Turtles and Head hunters ....

Eu Eu eeu eu e um um wey ...In the jungle the lion sleeps tonight .... Brian is sick to the back of his jungle teeth hearing me wailing that song to him the whole time ... don''t understand it myself ...and I can now sing it VERY loudly.. Awim ber way awim ber way ... all together now ...

Live egg laying  !!

Anyway ..... we left the jungle and had an extremely bumpy boat ride over to Turtle Island .. L4 and L5 vertebra are now in line, unfortunately they are not sitting on my SIJ (Sacral Iliac Joint) it never leaves you this medical jargon. I felt well and truly 'bucked' ... Turtle island is like paradise.. just like you can imagine, perfectly circular, clear turquoise water, fine white sand, coconut trees and mango trees, a party of 25 I love Borneo t shirt wearing elderly Americans...  bliss.....
We spent the afternoon snorkelling amongst the coral and laying on the sand getting bitten to buggery by sand flies, and listening to the gentle woo hooing from our friends across the pond ....

Eggs moved to Hatchery

We had to meet at 6.30pm for our turtle talk, and watch a video on these prehistoric creatures ... turtles start to lay eggs between the ages of 30 and 50 years.. they come back to where they were hatched ... this island has a conservation programme to help this endangered specie ... she lays around 100 eggs these take 50-70 days to hatch, then the hatchlings have to dig their way out of the sand, having waited for all their brothers and sisters to hatch, then they all make a mad dash for the sea, and off to a watery life on their own... only 1% survive .. they are eaten by monitor lizards and eagles and fish, etc..

Hatchlings ready for freedom ..

Rainy Rainforest ..

After dinner where I was bored to death by a Dutch guy who had just completed a survival course !!! pity about the outcome on my part ..... ( weary of doing these amazing experiences to be tainted by people .... whom I politely listen to all night ... whom I will never see again, and really don't care about .. god I am sounding like dad).... anyway at 905pm we got the shout 'turtle time'.. I know a bit tame .. I was thinking more ..OMG ... get your arse in gear there is a sodding great big turtle hauling herself up the ruddy beach .....!!!.the yanks were in an over excited stupor whooping and a hollering .... off we went to the beach, and god love her .. they are not overly gracefully out of the water, looked like such an effort... when she eventually chose her spot, she started digging with her legs to make her pit... Brian having done midwifery as a nurse gave me an amusing summary of how far dilated she was and whether she needed more gas and air, and if the father wanted to hold her flipper fins.. once she had dug her pit, she went into this trance like state, and started laying.. it was amazing, we literally saw them popping out, as she was laying a ranger was collecting them and putting them in a bucket, it was all done by torch light so forgive the photos .... when she had finished and started covering the hole with sand she was measured and tagged ..

Long house

We then went to the hatchery where a hole was dug and the still warm eggs put inside to keep them safe from predators..
We then collected hatchlings which had already hatched that evening and went down to the waters edge.... the basket was then tipped towards the water and 95 little hatchlings made a dash for it Charlie Chaplin like .... it was really emotional, they were all running around our feet so we had to keep picking them up and turning them round the right way.. it was pretty frantic...  it was also a  tearful experience helping these lovely creatures on their way to a pretty much watery grave ...
Interestingly temperature affects what sex the hatchlings are , its pretty easy women are hot and men are cool ..... Good luck little turtles.. after so much excitement it was back to our cabin for the night and thoughts of what we had just experienced.....
The next morning we had to leave the island by 7am !!! the beach looked like a war zone, with huge craters and tracks all over it, we later found out that 28 turtles had come ashore that night, it looked like a scene out of Saving Ryans Privates !!!!!
Back in the boat where L4 and L5 were put out but SIJ is sitting perfectly on my pelvis .... after a quick visit to a Chinese Temple.. ( man they must be on LSD when they build these things , they are well lairy ) we went onto to the airport for our 2 flights to Kuching ..

Tribal Brian

Kuching has a lovely river running through it and its waterfront is dotted with temples, very pretty, the town is pretty industrial and noisy, so after 2 days of wandering around we decided to head out to a national park to visit some long houses.. we had booked into a 5 star hotel for some beach time.... the hotel had the biggest most luscious pool I had ever seen... after an hour sat on a trendy lounger we were boiling hot and bored to death ... hmmm beach hols are dull dull dull..
The next day I dragged Brian around the long houses which was brilliant, built really high and all of wood, with intricate carvings on them, all sleep on raised platforms and just have a cooking area and a healing area ( bit scary all witch doctor carry on !!) we saw a wonderful dance lots of drumming and trance like dancing very tribal , men with lots of feather head dresses on and blowpipes... quite erotic ..... apart from the human skulls hanging from nets in the door ways ... made one feel slightly uncomfortable..they invited us up to dance, I was pretty keen , especially with the lean man in a feather headdress with hardy anything on, but was afraid his blowpipe might go off , so I reluctantly declined .... a really fantastic day, didn't get back to the pool until 5pm.. so not much beach time for poor old Brian...

headhunter skulls

oh er missus ...

Only leave turtle tracks xxx

The next day the heavens opened but then we are in the rainforest ..... it has not stopped raining, so I am writing this as Brian is watching the Rugby.. time to reflect on the past two weeks which have been totally amazing.. we leave Borneo tomorrow for Jakarta where we are going to make our way down through Indonesia and fly out from Bali... we will be sorry to leave Borneo but I am sure we will meet again ...