Today is a national holiday here in Cayman called "Boxing Day". The holiday was traditionally a day when employers would give gifts to their employees and people would give gifts to those less fortunate, ie a day for charitable works. It has morphed into a national sporting day and typically a big cricket match is played. We are off work and will be resting and perhaps doing some more snorkeling. We have been really good about sticking to our exercise schedule and after two straight days of biking today will be a walking day with some swimming mixed in for variety.
Katie and I awoke yesterday to an expected high of 84 degree weather. We wanted to do an early morning bike ride before it got too hot. With a morning chill still clearly being felt we left around 7:45 and biked on the new bypass out to Hirst road then up to Careenage the small dock about a kilometer above the college on the North Sound. After a brief stop at Careenage we biked down Hirst road to Pedro Castle where we ate some apples and drank our water. Then a ride home along the main road back to Red Bay for a good hour and a half tour. We are trying to work our way up to some long rides but this time we are taking it slow and building gradually so we don't have a repeat of last summer.
After cleaning up we made a nice Christmas breakfast of eggs, toast and turkey bacon. Our plan had been to head over to Smith's Cove around 11 and go snorkeling. we were running late and didn't get out the door until almost noon. By the time we got to Smith's cove it was packed. a drive up seven mile showed that everyone else had the same plan we did so we decided to head over to the north side of the Island. When we got to Cayman Kai we were greeted by an empty beach all to ourselves. We set out our picnic lunch and then went into the water. We were feeling adventurous and swam out to the reef a good 1000 feet from shore. The fish that far out were incredible and with our new underwater camera we were very busy. After an hour or so of swimming we headed back in and chowed down on our PB&J's and ginger bread cookies that Katie had made on Christmas Eve.
For Christmas dinner we had a full turkey, stuffing, corn and green bean casserole. We got to talk to a lot of family members throughout the day on Windows live and by phone. All in all it was an incredible Christmas.
