My friend Paula....

is on her way home from one of those trips that one can only dream of. She and her hubby left on Jan 3(ish) with their truck camper, and travelled through the states and ended up in Mexico, where they have been camping and touring for the past 3 months. The stories and pictures are amazing. I have published a few of her pictures so you, too, can enjoy the amazinginess of our beautiful world.

One of the beaches they were camped on is a protected beach for nesting sea turtles. At night, after dark, the females come out of the ocean, up onto the beach and, with their front flippers, make huge nesting ditches in which they lay their eggs. After speaking with some of the policia, to determine what time they might see this and if it was ok to go with flashlights to check it out. This is a quote from Paula's email...

"Off we went the first night, not knowing what to expect! We quickly saw that these nesting ditches (for lack of a better word), were everywhere and we had to be very careful not to step in them, as we would crush the eggs. This is not an easy feat in the pitch dark! We were awed when we saw our first mother turtle hard at work. We actually saw three the first night and on our second night we saw one more, the largest we had seen. It was amazing to see them come up out of the water and make their way up the beach and begin their mission. The baby turtles, we were told, usually hatch between two and four in the morning and make their way to the water in the dark, so they can escape the birds of prey. We did not manage to rouse ourselves to see this event, however, Chon, Leti's husband, did get up on our last night and saw baby turtles all around our camper. He had forgotten to turn a light off under the palapa and they were drawn to the light. When we got up, Leti and the girls presented us with about 24 little turtles in a wash tub that Chon had collected for us to see. How wonderful! They were adorable and Jer and I, of course, snapped some pictures of them after enjoying holding them. Their little tracks were all through the sand. What a thrill!"