New Beginnings: A Loggerhead's Journey

It’s been a banger of a turtle season!

November to April is a spectacular time for nature lovers who make their way up to the North coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal. Every year, thousands of turtles make their way back to the place of their birth to lay hundreds of eggs in the golden sands of iSimangaliso Wetland Park.

There’s a lot one can say about iSimangaliso, but its best to just shut up and look.

There's a little bit of everything in iSimangaliso.

iSimangaliso means ‘Miracle’, and it’s aptly named. It stretches from St. Lucia to Mozambique and is jeweled with savannah, coastal dune forest, pristine wetland and seemingly endless stretches of golden beach. At some point I'll do a general post about the park, but for now, there are bigger fish to fry.

Apart from the throngs of tourists that descend from beyond the ‘boerewors curtain’ over the Christmas period, there is another traveller that visits these shores: the Loggerhead Turtle. These endangered marine reptiles travel thousands of kilometres, across various oceans to visit these beaches and continue their oceanic legacy. A few months after egg laying takes place, that legacy explodes from the ground like a volcano, and hundreds of tiny turtles make their way down the beach towards the open ocean.

Unlike the human beachgoers, the turtles only come out at night.

I had a chance to visit South Africa’s most north-eastern beach, Bhanga Nek, on the border of Mozambique. Getting there is a bit of a haul: an hour’s drive down a sandy road with several turn-offs, providing ample opportunity to get lost in some primeval dune forest. We were lucky to have a driver who knew the place like the back of his handbrake (which he applied liberally on the numerous corners).

We arrived at the beach just before sunset, just as we had the night before, and the night before that. Unfortunately, our previous attempts had been thwarted by tremendous amounts of rain - a price you pay for the eternal summer of KZN. On our third effort however, conditions were a bit better. We arrived to a sky full of cloud, and a pristine, empty beach.

Summer skies in the sub-tropics: Epicness.

The sun fell out of the sky and it was time to scan the shores. Our team of four consisted of Pieter, Kesh and our guru of the natural world: “Papa C” (Claudio). We were led into the darkness by a local turtle monitor, who assured us she was well trained in the art of spotting an imminent eruption of tiny turtles from beneath the sand.

It’s a long stretch of beach. We made it up to the far end in about 2 hours without spotting any turtles, and only a little bit of tomfoolery (we stopped to take a few long exposure shots of ourselves under the night sky).

Pieter, myself and Kesh playing some silly buggers on the beach.

Our guide called from up on the dunes. She’d found a nest that was about to pop. The only evidence of any life beneath the sand were a few tiny, inconspicuous noses that poked out, reaching for freedom. The ground heaved, and a little closed eye breached the grains. The turtles were emerging. We waited, cameras at the ready, for what felt like hours. Every few minutes a small tremor rippled up through the nest and the little faces pushed a tiny bit further into the open air.

"Slow is smooth and smooth is fast." - Anonymous... But Phil Dunphy also said it in Modern Family.

Finally, something triggered in the pile of tiny turtles, and the great scramble for freedom had begun. Over the next hour, hundreds of loggerhead babies made a crazed dash for the ocean. We scrambled over ourselves to keep up with the tenacious little things. The guides watched on from the dunes, amused at our childlike hysteria over what was, to them, another day at the office.

Hiding beneath their hats :') These guys can spot an emerging turtle from a mile away. Mad Respect!

The efforts of the loggerheads were duly noted; for something as small and helpless

as these soft-shelled baby reptiles, the mission over the short stretch of sand is like a marathon through the dunes of a desert. One where there are giant crabs trying to eat you.

Piles and piles make the epic race toward the sea.

One has to be careful when filming the turtles. They use the moon as their guide and bright lights can easily lead them astray. We kept ours super dim and always facing them from the ocean, slowly leading them down toward the water. Lucky for us, the moon broke out from between the clouds to provide the key controlling light they needed to reach their destination.

"We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; / How restlessly they speed and gleam and quiver, / Streaking the darkness radiantly! yet soon / Night closes round, and they are lost for ever" - Percy Bysshe Shelley

It was all over too soon. Only the memory of the race and the tiny turtle tracks that dotted and lined the sand were left.

Ephemeral engravings to mark the start of their new lives.

These little adventurers will stay at sea for the rest of their lives. Only the females will emerge, many years in the future, to lay eggs of their own. Right here, on the very beach of their birth.

This was a once in a lifetime experience and one of the most incredible natural happenings I’ve ever seen Make sure you check it out for yourself.

#blogpost #wildlife #travel