This was my first workaway, and overall, it one of the best experiences of my life. It was quite literally life-changing. I met some incredible people, witnessed the beauty of Mother Nature every day, grew emotionally, spiritually, and in so many other ways, and got to spend a month in paradise. Nancy is quite an interesting person, and although
… read more we may share some contrary opinions, she is very generous and kind. If you need anything, whether it be equipment for the turtles or just fresh fruit, you can talk to her and she will do her best to accommodate. She's also got some interesting stories!
I will start with the good stuff, and then mention the not so good stuff, and finish on a good note. So here goes...
- Help: The help itself is not tedious, apart from walking in the sand a lot, so keep that in mind for your knees. It depends on the night, so some nights are really hectic, some nights are really slow. The most difficult thing is adjusting to the schedule. I would suggest trying to pick one task and stick with that, because it can be hard to get into a sleeping schedule. Other than that, how cool is it that your job is to walk on a beautiful beach at night and see sea turtles! The main thing you're doing is dealing with keeping the raccoons from killing too many of the baby turtles :'(
Edit: If you are there during hatching season, you may have to dig up and count the eggs after they have hatched, and that part is actually pretty tedious.
- Food: Food was delicious. The kitchen staff at the bar/restaurant make the meals for you, so it's great. However our meals had too much potatoes, cheese, and bread/dough for my liking. The good thing is, the kitchen guys are more than willing to accept requests or suggestions for the meals, so really I can't complain. Very nice guys, especially Josecito :D Also, sometimes you'll get fresh fruit from Nancy's ranch.
- Accommodation: The description of accommodation is fairly accurate. I was content. Just remember there will always be sand EVERYWHERE and the wifi was pretty unreliable at times.
- Location: An AMAZING location. You literally go downstairs from your room and you're on the beach (and not just any old beach, but a really beautiful beach). While there's not much in the immediate area besides the bar and houses, it's not that hard to take a collectivo (public transport) to go to Tulum or other places in the Riviera Maya. And it's not too far of a walk if you want to go to some less public beaches for a little breather and some alone time.
- Free time: You will have lots of free time. You probably will have a few chores to do during the day, but apart from that and your night shifts you have plenty of time. Snorkeling was probably my favorite thing...I saw so many cool fish. And the reef is literally so close to where you stay. Nancy is kind enough to let you borrow her snorkeling equipment, and if it's available the kayaks too! And of course, you can just enjoy chilling on the beach. The sunsets and sunrises there are some of the most incredible I've ever seen!
- People: The people here are really lovely. There's a lot of movement in and around the bar, as it's a popular spot and it's on the beach, so of course not all the people you meet here are affiliated with the organization. But in general it's very good vibes here, and the people who work at Nancy's are all very lovely people.
Now for the not so good stuff...
- Organization and communication: The organization and communication at times is non-existent. Nancy is around, but in general was not as directly involved in the work when I was there. However as I mentioned, if you talk to her about an issue, she will do her best to address it.
There were two head volunteers who worked there long-term who were in charge of most of the operations. One of the volunteers organizes mostly the pre-arrivals stuff and the data input (she wasn't actually there due to a personal situation), and the other is on-site and is the main leader when you're there.
Before arriving, the communication was a little bit confusing but nothing I couldn't handle. But when I arrived, NO ONE apart from Nancy knew that I was coming. And this wasn't an isolated incident, the other volunteers who were there said that they shared a similar experience. Most of us arrived really not knowing what was going on and feeling a bit lost. I think that there needs to be a welcome procedure for new volunteers when they arrive.
The on-site head volunteer was a nice and generous guy, but after he "trained" me, I still had so many questions on how to do this. I basically had to get most of my information from either the internet, the other volunteers, or literally try to figure it out myself. Also, he would occasionally just disappear without telling us when he was coming back, and in general there wasn't a ton of communication between us. I also later discovered that there was actually a quite thorough training manual in the kitchen that was created by a marine biologist but no one ever showed it to us. I believe that a more structured training for all new volunteers would be extremely beneficial, and just in general more communication between the head volunteer and the rest of the team.
As I mentioned earlier, part of the help during hatching season is to dig up and count how many eggs hatched in each nest. However, we were not instructed to actually do this until basically more than a month into hatching season, so a good month of data was just not taken. And then afterwards, there really wasn't much follow-up on whether or not we were actually taking the data.
I could mention many other things, but I think you get the idea. As was mentioned in other comments, we the volunteers pretty much had to figure things out and decide things for ourselves. Sometimes this ended up being a beneficial thing, and we ended up being able to make it work for the most part, but personally I think there was a lot more that we could have done better.
Despite the challenges of organization, I still think you can have an incredible experience here because the other aspects are really amazing. I hope that they will start to improve the organization and communication, but my suggestion would be just prepare to be very independent. You may have to take a lot of initiative if you really care about the job and be able to make decisions on your own. I myself had to take initiative and responsibility for a plethora of things because I cared about the project and they wouldn't have gotten done otherwise.
I want to finish by just saying that if you love animals, you will LOVE this experience. And even if you don't love animals, you will probably have a new appreciation for animals after this. Witnessing a mother turtle laying her nest is honestly a spiritual experience, and there is SO much joy in being able to watch 100 baby sea turtles scramble for the ocean with so much vigor and life.
Thank you Nancy for the opportunity!
Eco Projects
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Life at a Farmstay
General Maintenance
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Creating/ Cooking family meals
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