A TEENAGER will spend one month back-packing with her mum on a mission to save sea turtles.

Lucy Baker, 18, and her mum Jane Baker, 50, from Hatfield Peverel, will spent the time volunteering in Costa Rica trying to protect the endangered species.

Miss Baker, who studied media at Colchester Sixth Form College, was given a place at Brighton University but decided she wanted to have a year out globe-trotting.

She said: "I knew I wanted to do something adventurous and different before furthering my education and when I saw this I thought it was right for me. "Costa Rica definitely seems like a good place to start discovering the wider world.

“At first I was planning to go with a group of friends, but they opted to go on to uni so I was all prepared to travel out there on my own.

“Then mum suddenly said that she’d like to come along too. I thought she was joking but I soon realised she was serious.

"She turned 50 this year and wants to do something special to mark the milestone."

Miss Baker, who works as a sales assistant at Roman in Newlands Shopping Centre, and mum Ms Baker, a self-employed CAD technician, will be tasked with carrying out night patrols of Costa Rican beaches monitoring nesting sea turtles, protecting their eggs from destruction by predatory wildlife or poachers, and helping with environmental and ecotourism projects.