In search of sea turtles, ancient Aztec gyrogliphs and good food!

Today five couples formed a convoy for a trip about 60 miles north of Mazatlan. Our first destination was La Tortuga Marina at Playa La Cueta, a beautiful virgin beach. And yes, that large building in the photo is designed and painted to resemble a large turtle. La Tortuga Marina is a sea turtle sanctuary where baby sea turtles are hatched. It was closed when we got there, but someone evidently sighted our group, because the Mexican attendant came racing down the beach on a four-wheeler, opened the building and gave us a tour of the small facility. In Spanish, and with a lot of sign language and show and tell, he explained the process. To protect the eggs from predators, they are harvested from the beach where hundreds of adult turtles come to bury them out of reach of the tides. The egg-laying adults leave tracks in the sand, making it easy to find the eggs. After the eggs are retrieved, they are buried in sand-filled Styrofoam coolers until they hatch.
The attendant then took a cooler with about 30 four-day-old turtles and we headed to the beach where he asked us to line up parallel to the surf, and gave each of us a baby to release into the ocean. “How cool is that?” we thought, as we watched them enter the water for the first time. Until we learned that only about three in 100 babies survive. Most become dinner for porpoise or large fish. No wonder some of them seemed reluctant to race into the water.

Heading back south, we stopped at Celestino Beach near the town of LaCruz to check out a newly opened RV park, Punta San Miguel. It is on a remote beach between two established RV parks and is quite nice. No nightlife, but a good place to stay if you are an avid reader and/or beachcomber.

It was now past noon and our thoughts turned to what we love to do----eat. And there just happened to be a great seafood restaurant in Dimas that was the perfect place (It’s name I don’t remember.) Larry had breaded shrimp and I ordered garlic shrimp. The were large and scrumptious. Since Mazatlan has the largest shrimp fleet in the world, shrimp are abundant here.
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Somehow we missed finding the gyrogliphs, so we’ll leave that for another day.