Drugs, guns…and eggs?
“She’s got eggs!” shouted the police officer behind mirrored aviators from the bow of the boat. Dressed in dark blue SWAT-style fatigues, the officer held up a wet, woven plastic sack at arm’s length.
I was in one of the three water taxis departing Tortuguero, Costa Rica at 11:30 a.m. which were all stopped mid-stream. Blocking the river was a boat named “Tiburón,” shark in English, manned by six, dead-serious officers. A far cry from the police you usually see walking around the capital in uniforms two sizes too big, these five men and one woman wore a well-trained air as well as uniforms that fit. Jumping onto each vessel, the officers went through every bag on the boat.
All passengers were cooperative and quiet. Before the eggs were discovered, a man in his fifties had asked what the officers were looking for. The response: “Drugs, guns and eggs.”
The woman was smuggling protected American green sea turtle eggs, a species which is just finishing its nesting season in Tortuguero. Elegantly dressed in a red sequined tank and black pants, the woman sat quietly. Her twenty-something son called out from the back of the boat in English: “Ask them why you are being arrested.” (Many locals on Costa Rica’s Caribbean speak Creole English.) The officer pointed at the bag and then motioned for her to get into their boat.
Silent, she looked back at her son who was holding a small child wrapped in a white blanket and then stepped into the “Tiburón.” The police boat’s captain was the only officer without shades. His whitish skin pulled tight against his angular jaw. A crew cut was visible from underneath his black cap which read “POLICE” in yellow. With thin pursed lips, the captain stood tall and clenched his clipboard while he wrote down the name and ID number of the water taxi driver.
The boats separated and we continued down the river. Nobody spoke a word about the incident, not even a whisper.
In some areas of Costa Rica such as Playa Ostional, limited harvest of sea turtle eggs is allowed for local consumption. In many cultures, as people will explain to you in Ostional, sea turtle eggs are considered an aphrodisiac. Read about my visit to Playa Ostional and the olive ridley sea turtle politics.
Find out how to travel to Tortuguero, Costa Rica on you own and on a budget here.
