Everglades City

Almost over the jet lag now although still finding it a little bit hard to adjust because of the odd day length. The temperature is quite hot (hotter than home before we left) however because it is the middle of winter it’s not light until about 7.00am and is dark by 6. By 7.30 it feels like about midnight.

Thursday, we went down to Key Largo which was a bit of a disappointment. We all really like South Beach which has a definite individual charm and not a used car lot or fast food joint in sight. The trip down to the keys and key largo itself however was very much back to anywhere USA, an endless succession of strip malls and car yards.
We went out on Ocean Ave in South Beach that night which is the main drag along the beach and stacked with restaurants and clothes shops selling $700 jeans. Ally and Rhiannon got Henna tattoos and we wandered along soaking up or rather being bowled over by the ambience. Humvees blasting hip hop followed by convertibles with pulsating latin beats followed by roaring choppers seemed to be the order of things. I heard more languages being spoken than anywhere I have been before and not a hint of danger. Really a pretty cool place.

Friday, we drove the couple of hours over to Everglades city which is on the south west tip of Florida. We spent the day on a guided Kayak trip down through the everglades. The trip started off between stands of cypress, moved into tight mangrove tunnels and finished off in sawgrass. We paddled for about four hours and it was a great experience.

The wildlife was fantastic with innumerable bird species as well as lots of Alligators. I was paddling with Rhiannon who wasn’t altogether sure about the whole alligator thing but in the end was won over by the cute babies sitting on their mothers back. They really were pretty cute. In the pictue on the left Rhiannon is looking over at the Alligator in the photo below.

The only downside to the day was when Rhiannons new digital camera she got for Christmas got run over in the parking lot by some guy from Canada.

Today we drove up the road to Naples which is a nice little city on the Gulf of Mexico. It was a complete change to Miami which Rhiannon picked up on straight away when she observed that "its not as multicultural here is it". Naples is Noosa on Steroids. Very wealthy very white but also very pretty with a beautiful beach covered in shells and a planning regulation that limits any buildings from being taller than the palm trees. Its a big centre for art galleries and today they happened to have a huge art fair on with the main street shut down and about 500m of stalls all of which were selling really good art, sculpture and jewellery. As nice as it was it still felt a bit odd to have such a huge art market with no hippies. There was definately an element of an enforced "safeness" to it all.

We had a great time on the beach in the afternoon and watched the sun set over the gulf which was a bit of a novelty.