It was a
strange night, surprisingly quiet for a 10 share, apart from the screaming-girl
(she sleep-talks apparently). Our alarm rang at 8am, we got up, got ready and
had our free breakfast. We checked out at 9.30am and headed to Avis to get our
rented car.
We have
the car for 72h, it is red and luckily a manual! We left straight away and
headed for Bundaberg, which is supposed to be a 4h50 drive. On the way we saw
signs for the Glass House Mountains, so we decided to stop.
We went
to the information center and decided to go on a small trek on top of Mount
Ngungun (pronounced Nounou). It was super-hot and due to the limited amount of
time we had, we raced through it! We ended up quite sweaty….. But he view were
fantastic!
Around
1pm, we were done, we had lunch in a café and at 1.40pm we were back on the
road. It was a bit tense in the car, D. is not an experienced driver and thus
not too confident behind the wheel. Disagreements escalated quickly…
We
arrived in Bundaberg short of time with no place to stay… I am not confident
speaking on the phone and none of the places offered online booking. We stopped
in a shopping center to buy a quick dinner. We found a hostel, but drove to the
wrong address (the place is under refurbishment) the new address is in a crappy
hostel that had really bad rating…. Oh well… this will do for one night.
We were
back in the car before around 7pm, we were supposed to be at the Turtle
sanctuary for 6.30pm, we called them and they said it was fine. When we arrived
people were still queuing to get in. D. got some fries from a truck vendor. I
think we missed the video presentation, but at least we did not miss the
turtles and we did not have to wait for ages.
The place
is called Mon Repos, it is a sanctuary for turtles. They take care of a long
stretch of beach were sea turtles come and lay eggs from November to January
and the eggs hatch from January to April. They are a lot of people but they are
several groups. We are in group 3. While waiting, we got eaten alive by
mosquitoes….
We saw the hatchlings, we got to feel the
strengths in their front legs and with light we made a path from them to the
ocean. Turtles are attracted to the light from the horizon. D. was one of the
people making the pass, the hatchlings went under his legs it was so cute!
Once they
were gone, we could stay and learn a bit more about the nest and the turtles
with the ranger. She dug up the nest with her hands. We counted the egg shells,
122 hatchling survived out of 135. We saved 5 while digging the nest, the rest
were unhatched or wrong eggs. We also got to hold a few unhatched eggs and a
dead hatchling, it was a bit sad.
We headed
back to the hostel around 11.30pm, had showers and went to bed. The hostel is
super quiet! There is only one Asian girl in our dorm and she is sleeping.
Walked 5.20 km today.
Slept in a mixed dorm, in Cellblock Backpackers, Bundaberg.
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extra photos from the internet
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