Day 12

Such an exciting night.

After our dinner we all settled in for a Uno Tournament while we waited for a call from the Ranger to say the turtles were on the beach.

At around 10.00 pm the call came out "turtle time" "turtle time" from the Ranger. We all grabbed our head torches and followed the ranger to the beach.

"Helen" the green turtle had burrowed into the sand and was laying eggs. We all gathered around to watch as the ranger grabbed the eggs to put in a bucket as they were laid.  Once Helen was finished laying they announced she had produced 93 eggs. We then left her to rest before she would make her way back into the water.

We then followed the ranger to the hatchery. Here a 75 cm deep hole was dug and the 93 eggs put in and covered with sand to wait the 8 weeks for them to hatch.

We then made our way back to the beach and formed a horseshoe around a basket which had 66 very active baby turtles who had hatched. When released, they scurried for the water and we were able to touch them as we helped a few that went the wrong way back on track.

Unfortunately they are easy prey in the water and only about 3% of them survive.

We all then went to bed and left the rangers to continue their work through the night. When we got up this morning we were told that 9 turtles actually made nests through the night and the rangers collected 696 eggs for the hatchery.

We had our breaky and jumped on the boat to make the hour journey back to Sandakan, saying our goodbyes to beautiful Turtle Island.

Our bus was waiting for us at Sandakan and we then went to Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey sanctuary. These are funny looking monkeys with big noses. As they were fed they provided lots of entertainment with their shenanigans and they came very close to us. There was so many of them.

We then jumped on our bus again for another 2 hour drive to Sukau and then on a boat again for a five minute ride to the Borneo Nature Lodge.   We checked in and had our lunch and then all went for an afternoon nap.

We met again at 3.30 pm ready to go on our two hour river cruise.

For 2.5 hours we cruised up the river in an open boat. We were able to get so close to the animals in the wild including lots more monkeys, beautiful birds and to top it all off the Borneo pigmea elephants - very exciting. It was awesome to see them all in their natural habitat and was definitely not something we would ever normally experience.

We then returned to the Borneo Nature Lodge for showers before dinner.

This extra few days tour had been so amazing and I am so glad we stayed on to really see the sights of Borneo (besides jungle!). It has also been great to have Jerome come along with us just as one of us, and not our guide. He is great company and we taught him how to play Uno last night,

Simon, we are still on the lookout for Louise's crocodile and our guide is hopeful that tomorrow will be the day!!!!!

Hope you guys (Simon, Kylie, Jackson and Lachlan) had a good trip home.

Love to all our families back home - until tomorrow,

Donna