Anna from England, September 2005
Day one and I awake at 5:35 am to the sound of impatient campsite dogs eager for breakfast. It's time to get up for morning patrol anyway so bleary eyed I fumble around the mess of my tent for a touch. I manage to find a bikini, shorts and a jumper to guard against biting mosquitoes. Breakfast is a colorful selection of locally grown fruits, which I greedily gobble down with hot tea. Together with two other volunteers I gather nest measuring equipment and we set off on foot in the direction of Mounda beach and a spectacular sunrise. The trek requires careful footwork as we negotiate a rocky peninsula before we reach sand. Soon we come across a mass of hatchling tracks heading to the sea from high up on the beach so we hunt around in the undergrowth for nest markers and we take recordings. There is one hatchling caught up in the rocky part of the shore so we place it on suitable sand. As it reaches the sea and swims away I feel that this job is definitely worthwhile. Next we head to the site of a nest excavation. Sadly five dead hatchlings are found, rotten and crawling with maggots and the warm glow I'd held vanishes. However overall the nest was about 95% successful as have been most of the nests on Mounda and so it seems this project holds hope for conservation of the Loggerhead sea turtle.
After a nap and a swim on the beach we head back for second breakfast!