Last night at 5:00, we left in a maxi van with the most popular tour guide and friend to boaters, Jesse James to watch the Giant Leatherback Turtles lay their eggs. There is no guarantee, of course that you'll see the turtles, but we got very lucky last night. Our tour was originally scheduled for the night before but got rescheduled to last night. That was fortuitous because we saw two females laying eggs last night and on Wednesday night, there were no turtles in sight. It's a two hour bus trip to the beach, with a stop for dinner on the way. When we arrived at Matura Beach, we saw one of the females coming up from the surf onto the edge of the beach. I was stunned. She was huge and here she was, walking out of the ocean with her giant sized flippers. But our tour guide, a volunteer from the project that preserves and tags and turtles, kept walking on down the beach. There was a half moon lighting up our way, with a light ocean breeze and white, soft sand. We were instructed to use red lights only (Ed and I wore the headlamps we use on the boat for nighttime passages) and to use the camera only while the turtle is laying her eggs and is in a trance-like state before her next task. Here is a quote from Jesse James in his webpage. "One of the most moving experiences the natural world has to offer is the sight of the giant female leatherback turtle engaging in her timeless ritual of egg-laying. Trinidad is fortunate enough to be among these creatures laying sites. Each year between March and August, these mysterious leviathans of the deep return to the beach where they were born to begin the cycle anew. These turtles, the largest of the marine species, weigh from 700 - 1000 lbs and are 5-8 ft in length and 2 - 3 ft in width. The female digs a deep hole with her back flippers and lays about 80 - 125 soft glutinous eggs into it."

How she makes her nest is remarkable. She uses her back flippers to make a hole which is narrow and deep. She then deposits up to 125 eggs in the hole. Some of the eggs are small and won't survive which provides air pockets for the larger eggs. Once the female begins laying, she goes into a trance-like state. It's at that time we were allowed to touch and photograph her. When she starts stirring again, all lights and flashes go off. She then hides the nesting site with a good 30 minutes of hard work (can you imagine giving birth and then having to dig around in sand with your arms and legs?) where both her front and rear flippers work together to send sand every which way. She flips the sand backwards with her front flippers, patting it down with her back flippers, rests a moment then moves her body a few inches forward to repeat the process. Once she's finished, she might be several feet from the original nesting hole, with all the sand moved around to hide where her eggs are deposited. It looked exhausting. When she's finished, she saunters back into the water and disappears. It was magnificent, remarkable, magical. One of those experiences you feel grateful to have witnessed. Just extraordinary.