Beach Christmas Cards

America's very own slice of the Caribbean, plus plenty of rum

WELCOME to the United States of America,” says a groundsman as I land on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, introducing me to the first of many contradictions here. The island is, I find, a cocktail of the tropical Caribbean, American high rise (it is a commonwealth of the USA) all mixed with a huge dash of Latino. And, it turns out, big lashings of rum.

Puerto Rico is located at what is known as the “gateway to the Caribbean”, just 1,000 miles south east of Miami, and is where Caribbean verve meets Uncle Sam. Puerto Ricans drive big American cars and gesticulate like Spaniards. And they can all dance.

Bizarrely, Bruce Forsyth was on the welcome committee to greet the first British Airways flight to the island for 20 years. Married to a Puerto Rican, he has a holiday home here where he spends several months a year and extols the virtues of the island’s beaches and golf courses – even its discount shopping malls where he proudly claims to have bought the jacket he is wearing from Macy’s for $100.

Looking for something strictly more authentic, I head to Old San Juan, one of the oldest towns in the Americas.

Old San Juan’s blue cobblestone streets lead us through a capsule of Spanish colonial charm: The Murro fort which juts out over the Atlantic was built in 1528 and is the oldest Spanish fort in the New World. We stop for lunch and local rum in the inner courtyard of El Convento.

There’s no avoiding rum here. We find it tastes best in the island’s signature cocktail Pina Colada, said to have been invented at San Juan’s Caribe Hilton hotel, which opened its doors in 1949, the first Hilton to open outside the USA.

THE RUM DIARIES October 2011 will see the launch of the long-in-development film The Rum Diary. Based on the book The Rum Diaries by Hunter S Thompson (of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) it stars Johnny Depp as journalist Paul Kemp, who gets frustrated with New York and moves to Puerto Rico to write for a local newspaper in the late 1950s at a time when the Americans had fallen out of love with Cuba. The book, which was published in 1998, 40 years after it was written, is a thinly veiled autobiography of Hunter S’s own louche lifestyle on the island, which he spent drinking rum for breakfast and gate crashing press lunches.

Make Your Family Jealous with Tropical Theme Christmas Cards ...

Looking for a new style of Christmas cards? Try beach Christmas cards and hit the sand with Santa Claus! Dreaming of white sandy beaches instead of snow? Or do you live in the tropic’s and want your Christmas cards to reflect that? Than you have got to check out these sweet beach theme Christmas cards.

They’ve got Santa making snow angles in the sand or running along the beach in his trunks. Absolutely adorable! Need to be politically correct? There are cards with “Happy Holidays” written in sand or snowmen bathing in the sun. Go a little more classic with seashells in colors of green and red on the front and on the inside you can write your own personal holiday message. Also, check out the cards that have Christmas trees is the form of sand castles. Too cute!

These Christmas cards are definitely gonna catch the eyes of your loved ones this holiday season. Switch things up this year from those old traditional cards and show everyone your beachy style.

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