TRAVEL Maputaland
The half-ton leatherback turtle hauled herself out of the ocean, up the beach, and setded into a little depression above the high tide line. Then, she anchored her front flippers and began: dig, flick, dig, flick. First, with the right side. Then with the left.
The sand piled up around a steadily deepening hole as she laboured to hollow out a nest for her eggs. Her breathing rasped. The sand scratched. Behind her, the ocean whispered and sighed. Ghost crabs moonwalked where the sea wash shone silver on the sand. It was mesmerising.
‘Sometimes a flipper gets bitten off by a shark. She’ll still dig with it,’ said Andy Coetzee, a man with ocean-blue eyes and salt in his veins, who has seen thousands of turtles enact their destiny on the beaches of Maputaland. Stretched between St Lucia’s mouth to Maputo Bay, these beaches are South Africa’s haven for rare and endangered loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles. They’re the only species that nest on South African shores, although green, hawksbill and olive ridley turtles swim in our seas. Andy is one of their champions. ‘I love them,’ he explained. And like the turtles, this gifted author, TV presenter, naturalist and guide keeps returning to these beaches, year after year, to assist researchers and conservationists working on the Maputaland sea turtle programme.
The turtle nesting beaches are part of iSimangaliso Wetland Park, managed by KZN Ezemvelo. Female turtles will have been at sea for two decades before an invisible (to us) thread draws them to this specific stretch of
