters because it helps the organization understand how many turtles are being laid, how many hatch, and how successful the nests are.

That day, the tour group rescued 40 baby sea turtles.

Our family rescued nine of them alone.

What a feeling.

It’s hard to explain. You just have to do it.

You don’t really “save” them. You remove the obstacle that kept them from getting out, then let nature take over.

Watching those little guys waddle their little asses down through the sand toward the water, then get washed out to sea to swim and play for the next 150 or so years was just freaking awesome.

That alone made the entire cruise worth doing.

The rest of the tour took us through a “Mayan Village,” which, to me, seemed pretty pathetically staged and cheesy just to get the attention of tourists.

We survived it.

After the bus dropped us back off at the dock and mall, we caught a cab over to El Cid Beach Resort, where we were supposed to meet up with our glass-bottom snorkeling boat.

Apparently, there had been a miscommunication about where we were supposed to meet at the hotel, so we never got out on that boat.

Normally, that might have pissed me off.

Instead, we met a wonderful lady named Carla Blanco with Snorkel Adventure.

Carla had a boat out on a tour that was due back soon. She was kind enough to get us reserved and then sent us into the hotel to get some food.

Technically, we weren’t really supposed to be there because we weren’t guests of the resort, but we had Carla’s approval.

Thanks, Carla!

The boat still hadn’t returned by the time we finished eating, so we walked back down to the dock where Carla was waiting.

We eventually figured out that the boat was going to get back way too late for us to make the trip and still get back to our ship before it left.

So we called it.

No big deal.

Instead, we spent some time playing around at the resort, jumping off the pier—which was about a 15-foot drop—and talking with Carla and her daughter.

The snorkeling trip never happened.

And honestly, it didn’t matter.

The turtle experience had already given us something we never expected when we stepped off that ship that morning.

That’s one of the things I’ve learned about traveling.

Trips rarely go exactly as planned.

Sometimes the thing you planned falls apart, and something completely different ends up being the part you remember.

For me, Cozumel wasn’t about the snorkeling trip.

It was about digging through the sand, finding nine tiny turtles that couldn’t make it out on their own, and watching them make their way toward the ocean.

Everything else was just noise.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Neal is the founder of Bigfoot Trails Basecamp, an independent adventure media project built around real experiences. He’s spent most of his life around vehicles, motorcycles, racing, travel, and projects that tend to take longer and cost more than originally planned.

After decades of doing all that stuff, he’s learned that the best stories usually aren’t the ones you planned. They’re the people you meet, the places you stumble across, the things that go wrong, and the moments you never expected.

That’s what he wants to capture with BTB.

He doesn’t want to write about adventure from the outside. He wants to go experience it, then tell you what happened.

Bigfoot Trails Basecamp | Independent Adventure Media

Run lil dudes, run!

Setting the turtle in the basket before the big release