Mincing about in Miami (including Everglades NP and Key West)

Miami, Florida (1st - 6th Feb & 24th Feb)

We flew from LA to Florida on 31st Jan, after dropping off the rental car at the airport and spent the remainder of the day at LAX using their wifi and trying to get some blog photos uploaded to kill the many hours remaining until our flight departed 8 hours after we arrived.  We flew Spirit Airlines and will never fly with them ever again.  They are a budget airline so we shouldn't have expected much but considering it was a six hour flight it was the worst flight we have ever been on.

Arriving in Fort Lauderdale at 5am, after the shittiest flight in history we had been messaging our Air BnB host whom told us we could check in early to his house at as long as it was before 8am.  We decided that we would take the opportunity to sleep horizontally at the airport, by the noisy baggage claim, for an hour before catching a ride to the Air BnB.  We booked an Uber to collect us, the app told us he had picked us up (which he hadn't as we were still standing on the curb) then he drove off "virtually with us" - after about an hour messing about trying to get another Uber and then getting a refund of the failed pick up.  We threw our hands up in the air and got a taxi to the Air BnB, but half way there our host contacts us saying he had to leave so we turned the taxi around and then spent the entire day at the very good Science Museum & IMAX Cinema (we watched a documentary on the Hubble Telescope as well as the latest Star Wars Movie), in Fort Lauderdale.

We finally got hold of our Air BnB host, José Luis, whom is originally from Paraguay and spoke very very little English and made our way there via Uber.  We used transport apps like Uber and Lyft for mainly long distance city travel because we got free and discounted rides.  The Uber driver took us to the suburb of Hollywood, FL where we spent two nights.  José Luis and his wife Maria were lovely and we chatted to them for the remainder of the night, went to a little restaurant down the end of the street for a basic dinner, where the heavily pregnant young woman whom served us also didn't speak any English.  We were on a steep learning curve for how essential Spanish would be to our current and future travels - another lesson in being more prepared when planning trips!

The next morning after a wonderful night sleep after two days being awake, we caught a bus to Miami Beach and from there found a bike station and hired some bikes from the 'City Bike' service which uses a credit card as security for a fixed period of time you designate and then off we went touring the downtown.  We biked the very long foreshore boardwalk and found that we A nice security guard minded our bikes while we walked down the pier.

From the pier looking back at Miami Beach, not warm enough for a swim for me.

We found another Air BnB closer to the main part of Miami town, also closer to the Miami International Airport as we were in the process of organising a flight out of Miami to the Caribbean as well as our flight from Miami to Lima later in the month, though we were still deciding which sailing trip we would do.  

Our Air BnB hosts in Miami, Gabby and Fernanda were very good to us and we booked three nights with them.  They are full time students that have randoms, like us, stay at their home as it was a lot cheaper for us travelling than a motel room and the added bonus which we thoroughly enjoy is to chat with the locals and find out about their lives - everyone that knows us knows that we enjoy a good chat! 

We decided that we would hire a budget rental car to best see the outer regions of Miami which meant a bit of driving around for us to the Everglades National Park, as well as two nights at Key West.

Everglades National Park

We took a tour across the Everglades, which covers a very large area and is mainly a huge wetland with many birds, snakes, deer, rabbits as well as Alligators.  There is also approximately 160 Florida Panthers that are still living in the wild, but in drier areas of the Everglades.  We only saw a very small section of the areas and hope to do a kayak/canoe trip through the western section of the Everglades in the future - it can take up to a week to get through the canoe 'trail'. 

American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis).  Gators inhabit fresh water, have a short snout and dark colouring in comparison to a crocodile.

An abandoned village, new relocated along the main highway with assistance from the Indian reservation funds. 

Wetlands walk was impossible to do but there was boardwalks we found along the main highway that were advised by an information centre.

Wynwood Walls, Miami

Our very attentive Air BnB Hosts, Gabby and Fernanda gave us a huge handwritten list of things we should see while in the area, we pretty much did them all which was excellent. They suggested that we visit the Wynwood district which is famous for its arts, fashion and graffiti area - we ate at the hipster food places along the street too.

Eak with his buddy Vader.

A lot of quirky art, Eak sitting on digger tracks.

I think the reason that there was a bit of a Star Wars theme occurring was because of the new movie (which we saw while in Fort Lauderdale)

Yoko and Lennon

Michael with the art of recently departed Bowie, completely coincidental but a nice tribute to him nonetheless.

Key West

Part of the reason we hired the rental car was because we wanted to head south to the connected roads over the islands travelling the 265 kms down to Key West.  Gabby was incredibly generous in lending us her tent so we could camp down there as accommodation was ridiculously expensive and without that option we would have slept uncomfortably in the car.

We stayed at Boyd's Campground, which had pretty good facilities and we managed to get our laundry done there too.  We stayed there two nights, it was very windy and exposed right on the waters edge but it was quite nice.  They recommended a place close by to have dinner which we had to wait an hour to eat at but it was quite nice.  We also met a lovely couple from New Jersey, Christina & Lenny with their two young children.  We spent a few hours yarning to them in their beautiful RV and had some beers with them.

We went to the downtown area in Key West and spent an hour talking to a woman whom was involved in the treasure salvaging in the Gulf from a sunken Spanish ship which held millions of dollars of gold, stolen from Peru and being transported to Spain to fund the empire.

Visiting the Treasure Museum was interesting, we enjoyed all of the history there.

Shahn on top of the lookout point of the museum used historically to search for ships running aground so that locals could salvage the ships and lives of sailors... for a fee.

A memorial to the local settlers and famous locals that made Key West what it is today.

We went to Fort Zachary where they were finishing up a weekend of recreationalists whom were camped out and dressed up in period clothing.

Shahn enjoying the sunshine after we stopped off during our drive back from Key West. It was very sunny but it was quite cold, cold enough to wear long sleeves and pants.

We decided that we would find a way to spend our remaining time in North America on a sailboat and we found two possible options.  After much discussion and research we decided that we would go to Guadeloupe in the Caribbean on a 45ft yacht with a family of three.  We spent the remainder of our last day organising our Guadeloupe trip, two things were essential - snorkel & mask as well as a wide brim hat.  We were looking forward to some sunshine and snorkelling!

We had been hiking and camping, we completely forgot that Michael's Leatherman was in his day pack (now his carry on) a very vigilant security check at the airport saw his poor Leatherman a lonely soldier to be destroyed. He was and still is gutted to have lost it.