Tête à tête with a Luth turtle

 

The day before the visit at Îlet La Mère we decided to finish off the week at the beach, in order to start the weekend with the right vibes. That day was not a good one, until we got to the beach. I took off my shoes, enjoying the orange sand and trying to find a spot where to have the end-of-the-week aperitif. The view was amazing: the sunset was taking place behind the palm trees, on the direction we were heading, with a breeze still blowing from the ocean. Such a spectacle! After a couple of minutes a tall blonde guy with glasses told us that a turtle was actually laying eggs. So we hurried up, and after a kilometer we ended up in the same area where we were sat down the previous night. We saw a crowd in circle, some of them (unfortunately) even in the visual field of the turtle. We approached and tried to stay not too close and out of the turtle’s visual field. 

It was huge! It was a Luth turtle, which is between 400 and 800 kilograms for a height of 165 centimeters. It was digging, moving around mostly the anterior flippers (way bigger than the rear ones), moving around itself. The volunteers on the spot told us at the end that, despite being there since the beginning, they could not now the exact spot where the eggs were buried thanks to this technique. In fact, after digging the turtle covers the spot with sand and goes over it a few times. That may be to compact the soil and better hide the eggs. There was something sticking out which looked like and egg. The volunteers explained that it was a fake egg, so the predator gets it and does not dig further (being basically on the surface).  As the sun went down, the darkness took over and some got the red lights out. People started to gently leave and so did the turtle, crawled back to the sea leaving amazing traces on the sand, and against the waves got back into the deeper ocean. Not without difficulties due to the high tide and the big waves.

Out Luth friend in low definition (due to light)


We stayed on the spot to actually have our aperitif, in the mid-darkness. The only available light was the moon. We were so happy that we decided to go back for an aperitif at that time on the same beach, as we had considered to explore another one. We were so lucky! If the guy did not tell us anything, we would have settled way earlier, had a nice time with out aperitif but would have missed such an amazing and sought-after experience!  What an evening!

Unfortunately, our flat mates back home had a huge birthday party and decided to be very noisy until half past midnight. Which would be ok if we did not have to wake up at 3:30AM the day after for some work to be done.  They could have clearly invited us, instead of just notifying us about it in the late morning prior to it. But well, this is the life of flat-sharing. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Next experience: Ìlet La Mère.


Location: Plages de Montjoly, 97354, Guyana francese

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's NOT a flood!

Image
  I am writing with a couple of days delay. The last few hours were a little hectic . As you can imagine, no, I haven't been visited by Poseidon. 🐠 The following morning (18.04) the waters were relatively alright. The stream went back to its, and was relatively low. I thought the worst had passed, and it seemed like it. I could catch my breath. Stream even more overflown At 9:30 AM, on the other hand, it started rain cats and dogs. A lot of rain, in a very short period of time and all of a sudden. It lasted no less than two hours. Within one hour from the start the stream went back to being dangerous and it was even closer to the house than the day before. Back to paranoia! 😔 On the top of that, I miraculously spotted that our porch started to have water in it: the drain in front of it was filled with leaves and sand, for a while, and the cover was glued to the ground with concrete. The water started to increase but, luckily, it was not high enough to pass the windows and enter ...
Read more

Turtle miss

  We have read about turtles laying eggs in French Guyana on the internet and were excited to see this. Talking with some flat mates we decided to join them. We left at sunset, off to Montjoly beach. They showed us some pictures and videos from previous night and it was great! Traveling through the residential outskirts of Cayenne at that time was quite an experience: the areas were rather calm , not sleeping quite yet, and few people going for a jog. I did not really expect. As soon as we arrived at the beach we got our torches out. It was very dark and windy. We could hear the ocean and its waves breaking into the sand. Yet, we could not really see it at first . Once our eyes got used to the darkness, I managed to distinguish the sky, the clouds, the sand, the ocean and the lather. I took off my shoes, in a sort of freedom gesture.  I realized almost immediately that crabs populate the beach, and the fear of stepping over one accompanied me all evening long. I forgot that t...
Read more

The first few days

Image
  This post was supposed to be done earlier but, as you have read so far, a few things happened in between. By now a couple of weeks went by, so the right title would be "the first few weeks ". 😓 The first days were relatively easy, at least for me. I had the time to get the jet lag out of my body. I do know, though, that I struggle more when I travel east than west. I have noticed that I feel it more than I did when I was younger. It makes sense.  Normally, there are four hours difference between continental Europe and French Guyana. Just before departing, Europe switched to Summer daylight saving time (one hour ahead). This increased the gap to five hours. As our arrival was not expected (despite we confirmed that at least one month before), we had to improvise for the first night : we used our towels to cover the mattress and cover ourselves during the first night. Luckily we took extra towels, as we were expecting to swim often in the sea. Our personal flight neck pillo...
Read more