Free Chek Jawa boardwalk tour 24 Feb 08

Today is the first day that the Naked Hermit Crabs are trying out the FREE Chek Jawa boardwalk tours. With a brand-new approach that is guaranteed fun for everyone! Just walk in and join us, no pre-registration required!
We pose hopefully by the lovely poster that Gaytri and LK created and set up at the Ubin Jetty entrance.

And what a pleasant surprise to meet several people who came specially for the walk. Although it was terribly muggy and hot, there were lots of visitors too who came by and agreed to join the walk.
Here's my group, Linfred, Kelvin and Maggie from the Philippines, who heard about Chek Jawa from an SIA inflight magazine and specially made the effort to visit; and the Knott family from Australia who missed out on Airshow tickets and came by to Ubin instead. They all have mangroves too at home and shared stories about them. Wow, I learnt much from them.

The tide was really high, but we still saw lots of mudskippers of all kinds: from enormous Giant mudskippers, to smaller frisky Gold-spotted mudskippers to really tiny ones frolicking in the back mangroves, which were wetter than usual due to the very high tide (3metres today!).
We also saw various crabs on the mudlobster mounds, lots of tiny fishes swimming in the pools enlarged by the high tide, and one of the Knotts spotted a mudlobster just before it slunk back into its burrow! Wow!
We climbed up the tower for a spectacular view all around.

Meanwhile, Andy was taking great shots of Chay Hoon and her group.
Satish is the best spotter of all!Andy has lots more photos of the visitors and what we saw on his brand new sgbeachbum blog

As we headed back along the coastal loop, we stopped by to listen to July's excellent explanation about the seagrass lagoon.
It got a lot cooler and we realised why! It was raining on the mainland!
One of the most fantastic features of Chek Jawa is that you can see the sky all around you in 360 degrees! So you get a really early look at incoming weather. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see a water spout.

All too soon, the showers blessed us too and we all hurried back to House No. 1.Where the visitors as usual shared such wonderful drawings and thoughts about Chek Jawa. Our favourite participant, Isaac, is here at work on his masterpiece.

Here's some of the wonderful guestbook entries...
A tribute to CH, pictured here at centre left with the many badges on her bag.

And a tribute to July and the many things he shared with his visitors.

All the guestbook entries have been uploaded to this flickr account.

We take the obligatory photos of kitty cats on Ubin before saying goodbye to our favourite island.As we headed back in the dying day, the tide got low again.
And we could see the rhino rock again.

When we first started the walk, only the tip of the rhino 'horn' and its 'forehead' was sticking out of the water!

Join us for the next FREE guided walk on the Chek Jawa boardwalk on 30 Mar (Sun)!

Thanks to the naked ones for coming to guide today: CH, November, Marcus, Andy, Robin, July, LK and Ivan. (I'm sorry I missed taking photos of the other groups and their guides, will post them once I get the photos. Or look out for blog entries by the other guides).

More stories and photos ...
Andy's sgbeachbum blog has stories and photos of our guides with their visitors, all the special finds, a great fish eye shot from the tower.