It’s hard to know me and not know about my obsession with sea turtles. If a turtle can be found, I’m on it for some turtle bonding time. My interest started young – I had a pair of turtles growing up…then a pair of stuffed animal sea turtles when my mom got fed up with turtles crawling around the house – but the turning point really came a couple years ago when I went snorkeling in St Thomas. Our guide took us to a sea turtle grazing patch – and I was sold. I spent that day snorkeling around and chasing turtles. I liked them so much they even had the honour of being my first blog post subject ever on GeckoGo.
So here I am obsessed with turtles and trying to find the next logical step to turtle nirvana. How much closer can you get than snorkeling and diving? I started digging and realized that it would be possible to volunteer with sea turtle conservation agencies. At these places you can get right up close, help ‘em out, and if you’re super duper lucky, be there to release the hatchlings into the water!
Score!
This was something that was just going to have to happen sometime.
And of course that some time wasn’t going to be right then so I filed away this possibility in my mind and forgot about it.
Fast forward a few months and I get a message for Alexia – i-to-i was organizing a trip to showcase one of their most popular volunteer trips and were inviting people to go spend a week in Costa Rica to work with sea turtles. Would l like to come?
Would I?!
A quick word about i-to-i. Founded in 1994, i-to-i is a UK based company, and one of the largest voluntourism organizations around the world. They started out doing TEFL certification and added on volunteer travel. They now offer trips in 30 different countries around the world, including sea turtle conservation in Costa Rica, working with lions in South Africa, working with the community and children in Sri Lanka, building homes in Honduras and more.
So let’s get to the trip.
