My teenage son and I‘ve travelled with the coal mine-scarred landscape beyond Berau, a riverside town in Kalimantan on mainland Indonesian Borneo (and reached via two flights from Singapore ), to bring a ship out to invest every week exploring several of the archipelago’s scores of islands. Only two are officially inhabited, though 30-odd others have names and a few are home to scientists and sea-dwelling boat people. Towards the end of in 2012 the islands will certainly be better connected towards the mainland, using the completing a little airport on Maratua island, which should handle short-haul flights.
We’ll be spending subsequent few days at Derawan Dive Lodge, a cluster of elegant wooden cabanas reached by jetty over limpid waters, where green turtles graze on sea grass and algae. A minimum of 15, 000 female turtles go back to the archipelago annually, often swimming many lots and lots of kilometres to lay their eggs upon the beaches where That They‘d hatched. Now, numerous turtles graze off Derawan island, many the strategies non-local breeders, that their food sources are getting scarce.
The very best tides, all around the full moon and also the new moon, are the very best time for them to watch the females drag their heavy bodies in the sand and wheeze and grunt with the ovulation process. “One laid her eggs beneath the restaurant a few weeks ago, ” says the lodge’s Indonesian manager. We’ve missed their hatching, sadly.
Tranquil, tiny Derawan island has got busier since we first visited four years back. A couple of souvenir stalls, some cafes and also a sign reading “tourist village” enliven the brushed-sand village streets. Two bungalow resorts clog what once was virgin beach – the final new accommodation upon the island, if policy holds. However the spirit remains a similar. It will take 40 minutes to steer all around the island : fishermen greet us, schoolgirls line us up for photos, the odd turtle pops a scaly head up coming from the wate, and children play volleyball.
