Merry Christmas!

We wanted to wish all of you a very, though belated, Merry Christmas! We have been kept busy at the hostel preparing and recovering from it's annual Christmas feast. There were around 70 people in total and it was kind of a hectic day or two of preparation. Graham and I slaved away in a hot kitchen baking brownies and banana cakes for the occasion...and Graham was selfless enough to be the official taste tester. It was very generous of him. However, we agree that the desserts were the best part, so it was worth the sweat. The dinner went well and it was one big buffet-style affair with a variety of meats from pork to lamb, lots of vegetarian main dishes like eggplant lasagna and vegetarian Shepard's Pie, roasted vegetables, bread and salads. And then the desserts of course, of which there were no leftovers. So although there was no snow or presents, there was a great deal of food.

We are hoping to jump into more tours with the start of the new year. Although I have been a bit out of comission lately, Graham has been leading volcano boarding tours on Cerro Negro and is becoming quite the accomplished boarder (although to be fair, it is not rocket science - you sit on a piece of wood and slide down the slope). He also earned his first tip the other day, which makes him kind of a big deal, according to him. So, we will continue to help lead the volcano boarding tours, but in January hope to begin some of the one day and overnight tours. Some of these will include whale watching, high altitude coffee and cigar plantation tours, climbing the nearby volcanoes, camping and trekking in a cloud forest and boating through a protected mangrove estuary. We'll see what comes with the new year, but we are looking forward to it.

As always, we love hearing from everyone and hope that Christmas in the states was great. Oh and we finally uploaded more of our photos from our travels from Guatemala to El Salvador to Nicaragua and then from our month long tour within Nicaragua. So click here to check them out. Happy New Years in advance from both of us!