After our night in the desert and swim at Wadi Ben Khalid, we both needed to wash up, so we were very happy that our room had a lovely shower. Once clean, we got back into the car to drive a few minutes further to the Arabian Sea coast. This is where Oman's famous Ras al Jinz Turtle Reserve is, and we wanted to sign up for a tour later tonight.
Once that was done, we found an isolated spot by the sea to watch the sun set. Once again, Omani landscapes are impressive!
We returned to the lodge for dinner and then, at 20:45, headed back to the turtle reserve for our 21:00 tour. We were amazed at how many other people were here, especially since it is the low season. During the summer is the best time to see the turtles, when apparently thousands of mother turtles come ashore nightly to lay their eggs, and even more thousands of baby turles are hatching and trying to make it to the sea. But still here in February there were over a hundred people here hoping to see turtles. The park runs two tours a day, one at 5:00 and the other at 21:00. As far as we understand, although there is definitely a peak season, turtles do come ashore year round, just in much lower numbers. So, we had been assured that it was quite likely we would see turtles, but likely only in the single digits, not hundreds or thousands.
The park staff can obviously handle the crowds, and we were split up into buses, and then at the beach further divided into groups of about ten. Each group was then led by a guide, who did a good job of explaining
We actually saw her drop an egg as we watched, although I did not actually catch that on video. You can see, however, the hole in which she is laying here eggs here.
In this video, you can see her beginning to bury the nest with her back flippers.
At this point, she is beginning to use her much more powerful front flippers. She is spr
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