Turtle watching with Nathan

Last night, on our second night in Cancun, Nathan and I took a walk on the pool deck between playing games and saw a few turtles digging in the sand.  As the sun was setting earlier we actually saw three turtles coming on the beach, one just 20 feet away from where the kids were playing, but we decided to take the kids inside for dinner to give the turtles their space.

Later that night when all the other kids were asleep and it was just Nathan who was still awake Ken and I took him out to see the turtles.  He was so happy and his patience and quietness was rewarded!  In fact when we sat down on the upper level of a sand bank 30 feet away to the side of one turtle that we had watched crawl in from the sea.  After we were sitting we noticed we were actually less than 10 feet away from one that had already been resting from laying it's eggs.

At one point we counted 9 turtles on the beach!  We have never seen that many in a whole entire night, let alone at the same time.  It was crazy, we saw one turtle dig and dig for 40 minutes that abandoned it's hole and ended up crawling up and over another turtle and laying eggs just a few feet away from the other one.

The ecological people who dig up all the eggs and plant them in the turtle nursery were alot more willing to let us be up close and personal than normal.  Normally they will let us touch the turtle after they have collected eggs. Ken asked them if Nathan could touch an egg and they ended up waving us over to a turtle as it was laying it's eggs.  The ecological people were literally catching the eggs as the turtle laid them.  They were wet and slimy.  And they let us sit right on the edge of the hole with them.  We could actually see the turtle lay eggs and got to hold one.

They measured the turtle and it was 138 cm long.  After the ecological people left to rebury the eggs, we stayed with this one and watched it throw sand to bury it's eggs.  This was the best picture that I was able to get.  We really can't use the flash much because we don't want to scare away the turtles.

We had a wonderful night with Nathan.  Ken and I stayed up even later marveling about the precious moments that we are able to have with our children here.  Times like this are so special and rare.  We got to whisper talk with Nathan for two plus hours and he was so grateful that we spent that time with him.  We love our Nathan so much!  He brings us such joy and happiness and is always so loving.  He thinks of others in our family all the time and often overlooks his wants and desires for his siblings so it was especially nice and tender for us to experience the turtles first with him. It will be something neither of us will ever forget!