Stingrays, Turtles, Whales and Isla Marietas - Great Day!

Today was a great day.We went out in a boat for a whale watching, snorkeling, and island tour.
First we cane across stingrays I have never seen them at the surface before.   We saw about 4 huge groups of them.

                                                           Then we came across this turtle.   From afar, it looked like a red blob in the water.   The girls were guessing what it could be.   Strangely, they were fairly confident it was a dog.   Seriously?  Yes, seriously, they thought a random dog was swimming in the Pacific Ocean miles from shore all by itself.    hmmm...they are smart girls....really......they are!     lmao
  

                          Gabriel (our boat driver) pulled the turtle right on the boat and the girls got to touch it.

            Then we came across the humpback whales.   They are such big beautiful, magnificent creatures.  

 This one kept slapping its' tail on the water.   It did it a dozen times or more.   This is called lobtailing.   Some scientists theorize that lobtailing is a form of communication, while others speculate it is a means of foraging. The theory is that the loud noise causes fish to become frightened, thus tightening their school together, making it easier for the humpback to feed on them.

 After the whales we went to the islands.They were quite breath taking.  There were many caves.  Gabriel drove the boat right inside this one.   Notice how the girls are sitting?   Would it surprise you that Maddy has a sunburn on the front of her legs, on her chest, and on both her arms, while Ryleigh is burnt on the back of her legs?    After 9 days in Mexico, today was the only day they got too much sun.     After they went swimming, I asked if they had sunscreen on...they both replied "yes"...what I should have asked is if they had reapplied sunscreen after swimming.      

There is a beach on the other side of this rock.   The girls jumped in and swam over...thus removing their sunscreen.  

We only took 1042 pictures today.....pulling out a few favourites for the blog was near impossible.   Isla Marietas is a popular excursion from all the little towns between Puerto Vallarta Sayulita, and we can certainly tell why.    

 It has been a pleasure having Ryleigh and Maddy here to visit with us.   Tomorrow they go back home and we will miss them.   They must have a lot of respect for us, because they were extremely well behaved...either that or they have a great deal of fear for Sara might do to them if they were to get a bad report from us.  lol      We got a fabulous picture of each of them today.       

hasta la vista Isla Marietas....hasta la vista