Going out of our minds with the stress from building the house, we decided to leave everything behind and spend Christmas in the Bahamas.

We stayed at South Ocean Beach Resort, which is on New Providence Island, but far far away from Nassau. The diving was fantastic, but the food got old after the first night.

Since there was nothing around the hotel, most nights we took the bus into Nassau. Our favorite restaurants were the Poop Deck in downtown, Johnny Canoes in Cable Beach, and Compass Point between Cable Beach and Lyford Key. Christmas night we decided to check out Junkanoo, a carnival-like parade that lasts all night. We didn't realize it didn't start until midnight, so we decided watching it on television would be fine. We did get to see all the floats though - have never seen so much glitter in my entire life!

We went on two shark dives with Stuart Coves dive shop. One was a dive along the wall - we got to hear submarine pings, which was really neat. The wall is on the edge of a 6,000 ft. trench where the submarines apparently do training drills or something. I kept thinking it was Andy banging on his tank to get my attention, so I'd swim over and give the "what?" pantomime - he'd give the "nothing" pantomime - and I'd swim off. We finally figured out what the noise was when the divemaster did the charades version of "do you hear the submarine". Gotta love underwater communication. The other shark dive was to a place called "the Arena" - you sit in a semicircle and the divemaster feeds the sharks. I don't know what was crazier - jumping into the water after seeing a 12 foot shark swim by of sitting so close to shark food. We rented a Nikonos underwater camera and got some amazing pictures. The food creates a kind of feeding frenzy - the sharks swarm and knock you with their tails and fins as they swim by. It isn't until about 15 minutes into it that you realize where you are and what you are doing - must say I've never used a tank of air so quick before !

We contemplated staying longer, but had a dental emergency and had to return home as scheduled. Our last day we wandered around Atlantis on our way to the airport. it just opened two weeks before and it's amazing. We were both absolutely awe struck - everything was nautical- you can't even begin to describe this place. Little did we know that we'd be back soon...