CHRISMAS ON THE PENINSULA (Dec. 25th)

What is Christmas without a Christmas tree? John was determined to have two things on Christmas day…presents to unwrap and a tree to put them under. Prior to leaving home in the USofA , he had searched on line until he found what he wanted, ordered it, packed it in his suitcase, inflated it, and gave it a home in Chelsey’s room, the Gathering Room at our hotel. Yes, we packed all of our presents down. I’m surprised we were able to fit them all in our suitcases.
Before breakfast John read the Christmas story from the Bible and then we unwrapped our presents. We had too much to do today to further diddle dally at the hotel…on to today’s activities. We drove to Punto Morales where we spent a couple of hours snorkeling one of the beautiful reefs in the area. The waters were shallow so we felt lost in sea weed, coral, and the rest of the beautiful underwater world. It was a very different dive from the one we took a couple of days ago off the coast of Cozumel. When we returned to our car we were ready to find us another beach for some more relaxing time. We ended up at Playa Del Carmen, just minutes south of where we snorkeled.
Wanting to please those of us who had previously looked forward to having a tropical drink on a warm and sunny beach, Nolan volunteered to find us some. He returned a while later with some wonderfully cool, albeit huge drinks to enjoy on the beach. Apparently they only had the foot long plastic cups for take out drinks.
Once the sun went down we spent some time meandering down 5th Street that is nothing but shops for many, many blocks. We ate an early dinner at 5:00PM since we didn't have a true lunch. Dinners in Mexico are usually much later so we actually were able to take advantage of a lunch special. It was a definite upgrade from ye local taco stand but John's wish was to eat somewhere a little nicer. And, it was fabulous although not yet on the same scale as our anniversary dinner. Eventually we decided it was time to head to our lodging facilities back in Cancun. The day could not end however without some more churros and fried bananas.