Príncipe, São Tomé and Príncipe

We slept in (breakfast was served until 10am) and had a leisurely breakfast on the terrace. There were lots of birds flitting about, mostly we just heard them at the late morning hour.

Minette came by to discuss today's excursions. The hotel was having a barbecue on Praia Banana (which they own) and so after breakfast we walked down (the Belo Monte sits at about 100m above sea level). Grabbed a cabana for two under the palm trees and relaxed. It was very comfortable with the temperature about 22C and a slight breeze coming in off the beach. It was just the Belo Monte guests (about 12 of us) and a couple people from Bom Bom.

The Belo Monte has a permanent grill and bar set up just under the palm trees and they started up on lunch. We could smell the grilled chicken and grilled fish and we were getting hungry, even though we'd just had breakfast and then pretty much just lounged about.

Lunch was excellent, with the exception of buzzing flies attracted to the food. My left arm was in a constant windshield wiper motion, not even needing a fly sensor cause they didn't stop buzzing.

After lunch we sized up our snorkelling masks and fins and then waded out to check out the fishes. We followed the suggested circuit of about 500m. There was quite a variety of fish, more than what I've seen on recent snorkelling attempts (and definitely more than at Praia Sundy). Visibility was also great, we had clear views down about 20 feet.

After about an hour we headed back into shore, and grabbed the shuttle (just the hotel pickup truck) back up the steep hill to the Belo Monte. On the short ride up we met two sisters from Beijing who were also staying at the Belo Monte. The one sister who was more comfortable speaking English was really witty and reminded us a bit of Chang, the South Korean we met in Ethiopia on the Danakil excursion.

We had a quick shower and then got ready for the turtle excursion. We had originally planned to go before dinner, but we were paired with a group of three other guests that wanted to have dinner first. So we had dinner at 7pm. Dinner was much better tonight, the main chef must have had the night off yesterday.

We met the other people, from South Africa. They were pretty fashionable and we think they may have been sponsored by a tourist board as influencers on social media or something like that.

We were wearing our trekking shoes after talking with some other guests who went the night before. There are hundreds of crabs on the beach and we were paranoid about our toes and ankles. We also had our headlights which had a red LED setting - regular light scares the turtles and they don't nest when scared.

So we loaded into the truck for the 30 minute drive to Praia Grande. There was no avoiding crabs on the road - they were all over the place. Heather said this was more like eco-terrorism than eco-tourism what with all the dead crabs just so we could see a turtle or two.

We got out of the truck and started walking down the beach with our red lights. The crabs started thinly at first, where it was possible to avoid them. Then it got thicker and thicker where each step we brushed up against a crab and hoped it didn't bite us. It was mostly in our heads as the guides wore flip flops and still had all their toes, at least it looked like that in the red light. After about 20 minutes of scary crab beach we met up with the researcher. It was like a scene from an Indiana Jones movie.

We then walked to the first turtle that was nesting. Its shell was 95cm (the researchers measure as part of their docs). Walked down to the beach to another turtle, slightly larger at 105cm. It was in the process of covering the eggs with sand and so we waited about 30 minutes for it to complete, so that we could watch it return to the sea.

There was then a surreal sight of five tourists plus our guide slowly following a distance behind the turtle as it slowly but surely made its way to the sea, reminding me of a slow funeral procession, with us trailing behind the turtle as pallbearers.

Anyways the turtle eventually reached the sea and swam off.

We walked back through the crab area. This time we were smarter and walked the thin line between the waves lapping up on shore and the crabs who gave the water a bit of a berth. There were still hundreds of them.

Got back to the truck and drove back to the Belo Monte. It was a cool experience to see the turtles nesting, and it wasn't even on our list of things to do here! Went to bed hoping to avoid nightmares of crab attacks.