Birds, Turtles, and Frogs, oh my!
June 27th, 2008 , 15:51
Last day at Asa Wright and we are sitting on the veranda again watching the rain and birds. Last night was fun.
After a restful afternoon, napping and taking it easy, we were collected and driven down to Matura. We parked and walked along the beach a bit while dinner was being set up. Ate then did another walk along the beach to see if we had really seen a turtle coming in. It was a turtle shaped log. We then sat in the shelter and waited for Nature Seekers to turn up. And turn up they did, in droves. A truck load of volunteers. After they were sorted into teams and sent out we were given a brief talk. Toward the end of this talk another tour group turned up – unfortunately we were stuck with them. Unfortunately because most of them had no idea why they were out on this tour! One young lad just kept whining “what is happening now? How long will this take? Are we going back yet?” while his girlfriend climbed all over him. But I hope they learned a bit about turtles.
We headed back to the beach and our guide talked about what would be happening – in the middle of this a volunteer turned up next to Kathleen and handed her a baby leatherback turtle that had just hatched. There were hatchlings all over the beach. We then walked for quite a while and got very wet climbing over palm tree trunks until we got to a female that was digging and preparing to lay her eggs. (This is where whiny bloke started up.) We watched her dig, then when she started laying the volunteers moved in to tag her, then the tourists could start taking photos. Up the beach a bit further was another female and you could tell when she started laying by all the flashes around! Once she started filling in the hole all the lights were turned off and we watched her finish and move off into the surf. On the hike back we saw three more coming in, but didn’t stop to watch them.
So back to the centre very late (gone midnight) and wet and sandy but very happy!
