Tortuga Bay, Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos
We took a boat to Tortuga Bay, which was a few miles away from the main harbor on Santa Cruz. Unfortunately, Tortuga Bay had no Tortugas (turtles). But it did have white-tipped reef sharks. We snorkeled and saw 26 (I counted!) of these sharks resting/sleeping on the bottom. They are nocturnal, so they sleep during the day (and I was glad they were sleeping). But they were not sound sleepers, because some of them would swim away as we swam over them and disturbed them. After snorkeling we swam ashore to a beautiful sandy beach. The sand was very fine and very white, so it was soft and cool to walk on. As we walked to another part of the bay we started seeing iguanas walking on the sand or laying in the shade of bushes. They didn’t seem to pay any attention to the people walking on the beach. When we got to a small lagoon formed by lava rocks, there were some iguanas swimming and floating in the water. It was pretty cool to be in the water with the iguanas and watch them swimming. There were also a lot of pretty tropical fish in this lagoon and as I floated in two feet of water, watching the fish, I met a little black and yellow fish who was very territorial. I put my hand on a rock to steady myself and this fish rushed at my hand. I was startled and pulled back my hand and he swam away. So I put my hand back on the rock to see what he would do and he rushed at my hand again! I did this several times, just playing with him, and when I left my hand on the rock he actually hit my hand and tried to bite it. So, he wasn’t just bluffing by rushing at my hand! It was pretty funny watching this little fish trying to scare away my hand. Then it was time to swim back to the anchored boat and head back to the harbor.