We were staying in St Thomas and decided to take an excursion over to St John for some snorkeling with Ocean Surfari.

We drove to Red Hook to catch our excursion. The parking garage was across the side street then walked over to Ocean Surfari to check in.

When it was time to get on the boat we headed down to the dock. They informed us that only people from St Thomas would be going on this excursion (normally they pick up people from St John after us). 

Our captain for the day was Jake, as in Jake from State Farm he said. He was funny and had a lot of jokes. He was going to be fun. They played music on our way and he continued to joke around. He was from North Carolina.

You could tell we were getting close when we started seeing other boats

We were arriving at Maho Bay in St John. I had hoped we would be going to some place we had never been (we went to Maho last time) but I guess it was ok. We were going snorkeling and we were going to see turtles!!

We had arrived and was given instructions of where to go once we got off the boat. They pointed waaaaaayyyy over there and said by the yellow markers. Wait what? Why the heck are we parked so far away then? There are much closer boats. We most definitely could have parked in the handicapped parking spot IMO. Geesh!

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I handed Sakari one camera, I had the other and then gave the GoPro to the hubby. We jumped off the boat.

The kids and I were in the water, but the hubby was still on the boat talking to the crew. I got tired of waiting and we started swimming. He'd be along. We were in such deep water that it was hard to see the bottom...or much of anything at that point. 

When we were finally close to the markers they told us to go to, things were getting clearer and you could now see the bottom of the ocean floor. Then we started spotting turtles...everywhere and the weird thing was, every turtle had at least one remora on them. I have only seen a remora maybe once, and I believe it was in St Thomas, at Coki I think. But this many?!? It was insanely neato!

These remora's are very odd looking. I didn't realize until now. 

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Sakari was able to dive down close to them and get all these awesome pictures. I can never get down far enough because I'm fluffy and I drift back up 

How awesome are Sakari's pictures? She was really all up in the turtles personal space. Then she came up....The next thing that happened was NOT awesome. I caught a glance at her camera AND IT WAS OPEN!! The door to the area that you charge was OPEN! OMG!!! I screamed for her to give me the camera and I quickly shut the door. I tried turning it on and nope...nothing. My heart was beating fast, my head was spinning...omg, what about all of my pictures on the sd card??? Will they work? Will the camera ever work? How am I going to save the pictures??? I was very distraught after this. Sakari felt bad. I tried not to show it. I didn't want to upset her but I was dying inside. I don't know how it happened. It has a lock on it. But somehow it got open. 

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I took the camera and put it around my other arm and we continued snorkeling. At least with my head in the water it would hide back my tears. Then Sakari screamed with excitement.  "Mom, look down, there's squid!" I looked down  and didn't see anything. My head quickly popped back up, Sakari came up, I gave the idk look and she said "They are babies...look by my feet" I looked back down and there were two little baby squid and by baby I mean BABY! I had never seen babies before. They were so cute. 

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We seen a few more turtles and decided to head back. I was still pretty distraught and just wanted to get back to the boat to try another battery in the water logged camera or try the sd card in my good camera. I just had to know. On the way back here come the hubby with the GoPro. Well, it's too late. You took too long we are going back...my camera is ruined...and I kept going. Sakari did take over the GoPro and got some footage before we made it out of the area. It was a long swim back.

I got back to the boat and tried every combination I could for both the camera and sd card and nothing worked. Sakari looked at me with that "look". She knew I was upset. She felt really bad. She knows how much my pictures mean to me. I'm not worried about the camera. Camera's can be replaced. Yes, they are expensive, but replaceable. The pictures you take on them...cannot be replaced and these were my vacation pictures. My review pictures.  I really tried to play it off. I didn't want her upset. She said she was sorry, but not sorry as in you lost your pictures, sorry that I did this to your camera type of sorry and then I knew she was blaming herself. Oh no! "It was NOT your fault Sakari! It came open somehow. You didn't open it. Accidents happen and it just happened when you had it. Maybe I didn't have the water lock clicked." She felt better after that. 

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It was time to move on to the next snorkeling spot. Everyone was back on the boat and off we went. We were told the next spot would have a shipwreck. Sakari got really excited over that. She loves shipwrecks. They said it was called Christmas Cove. We were headed to Great Saint James. 

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Check out my review on Christmas Cove, which was the next spot we went to.