Turtle Patrol

Day 79 of The Big Adventure.
I don’t even hear the family leave in the mornings anymore and sleep through until 8.30am.

I go across to turtle house to discover they have some chocolate cereal hidden on the top shelf and immediately pour myself a bowl.

I go back into the living room to eat it just as the other half of the group is returning, looking rather dishevelled, from Tigre Ruan. We all sit around and they say it’s great over there and that I’ll love it.

This mornings activity: turtle patrol. We get the boat back across to turtle bay and scour the sea for turtles. We had to swim around for a while before we saw some and Ramona managed to dive down and get some good photos of them. We had some time to kill before the boat took us back to the village so we all climbed aboard a floating raft and then jumped off. 

Then we got the boat back to the village and had lunch at a restaurant that basically had a few trays of food and you helped yourself buffet style. It was rather tepid and distinctly average food.

Then we decided to go to Mamma’s for another Mars bar shake – equally as good as yesterday’s, if not better. This one actually had little bits of cut up Mars bar in. Heaven.

Then we headed home to do Data Analysis. Jo-el showed me the software they use to identify all the different turtles. They basically upload the photos of both of the side of the turtles face and the top of its head and then the software scans the image and searches the database for other matching patterns. If there isn’t a matching pattern, then you’ve just discovered a new turtle! It was very exciting and amazingly clever technology.
Then I headed back to the volunteer house to have a cheeky nap before packing a little bag ready to go to Tigre Ruan that evening.

We got the boat across to another side of the other island and pulled up on a gorgeous deserted beach with pristine white sands.

When Ramona showed us to camp, I realised the volunteer house at the village was, infact, luxury compared to this.

There were two large wooden sheds with corregated iron roofs, both essentially empty.

One had a little covered area attached to it where there was a basic kitchen sink, a camp stove and a cage to put the food in (so the rats and squirrels couldn’t get to it).

There were no beds; you either slept in a hammock or slept on the sand.

There is a picnic table where you prepare and eat all meals and is the only seat (apart from hammocks).

There’s no electricity during the day.

There’s no fridge. Ever.

There was a toilet (again no flush, but a bucket of water) and a cold shower.

When we arrived Wid had prepared nice dinner for us – veggies, curry and rice.

We did the first beach patrol at 8pm. Beach patrol basically entailed walking the entire length of the beach, which meant you had to climb over a few large rocks – not ideal in the dark. We weren’t allowed to use our head torches even on infrared because it could scare the turtles away. This was fine for the first beach patrol at 8pm when we were all still awake and aware. But by 4am when all you want to do is sleep, clambering over rocks in the dark was actually a little hairy.

We saw the first turtle relatively early on in the night (around 9pm); we saw its shadow swimming in the water, we saw her make her way out of the sea and up the beach to the foliage, then she dug a body pit and an egg chamber and finally she began laying eggs. I was amazed at how many they lay – I was asked to keep count and put them into a bucket. She laid 130! It was a very strange feeling – the eggs are about the size of a ping pong ball (little bigger) and the shell isn’t hard like egg, it’s slightly soft. Then once they’re finished they begin filling in the egg chamber with sand and then use their front flippers to throw sand over the whole area (known as camouflaging).

Then once they are satisfied that it is fully camouflaged they make their way back down the beach to the sea. The entire process took around 2 and a half hours; turtles may be quick, gracious animals in water, but on land they are far from it.

Just as we are heading back to the hatchery with the eggs we spy another turtle coming out of the sea. But because it was 11.30pm I head off to bed ( they split the night into two shifts; 11.00pm – 2am and 3am – 6am) to catch a couple of hours kip before having to get up again at 3am.
Ramona came to wake me at 3am and I felt disgusting and completely uninterested in turtles. However I got up and walked the beach with her every hour, on the hour until 6am. Thankfully there were no more turtles so we could go back to sleep inbetween.