..laid it's eggs in front of us!! It was 1.65 x 1.25 metre's so not something that you would pass by without noticing! Wow, what an evening that was. We were visiting the Las Baulas National Park where their main objective is to protect the rapidly becoming extinct species of leatherback turtle from poachers and the like. www.leatherback.org/ldc/pg/park.htm .
We waited for 3 hours in the rangers office at night for a call to say that one had come onto the beach (it's not guaranteed though) to lay it's eggs and then we were marched in single file for around 1km along a very dark beach to where the turtle was being monitored by biologists. We got to observe for a while and it was quite a surreal experience. The whole of the beach is closed at night purely to protect the turtle activity and no ambient light was allowed apart from the biologists infrareds. For those reasons we have no photographs of the event, and in any case it would have seemed wrong to try and capture the moment with just an image. Here's some pictures of the beach though, and you will just have to take our word for it!
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