Turtle Time!

We spent our first few days in Borneo relaxing on beautiful beaches and snorkelling in super clear waters - until about 2pm each afternoon that is. This seemed to be some sort of witching hour as at exactly 2pm every day it absolutely tipped it down!

Our friends from home arrived and after a good drunken catch up (which ended with Adam and Nigel singing along with a live band in a bar at the top of their voices but using their own made up words) we set off on our Borneo adventure.

First on 'the planner' was a trip to turtle island where, if you're lucky, you got to see wild sea turtles laying eggs on the beach. This only happens at night and so we had the day to explore the island - in the rain! After lots of snorkelling, playing pit pat and taking it in turns to amuse Adam it was time to head indoors and wait for the turtles (they won't come onto the beach if it's occupied).

We waited, and waited, and waited. Then we waited some more. You get the picture - after a pretty long wait we were told that it was 'turtle time!'. A mother turtle had landed on the beach, dug quite a deep hole and had started laying eggs. We crept outside and stood around her while she continued to lay eggs, in total 109!! It was awesome to watch.

However, the best was still to come. As turtles are an endangered species rangers on the island collect the eggs as they are layed and take them to a special hatchery where they bury them in fake nests. After a couple of months the eggs hatch and the rangers take the hatchlings down to the sea to be released. We saw about 50 hatchlings get released into the sea that night, they were so tiny, much smaller than the palm of my hand. They could swim pretty fast though considering how little they were. Kind of scary to watch them swim out into the sea though as they have an absolutely tiny chance of survival, something like 1 out of every 100 survive.