A Hazy Start to the New Year

We spent a few days around the New Year's holiday down the coast, from the end of December into early January. The weather was mild, but a persistent haze hung over the water most of the time, softening the light and blurring the distant shoreline.

From where we were staying, I could watch sailboats gliding across the bay. It felt very quiet and still. The evenings were the clearest, with the setting sun creating sharp silhouettes of the tall, skinny palm trees against a cloudy sky.

One afternoon we went to an aquarium. The intense, saturated colors inside the tanks were a sharp contrast to the muted tones outside. I spent a good while just watching the schools of fish dart through the elaborate coral displays. I managed to get a decent shot of a seahorse, which seemed to barely move at all in the gentle current. It was a calm way to start 2009.