Christmas in the Carribbean

Being the fortunate people that we are, we got to spend Christmas on the carribbean island of Roatan, off the coast of Honduras. We met our friends Christine and Ian, from Port Angeles, to spend the holidays snorkeling and relaxing on the beach. Ian is a techno gadget wizard and had this cool underwater camera so we are lucky to have some of his pictures.

Love on the rocks... well the coral reef. Here we are doing one of our favorite things, snorkeling! Most of Roatan is surrounded by coral reef and the west end, where we are staying is surrounded by marine park, so the reef is protected from fishing and harvesting. It also comes very close to shore. It is truly amazing!

A school of damsel fish swimming above the reef.

Our first carribbean sea turtle. We were able to follow this Hawksbill turtle around for about 30 minutes. Enough time to watch it come up for air and munch on the algae growing on the reef. Hawksbills are one of the most endangered sea turtles in the area.

Ian and Christine, posing for their carribbean travel brochure photo. These two newlyweds are traveling around the world for a year!

We didn`t have a Christmas tree so we had to use Kevin. He is wearing the Angel of the Navidad, which was published in El Heraldo, a Nicaraguan newspaper.

Our Christmas feast of bean burritos. We stayed in a really cool jungle cabin across from the beach, complete with hammocks, chickens and a resident cat (DON`T tell Oscar). Roatan is one of the cheapest places in the world to dive so we splurged and went diving on Christmas day, thanks to all of you who gifted us travel money to make that possible!

Kevin was able to go diving again today and had another amazing experience. I am having trouble with my sinuses and a relapse of my previous lung infection, so I opted out.

Alas, the weather gods brought in a storm. This is what our snorkeling beach looked like yesterday! We are hoping to wait it out so we can go back, but are not sure if our wallets are up for it. I keep checking the weather and trying to convince myself that the wind is calming down and the reef will be swimable.

We hope you all had happy holidays!

love Chrissy and Kevin