Galapagos Islands - Day 2 - Snorkelling with sea-turtles and sneezing marine iguanas at James Bay

This was probably the highlight of the whole Galapagos island trip for me.  Our guide Ruben wisely elected that as soon as we touched down in James Bay we head out snorkelling. The reason for the wisdom is that as we came to the end of our snorkelling time a cruise ship with about 100 people began to disembark to snorkel the same area, I suspect that might scare some of the wildlife off so suddenly I was even more content with our smaller 16 person boat.

Now back to the snorkelling, did I mention it was absolutely incredible!  The first highlight has to be the sea turtles, these guys just cruise through the water without a care in the world.  You can see why they are portrayed the way they are in Finding Nemo :) It's quite easy, and a bit mesmerising, to glide along next to them as they plod along.

  Then of course a couple of sea-lions show up so I'm faced with age-old dilemma of 'do you follow the turtle or the sea-lions'. You know how it is ;)  I think you get the idea though, lots of colourful fish, a sting ray or two, watching a turle feed on the moss off the rocks, more sea-lions.  Just mind-blowingly good really :))

As the mass of cruise ship passengers started roll in, in scenes reminiscent of the start of Saving Private Ryan, we hiked away from that side of the island to go searching for marine iguanas.  Sure enough after not too long we just found piles of them sunning themselves on the rocks.  They also have this quirk where as they process the water they've taken in the previous swim, they sneeze it out, all over the other marine iguanas.  So there is just a pile of very still iguanas, sneezing all over each other!  Crabs get in to the mix too, crawling on the marine iguanas to feed on their shedding skin.  The iguanas don't care though, I don't think they care about much!