Day 82 - 30th Mar

Had a pretty relaxing day, just went and brought some food and did some washing, then laid about the pool for the rest of the day. Evening was very different though, we booked to do a tour to see the turtles in the local conservation park on the coastal beach called Mon Repos. We had about a 40 min drive to the site; once we got there you get told about the night and what they hope you will see and a bit of info about the turtles etc. What you do is very dependent on when the turtle hatchlings actually coming out of the sand. You basically have to wait at the conservation sit until they get a call from someone who is patrolling the beach to say that the hatchlings are beginning to come out and to bring the group down. We were actually pretty lucky as we didn't really have to wait around for that long; the hatchlings started emerging pretty early, something to do with the heat of the sand. So what we got to see was the hatchlings emerging from the sand, then we got to have touch one then see them running down the sand in front of us towards the sea. They were so tiny and so cute. After the hatchlings went into the sea, we also got to see the expert inspecting the nest to count how many hatchlings went into the sea, and how many other eggs were in the nest. Lots of the eggs didn't actually make it, 45 eggs hatched successfully and made it out into the sea, 23 eggs started to develop but didn't hatch and 58 eggs failed to develop properly at all. The guy said it was probably to do with where the eggs we laid and some kind of bacteria in the sand. Quite sad when he picked out all the bad eggs, and smelt awful but really interesting too.