Nick's birthday was spent in the Desert quad biking: round No. 2

We had so much fun last year that looks like we're making Nick's birthday an annual quadbiking trip. We went out in the day time with a group of friends and enjoyed chasing each other up and over the san dunes.

Christmas Eve SUP through the mangroves! It was a beautiful morning and while I might miss the snow at Christmas time, being able to see the sun shine and get out and enjoy the water wand warm weather is pretty good too!

We're on to learning how to kitesurf now! Our friend Kareem is an instructor and we've been out twice, so looking forward to getting up on a board and actually seeing what this is all about! Obviously it looks fun, but it does takes a lot more time then just learning in a few hours...so we'll get there soon!

We joined other SUP'ers in Dubai to paddle around the world islands for Charity. It's 30km+ paddle and usually takes 4-6 hours, quite a paddle and something that we were thinking we should probably train a bit more then we had leading up to it. The morning of the paddle, security denied us access to paddle around the whole thing so we had to change course. While it was a bit shorter, we still did 25 km, had a great day out on the water and helped support Surf Aid International. The sunrise was amazing looking back to the Burj Khalifa and the Dubai skyline!

I am still busy playing hockey this season and we had our first game since Hong Kong! It was against the Dubai Mighty Camels, an expat female team that started a team this year. We won the game 5-4 and I took my first penalty shot and scored! We never really practice penalty shots, but thankfully I just thought back to Mighty Ducks and knew exactly what to do :)

During the Eid vacation we made our first trip to Sri Lanka and it definitely won't be our last! We had an amazing time and loved this place. Except the traffic and the drive from Colombo down to Ahangama on the West Coast!

The food was deliciously spicy, the people were amazingly friendly and the surf (that's the main reason we went) was fantastic for us! We went with Jess and Dre, Kareem and Zoe and Mark were overlapped our trip for a few days. There is so much to see in Sri Lanka, but our first time was about SUP surfing.






We rented a house about 800 meters from the beach with a garden where you could see monkeys playing in the trees! It wasn't luxurious, but great for our group and super cheap :) I don't think Jess and Dre appreciated the huge spider that greeted us when we arrive, not poisonous, but seriously the size of my head with super long legs.

We all took our inflatable SUP's, checked them in as our baggage, which was so easy and were ready to hit the waves! Pretty much every day went like this: 5:30 wake up for sunrise surf, post surf snack was a Roti, this triangle wrapped potato curry snack, we rested, ate lunch, did a sightseeing trip, then a sunset surf, drinks and dinner and repeat for 6 days!





We had drivers for the whole week who were super nice and took us around in their Tuk Tuks, they even prepared dinner for us one night at their house with their families, it was amazing! We saw a few temples, went to the Old Galle Fort and town which was neat and took a boat ride with a visit to a spice plantation as well.








A few nights we ate very local food and thankfully we all responded okay to it. For most of us our favorite meal was a Mango fish curry at one of the sea side restaurants, we even went back there a second time.


The last night/day in Sri Lanka we went back to Colombo and spent an awesome night at the Galle Face Hotel. Traditional Colonial hotel and we had some amazing rooms. The hotel overlooked the water and was beautiful. We had been recommended to go to this Art Cafe called Paradise Road, which had some fantastic food, art and the cafe itself was super cool, highly recommended for a night before you head out from Colombo.