We left our flat at 9:00 AM which is still just a bit to early for me to not be grumpy. Luckily, I slept on the bus about two hours, until we got to the Bimmah Sink Hole to swim. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it surely wasn't this. Typically when I hear the word sink hole I think of some witty Grey's Anatomy plot where the road falls in and disaster ensues. Clearly I lack sink hole education because what I saw was a beautiful oasis. We trudged our way to the park and I descended into this beautiful... well, sinkhole.
We swam and explored and climbed up the rocks to jump off cliffs and had little fishies bite our toes. The water, like everything else here, was very warm. You could see straight to the bottom to at least 20 or 30 feet and under the sink hole was a cave that connected to the ocean, about 2000 yards away. It's astounding that something as simple as a hole in the ground could be so beautiful. Sometimes I spend so much time in the city that I forget that not all of Oman is Muscat.
After we swam for a while, it was time to venture to Rais Al-Jinz, the turtle reserve on the coast of the Indian Ocean. I have one word to describe the experience: GLAMPING. To those unfamiliar with the word, it means glamour-camping. Our tents were settled in the mountain right over the coast and were fully equipped with luxurious beds, air conditioning, a full bathroom, and a mini fridge. (Caz could take a hint or two for the counselors)
This picture below is quite "haram", or forbidden, by Omani standards because men and women are intermingling in the same tent! Us "gariibun", which means both Westerners and strangers, got some rest before we went out that night to watch the sea turtles at Rais Al-Jinz.
Rais Al-Jinz is a 45 kilometer long coastal reserve in the southern half of Oman, along the Indian Ocean. About three times a year, in the span of about three months, a sea turtle lays her eggs on the beach, buries them, and goes back to sea. Three weeks later these babies hatch and try to make it to the shore and into the wild. It just so happens that Oman hosts these beautiful creatures at Rais Al-Jinz. At this reserve you are able to go on a tour to see the turtles on the beach at 9:00PM (long after sunset here), and at 4:15AM.
I was excited, but didn't know what to expect. I had no knowledge of the size of the turtles, what it looked like to lay eggs, or how they got to and from shore. 9:00 PM is very dark here, so my first trip to see the turtles was guided solely by the light of our host. We walked in a group and spoke in hushed voices. Photography was forbidden at night as not to disturb the turtles. We walked by the first turtle hole and before my eyes adjusted it looked like a big pit, about 2 meters x 2 meters, with an extra dark spot in the middle. As I finally saw that the dark spot was actually a turtle, I gasped with wide eyes. I barely had time to process it as we swiftly moved on to follow our guide to turtles closer to the beach.
At this point in time my "sadiiqa", or friend, Melissa, began to hyperventilate. Okay, so she didn't hyperventilate... but she did get really worked up and so excited she could barely form words or even move. She pointed at it in amazement and yell-whispered, "IT'S A DINOSAUR". She expected the turtles to be the size of those that fit in tanks in a home aquarium. So you can imagine her surprise when she saw this:
This is a mama turtle who has laid her eggs and was covering them in about two meters of sand to keep them safe for the few weeks while they get ready to hatch. Of course the father is no where to be found... it seems that men are the same among all the species. Typical. (Only joking, the mom doesn't even check up on her little babies and only like 3 out of 1,000 survive to adulthood).
This is the type of track a turtle leaves behind after it's inched its way back to the ocean. She usually stops to take a few breaks. So the whole process is between 5-10 minutes. And next to that is the sad reality that the eggs aren't always safe from nature's intrusions. These little guys were uncovered and won't make it :(
This is how I initially felt to be out of bed at the inhumane hour of 4:45AM. Luckily everyone has to be pretty quiet around the turtles. Clearly Elise having a good time. But once I witnessed the mama turtles doing what turtles do I was a much happier camper. I couldn't believe my eyes for most of the trip, every single moment I felt like I was witnessing a nature-y miracle of some sort.
This was my favorite trip we've taken so far. Everything about it was outstanding. I spend so much of my life passing through nature as though it's nothing special; it's sad to think that it takes something like this to make me appreciate how beautiful the world can be. It's funny to me because we, as humans, are nature. When did we come to the point where we started believing we were something more?
Watching the sunrise and the turtles scuttle back to sea at dawn made me think of a favorite quote from Thoreau:
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life. And see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived"
(Turtle photos courtesy of my dear friend Adrian Castillo)
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