The Sea Turtle and the Cattle Drive
Saturday, 24 October 2015; Dean

A while after dinner at the hotel beachside restaurant, a sea turtle (probably 2-and-a-half feet long) was seen making her way up the flat part of the beach to lay eggs.  A crowd gathered.  Unfortunately, she was headed exactly toward the base of the hotel stairs that go down to the sand.  Fortunately, 2 guys were watching her carefully.  Once it was quite clear the sea turtle was headed in an inappropriate direction, one of the guys stepped up and grabbed her by the shell, and ran down the beach with the turtle's legs flapping furiously.  You could immediately tell he knew exactly what he was doing.  He moved to an unoccupied section of the beach about 50 yards north, and deposited her in the sand, and she resumed her trek to find a place to lay her eggs.  She only crawled for about a minute, and she began digging in an existing depression.  It grew too dark to watch, and we all stayed away.  In the morning, the depression in the sand remained, and the sea turtle was gone.  It was really neat to see, and I don't think any of us had ever seen a turtle coming of of the sea before.

Zack reports that he earlier saw cattle being led down the same beach by a man on a horse.  I had also seen some cattle pass under a hotel footbridge that goes over a local road.  Those were being wrangled by a guy on bicycle.  Later, I saw a herd of 30 just being moved along by 2 men with sticks.