TURTLES!! GREAT BIG HONKING TURTLES! I heard them, saw them, smelled them, even rode on their backs!! They looked at me with their ancient eyes. They struck me dumb with awe and admiration.

It was a long pilgrimage to get to the beach where the turtles made landfall. 17 hours of skating from Bali, a bus ride and a car ride, and a few more hours of jolting along on the back of a motorcycle. On the motorcycle journey, families of monkeys scattered as we approached; wild boars ran snorting off into the underbrush, and deer bounded off and away. Birds called from high perches and sometimes cicada bugs raised a collective din so loud that my ears rang for minutes afterwards.

Amin and I hugged the coast pretty much the whole way. We dipped down into and back out of valley after uninhabited valley. At the end of the road we came across a small encampment. From there it was an hour's walk at a good clip to get to the "hunter's lodge." This lodge, a house on stilts, open on all sides, leans even more severly than the tower at Pisa. A pack of hunting dogs live under the house and greet us with expectant yelps. They subsist on a gruel of rice and water.

A quick dip in the stream really refreshes us, and then we set about preparing our meal: rice, boiled turtle eggs, and a hunk of deer meat right off the smoked carcass hanging over the fire from its own antlers. The turtle eggs look like ping-pong balls and come out of a huge burlap bag hanging from the rafters. Sambal, or pepper paste made fresh from chilies, lime juice, and salt, is the perfect condiment for the meal.

There we ate, ten feet off the ground, squatting on our haunches. The dogs circled underneath like sharks, waiting for egg shells disposed of through the floor planks. We ate with our hands, rolling the rice into little balls, dipping our fingers into a coconut-shell bowl full of sambal, then peeling the turtle eggs open over the rice. The yolk holds together but the white still runs. What a treat to slurp them up! Best taste of any egg ever. The white was still running but the yolk held together. In that one meal I had more protein than in the past two weeks.

After dinner it was another hour's walk to the beach, and picking our way carefully up and over logs and under branches on a very dark trail. The sound of the ocean grew louder until finally we came out on a beach that was more like a small cove. The sand was white and very fine, but there were boulders in splash zone, which rumbled in and out with the waves. The whole beach shook with mini temblors each time. Four others joined us. No turtles had shown up yet so we waited.

With no moon up yet, all you could see were the dancing embers of clove cigarettes. The older men smoked the traditional rokok lontar, a practically foot-long cigarette that's grasped in the fist of one's hand, rather than between the fingers. The whole thing is tied with little strips of lignin which rip off like string cheese. When they light the thing, it keeps them occupied for quite some time.

At ten p.m. we made our first foray on the beach looking for turtles. We saw only tracks from the previous night, where turtles had hauled themselves up high up onto the sand, leaving wide drag marks with indentations from their flippers. We hit the trail and climbed up and over a small peninsula, and down onto the next little beach, roughly the same size as the first one, and also shaking from the surf pounding the rocks together every time the swash rolled back to sea.

Walking along, all of a sudden we spied fresh turtle tracks, dark, moist tracks. We hit all fours and stole our way up the beach, until we were within yards of a huge dark form throwing sand. A huge honking turtle!! Turtles have eyes and ears, so we tried not to disturb the creature, watching from a distance while the excavation was in progress. A turtle this size can deposit anywhere from 100 to 1200 eggs in a hole, so it has to be plenty deep. The majestic turtle snorted and heaved while we sat their with our feet dug into the sand to avoid the mosquitoes.

All of a sudden the digging stopped and started up again somewhere else. Apparently the turtle encountered too many rocks and twigs in at the bottom of the hole, not enough soft sand. Now the poor thing was floundering in the bushes, digging here and there in search of a better spot, but she was encountering more of the same.

She gave up. We intervened. Three of us clapped and shushed and hopelessly tried to redirect the turtle back to a sandy spot. Briefly, she allowed herself to be coaxed to a into a hole, but when she began her slow, inexorable walk back towards the sea, we were powerless to stop her. She crawled back to sea with three grown men on board. Everybody bailed as she plowed through the waves. At a certain moment her massive body was buoyed by an incoming wave and borne out to sea, disappearing as quickly and noiselessly as she had come.

People were having better luck over on the other beach. Another turtle had made landfall, crawled up the beach, dug a hole, and deposited about a hundred eggs. We arrived just as the turtle was covering up her work. Everybody except me went back to sit around the fire and wait for her to be done before raiding her nest, but I stayed behind to marvel at the work in progress.

When she was done I accompanied her back to the water, waving goodbye and wishing her better luck next year at making little ones. The hunters would raid her nest completely.


It was 3 a.m. before we were ready to retire for a few hours' sleep. I slept, like the others, right on the planks on the floor of the lodge, with my head on a saddle blanket, a sturdy plastic woven bag stuffed with more plastic. We all fell asleep swatting at our heads as mosquitoes circled us like buzzards. Occasionally one crawled into my ear and I'd jerk awake.

In the morning as I bathed in the river while tiny little fish nipped at me, tickling softly. The previous evenings happenings seemed so unbelievable.


12/02/96

It was a tearful departure today from Sukajaya. Little Bayu bowled when he realized I was leaving. Nobody else was all too happy either. They made me promise to come back next year.

Today I ate the most delicious cooked concoction of bananas, coconut juice, and coconut sugar. So good!! I also experienced a new tropical fruit today, a sweet fruit called jambu. It grows in clusters on the tree and is pinkish/white in color. A little boy climbed into the tree for us to pick them, and we sat under its shade munching happily away on jambu.

I skated around Sumbawa Besar wearing a sarong. I quite like the practicality of the skirt-like piece of clothing, easy to slip on and off and airy like shorts. I ran errands on skates -- to the telephone office to send a fax, to the bank to change money, to the ticket office to purchase airplane tickets, and to various stores: a music store for cassettes of Indonesian music, a shoe store for new flip flops, and a clothing store for a sarong. I also got a Sumbawa t-shirt to have tangible proof of having been here. Otherwise it seems only a dream.