From Sandakan we took a flight back to Kota Kinabalu and a transfer to the ferry terminal to visit Selingan Island which is one of the islands in the Turtle Islands National Park. The ferry trip was about 45 minutes and was smooth at first but then we got a bit of swell as we made our way there. We arrived with a beach landing and welcomed by some large monitor lizards and an escaped little hatched turtle. We had the afternoon to ourselves to snorkel, swim and check out the very pretty island which turned out to be very small but apart from 2 other tourists we had it all to ourselves.
After dinner that night they told us to come back to the lounge area with whatever we needed and our lights as we could get the call anytime that a turtle was nesting and we would have to run out there quickly to observe, however, that could even be really late. To start passing time we played board games, card games and watched TV but luckily we didn’t have to wait too long until we heard “TURTLES’ so we had to quickly run after the ranger out to the beach. What we ended up seeing was really interesting. There was a large green sea turtle laying her eggs into a hole in the sand she had just dug. Because these eggs have very little chance of hatching and even making it into the ocean rangers collect the eggs that the turtle lays and bury them in a protected hatchery, It took a while for the female to lay her eggs but when she was done she slowly starting making her way back to ocean and we followed the rangers to the hatchery where we watched them bury and record the eggs.
Then the cutest part! We got to watch a basket of hatched baby turtles released into the water! Oh love! Ive never seen anything so cute!!! Id definitely recommend to everyone to spend a night on a turtle island at some point in their life!!
We had 1 night on the island so we took the boat back the next morning for the groups last night back in Kota Kinabalu where we had a goodbye dinner at a really nice Mexican restaurant called Mamacita!
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