Chumbe Island: Surviving Jellyfish to see a Hawksbill Turtle

We have just come back from an overnight stay at the beautiful Chumbe Island Coral Park resort.  This is an environmental project run by two expatriates, the German founder, Sibylle Riedmiller and a young Canadian business graduate from Ryerson University.  The hope is that one day it will be run by local staff.  In the meantime the project aims to maximise the economic benefit to the local community - employing 45 people for a resort that has just 7 rooms.

Eco- tourism

Management choices attempt, wherever possible, to limit the environmental impact of the resort.

Each cabin is built on top of a 10,000 litre cistern for storing rainwater.  The island is currently experiencing a drought.  Nevertheless there was plenty of water for our showers.



Readers of this blog will know how much I appreciate flush toilets.  I was a little sceptical when I heard about the composting toilets.  Turns out that I should have been more open minded.

The bark mulch that was provided, did a fantastic job of keeping the place smelling nice.

Jellyfish and Turtles

On the snorkelling trip, we all got stung by the clouds of microscopic jellyfish in the water.  The stings were mild - not as bad as walking through a patch of nettles.  Afterwards, the stings affected each person differently.  One poor girl had a miserable night of it as her body reacted badly:

Michele was feeling the stings as much as anybody, but she had come to the island to see a turtle.  Our guide swum fast in pursuit of the elusive turtle.  Michele, not normally known for her love of water sports, kept up with no complaint.  Eventually we were rewarded with a sighting of the turtle.

  
Personally, I would have given up the chase as a lost cause if it was not for Michele.  As it was, by the time we actually found it, we were the only tourists still in the water.  We were able to follow the turtle as it swam around the reef.  Our presence did not seem to disconcert the turtle (Editor:  how would you know?).  Anyway after about ten minutes we decided that we should leave the poor creature alone.