Pictures of Zakynthos click me!

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these aren't mine obviously

one turtle nest!

this morning one of our groups found a turtle nest on Sekania beach! the previous day there had been turtle tracks on the beach but no nest. meaning some turtle was scouting out the beach for a nesting location. Sekania beach is a really nice beach that the World Wildlife Foundation bought from Greece. Can't remember if i'm repeating myself!
anyho it's the nicest one on the island and no one local or tourist is allowed on it. i have a picture of all the garbage we collected of it.
so now that we have turtles starting to nest we will be beginning our evening turtle surveys where a select few of us will be trained in how to tag turtles. i'm half hoping i'll get to do this but on the other hand the shifts are from 11pm to 4 am which is not so cool.

i've volunteered to be a leader for the morning surveys. i'll take a group with me a to a beach that i will be responsible for, and measure locations and record turtle nests.

today i saw 2 turtles from the beach. Laganas gets a lot of turtles that come and hang out in the warm shallow bay. Mel and I told some tourists off for following the turtle in the water and then one of them tried to convince us that she hadn't been following the turtle when she clearly was. She was just embarrased that we told her off when there were so many other people around. very annoying. i'm not swimming in after someone to try to stop them.

we also had some British guy say he wanted to know about the turtles when he so obviously was just trying to hit on us (or more Mel, she's the tall, blonde Aussie) he wanted our number at the camp but we have no phones, so he gave us his.

The other day, one of the volunteers got summoned over and then asked if she could put suntan lotion on this 300 lbs lady because the lady couldn't reach. i lauged and laughed when she told me about it. people think we're full service and being paid to be there.

one local guy told me that there are no turtles here and that he knows what our group is up to. that we're just here to party (which isn;t far from the truth about some of the people at camp) but i was offended. he was pretty rude. and i hadn't even bothered to give him the turtle spiel, i'd just asked what time it was as he was leaving the beach cause i knew my shift was almost over. Greek people don;t understand the concept of volunteering and why we;d come here for free.

we had a big bbq last night at camp. it was pretty fun. Tim went all out and bought tons of food, beer and sangria. then the lot of us walked to one of the local bars where they were serving free sambuca shots. yuck. i really can;t stand that stuff anymore. ouzo and sambuca are always given out as shots here. they're both so deathly sweet.

tomorrow i was scheduled to go on an all day boat tour and sell turtle merchandise and give a slide show presentation but the boat has broken down. Michi, the presentation organizer was going to put me on another beach patrol shift but i protested. i'm so sick of bloody beach patrol so i might get to go to another beach that i haven't been to yet and help her with some kids info event which sounds like fun. Gerikas looks amazing from the pictures i've seen. Julia and I are going to try to get the same day off next week and rent mountain bikes and bike there. it's a 40 min drive so not sure how long it'll take. we're looking forward to it.