Fate

After five unforgettable days in Ras Al Hadd, our adventure ended with an unexpected but amazing experience. We had spent hours camping out near a coastal cove, eagerly waiting and hoping that a female green sea turtle would come ashore to lay her eggs. Despite several patient hours of checking the beaches every 15 minutes, the turtles didn’t appear, and we reluctantly decided to call it a night and head back to our accommodation. We had plans to leave Ras Al Hadd the next morning to head to our next destination.

Dawn rolled around, and we were back to desperately searching for any signs of life. That’s when a local friend we had made the day before waved us down to one of the beaches nestled between the sea cliffs. We made our way down quickly but carefully, and we were pleasantly surprised to find him carefully rescuing three green turtle hatchlings that had likely gotten confused and trapped in a small, stagnant pool of polluted water, rather than making it out safely to the ocean. It felt like fate — fate that we managed to see these little guys in the last few moments we had in Ras Al Hadd, but also fate that our friend was there to save them from an otherwise grim fate — either dying from the polluted water or being predated upon by gulls, foxes, or cats.

Watching them find their way to the ocean, knowing we had given them a fighting chance, filled me with such a magical feeling that I’m not quite sure how to put it into words.

I’d read so much about the dangers these little creatures face, but nothing could have prepared me for the humbling reality of their journey, right from their very first breath on this planet. Their survival is a testament to the wild world’s incredible resilience, and the privilege of being part of that story is something I’ll always be grateful for!