Olympos beach mid August, Turkey and the tranquil sea seemed virtually silent under a sky blue and grey sky and orangey red sun. 6am.
A group of fifteen or so tourists lurked. Anticipating. Curious. Dark and slow compared to the sea and sky evolving too quickly from day to night to day. A week vacation is too short amongst these beautiful beaches, crumbling ruins and strong mountains.
A man in a black t-shirt carrying a bucket called in Turkish to a man in the same t-shirt. The second man was also modelling a matching baseball cap with the emblem of a panda on it and the letters WWF.
The tourists gained speed and soon resembled children following a pied piper. They flashed excited glances at one and other and those who spoke the same tongue whispered excitedly the majority did not.
After some confusion as a result of one of the WWF men opening his diary on the wrong page the group came to a cage marked with a panda, a sort of explanation in English and Turkish and a number. One man organised the tourists into a circle around the cage. The other took the cage away and carefully, like an archaeologist, removed layers of sand. Eyes shifted from his hands to equally interested eyes and back again.
Eventually the nest was uncovered. Along with a deeply rank scent that filled the warming morning air. Slowly he pulled out his prehistoric looking find: perhaps thirty maybe up to fifty un-hatched and half hatched turtle eggs. Little black grey bodies so close and so far from life.
An English teenage girl sniffed and then in her innocence began to quietly cry. Her blue and red eyes spilled in waves onto her pretty freckled face. She had expected to be charmed by babies. Not overwhelmed by death!
The man from the WWF continued to search for any signs of life digging through death until he reached only sand. He spoke in Turkish first and repeated in English ?No live babies?. He then buried the eggs and bodies in a mass grave.
The woman accompanying the teenage girl put a protective arm around her little hunched shoulders. An athletic teenage Turkish boy who I think was approximately the same age as the girl was standing opposite her in the circle. I watched him as he watched the girl watching the burial and I was touched by a single tear that he allowed to fall from the corner of his own deep brown eye, down his bronze cheek and he wiped it away with some part of his hand as it passed his nose.
The man from the WWF saw the pains of the tourist circle and pointed at the forgotten bucket his colleague had first arrived with. Somehow the red and white teacloth was removed from the top revealing a single live baby turtle found earlier that morning. The tourists giggled and cooed for a while and when they were eventually completely comforted the men in black led them to a new nesting site.
It is here that live babies were found and in a way saved. The first of the two emerged from the nest once the sand had been barely stroked twice. The creature was completely exhausted after a night of complicated hatching due to being so far down in the nest. After a dizzy trip around squealing children?s less than careful hands the turtle joined the previous find in the bucket to rest and be nourished then released that night.
The second was not in the nest but was curiously discovered by a dog whose presence had previously seemed odd to me. This turtle was stronger and determinedly began to move towards the sea.
Admittedly it was hardly a sprint and the plastic bag dripping water onto his or her small fragile body seemed to become a necessity for the turtle?s continuation but it began to dawn on the crowed that this little wriggling turtle might just make it to the sea.
When a wave caught the creature there was a moment of panic. The turtle seemed to have been pulled into the sea only to be immediately thrown out again by the force of the waves on its tiny form. However, it soon became obvious that each wave was pulling the turtle a little bit further into the sea than throwing it back so painfully slowly to begin with and then all of a sudden this being carrying each and everyone?s hopes, dreams and optimism was nothing but a dot in the distance.