Spend three nights at Pacuare Nature Reserve. Trips depart from San Jose and go by car through rugged Baulio National Park. The next three nights, dinners are by candlelight against the backdrop of the rolling Caribbean Sea. Each night you'll join researchers in their patrols for leatherback turtles. During nesting season, your job is to walk the beach looking for a leatherbacks laying eggs. When you find one, you'll wait with the researcher until the turtle is done laying eggs. Then, you'll have the chance to approach the turtle and assist in measuring and tagging it before the giant leatherback returns to the sea.

Turtle egg poachers are a major threat to the survival of leatherbacks, so your next job is to carefully dig up the eggs and rebury them in another location so poachers cannot find the nest. When the turtles begin to hatch later in the season, you'll have the chance to observe dozens and sometimes hundreds of baby leatherbacks scratching their way to the surface and making their way into the surf. Don't imagine that this is a beautiful sight to observe! Hatchlings at the top of a nest often pack the sand below them so that their siblings cannot escape to the surface. This means that in the morning you might be invited to play midwife to these trapped baby turtles. By loosening the sand in certain nests, you allow hatchlings at the bottom a chance to escape to the sea to begin their lives. While the leatherbacks are hatching, 250 pound green turtles come to these same beaches to lay their eggs, and visitors will be out searching for these turtles, measuring, tagging, and hiding the nests of these endangered turtles too.

The trip includes an afternoon boat trip through the adjacent canals and into the reserve's primary rainforest. The days are free to relax or walk along the beach and trails. You return to San Jose by car after a late breakfast on Day 4.