Yes, it’s not the tyre track of a large mechanical monster, but the pathway of a single Green Turtle, going back to the sea after nesting on Sipadan Island.

The eggs are collected – mostly to keep them safe from the huge monitor lizards, and the young released at night when they hatch. Human interference is not a problem here, due to the military presence on the island.

This particular turtle laid under some bushes, well up the beach. You can see her shifting sand with her flippers. She must have been more than a metre in length.

Note how deep she laid the eggs, being collected here by the wildlife officer. His right arm is buried up to the shoulder as he extracts them. The eggs are soft-shelled but tough and therefore not easily broken…

And here’s a tongue-in-cheek etymological lesson for Americans: turtles have flippers and spent most of their life in water. The other guys – the ones with legs and feet and claws are called tortoises, and live mostly on land…

Nothing makes me happier than to see this on a beach.

Follow up tomorrow.

Been a while since I posted any Malaysian nature shots – so here is some we took on Sipadan Island. This is an oceanic island off the coast of Sabah, Borneo, infamous because it was raided by some rather nasty Filipino pirates and some tourists and staff were kidnapped.

As a consequence the tourist hotels were relocated to Mabul Island and the accommodation on Sipadan was left to the military and Sabah Parks staff. That was where we stayed.

The island is small enough to walk around in 20 minutes.

First photo: fig tree and pandanus
Second photo: Dive boats from Mabul dropping off divers. We snorkelled inside the floats, and the undersea photos were taken by my husband.

That’s also him taking a shot of the Green Turtle from the beach. These guys were everywhere – mating, egg laying and just swimming around.

If you look at the second last photo, you will see the deep blue of the drop – 900 metres to the sea floor. Snorkelling over that was as eerie as looking into deep space – and just wondering…

I had a pleasant dinner tonight with the people who live in the apartment above me. We went down to the waterfront, ate kuey teow at a table under a tree as the sun set over the bay and the water lapped a few feet away from our feet. Oh, how I am going to miss this place.

Tomorrow I have to fly back to Kuala Lumpur for a one day meeting at a Federal Ministry to present a project paper – the project that took me gallivanting to all those national parks, remember? On Tuesday, I return to Sabah. Which is pretty ridiculous when you think about it. Five hours flying time there and back, just to attend one meeting.

The photo was taken underwater by my husband at Sipadan Island. I was going to post one of me snorkelling, taken from below, but he deleted it first…hmmm. Was it really that bad?

Just hopped off yet another plane. I am now back in Sabah. And next week I am giving a short course to staff of Sabah Parks up at Kinabalu National Park.

Payment is in kind…A trip.

I am going to the islands off the east coast, where I have never been before.

Eat your heart out, you poor folk chained to your office desks; next week’s blogs will be about Sipadan Island and other places from
the Land Below the Wind.

Other people dream about tropical islands and deserted coral sands – I go there.

*Evil laughter…*