Turtles... and other animals

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On Sat we had an introduction to our volunteer duties which was interesting. The dive resort manager, Peisee, a friendly Malaysian turtle enthusiast, told us all about how the turtles lay their eggs. It takes the mum 3 hours to get to shore and lay her eggs after digging her hole and covering it over again, plus digging a pretend hole to fool any predators (such as the big monitor lizards that we've seen sauntering around the island!). If the hole is in the open air then all the hatchlings will be female; if the hole is under cover of a tree then all the hatchlings will be male - strange eh?!

The babies take about 3 months to hatch and the strongest climb over the weakest to the top. Then the top one literally puts their fin above their head to sense whether it's night or day (as they only surface after 11pm), and whether the weather is good enough for them to come out and make their way to the water!

We walked down the beach to see what we were looking for; they scrape the sand where the nests are every night so we can look for tracks under torchlight. Also went on our first beach clean - basically clearing up any rubbish that's left on the beach or washes up from the shore every day.

Burnt my back on the first day while writing my journal on the beach and snorkelling (well done Ellie) - OUCH! We're starting our PADI Open Water diving course tomorrow so won't have much time to sunbathe!

Food is good - eating mainly chicken or beef, with rice and veg dishes which can be quite spicy. Lunch is a toasted sandwich (with something called 'chicken ham' in it which is a bit dubious!) with chips, or pasta.

Starting to get used to all the spiders - we have 2 resident spiders, Betty and Bertha. Had a 'rat incident' in our hut which some of you have already heard about! My roommate Julie told me she'd heard rustling before I got back to the hut after helping Laura and Kate with their 9pm-1am turtle watch, but we couldn't see anything so started to drift off to sleep. I woke up to hear her saying 'Was that you?' so I said 'No!' Shone the torch where the bin is in our room to see a small furry head pop up and run off somewhere! We were so freaked out that it was under the bed that we didn't sleep until about 3am. I'm keeping all bags zipped shut from now on!

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