24 February

Today started out well with me up not long after 6 and having breakfast. Unusually, at this early time there was a large number in the (small) lobby. It looked like a school, sporting or church group with a large number of girls, one or two boys and about five parents (or teachers, or both). Kids were coming in at all times with tales of how they had slept (or not, as the case may be, as they were too busy playing). They certainly were not inquisitive as no-one asked about the jar of Vegemite I had with me.
That finished, it was a final pack and check and then off. I was a bit too efficient in one way as I arrived at the first Visitors Centre in the Everglades area well before it opened, so I just had a quick glance at what I was missing and pressed on. At the next Centre, not only was it open (well, ten minutes after I arrived) but there were some alligators and birds present to keep up the interest. In some ways the alligators were disappointing, as I expected them to be larger and far more ferocious and threatening. But to counteract that, they were free and roaming around in a pool just in front of the centre. The cormorants were fishing so the alligators can’t be perceived as too much of a threat to them. Here I spoke to a couple who had come down from New York because of the weather (note: this should have put me on guard, but it didn’t). In the Centre I found out there were panthers locally (see picture of warning sign) and that there were crocodiles in the Everglades with the alligators (but only pipsqueaks compared to our “salties”).
When going along I decided that an airboat ride (just for the experience) was in order. At the first place I stopped (just before 10) there was no-one else waiting, so after a futile ten minutes (except for some more good alligator photos) I went down to the next airboat franchise. Here, within a minute, a family arrived so our boat was ready to go. The husband was from England, the wife from New Zealand and the son was born and lived in the US – three distinctly different accents all in the one family!
The ride was interesting for the different view of the Everglades – the small lanes formed by the movement of the reeds by the boats, the “islands” and the wildlife. The driver warned about hats flying off, so I kept mine firmly in my grasp – so off went my sunnies instead. Now I really do have to get a new pair, so I will try Target or WalMart tomorrow. The ride was supposed to be thirty minutes with a ten minute walk in the middle, but ours ended up being nearly fifty minutes – good value!
After that I set off to enter the actual Everglades National Park. The Visitors Centre was outside the park, good for those who couldn’t decide whether to go in or not. There were good displays plus some informative films. I went in, using my pass, and went right down to the Flamingo area. There aren’t any flamingos there at present, but again there was a good informative centre (with an osprey nest on a set of aerials). I went in search of the crocodiles and found a cat on a lead instead. The owner pointed out where the crocs should be, and mentioned the cat was on a lead so he wouldn’t get lost (they were on a boat). He had been in the crew of the winner of the Sydney-Hobart yacht race in 1975 (Kialoa III (USA, which set a record which was maintained for twenty-one years) so was familiar with parts of Australia and my accent.
I managed to find one crocodile, so got the best picture I could before having some lunch (the facilities were damaged in a hurricane and only light refreshments are available). Then I cruised the rest of the park and saw some more of the areas for public viewing.
After that, with the temperature rising (I had already found that I had to carry the camera on the dash, to keep it warm so it wouldn’t fog up) I headed off to see the Florida Keys. The interminable roadworks continued to haunt me, and the traffic coming back to the mainland was something. At one point there was a four mile traffic jam (and that should have told me something more!). By the time I got down to Key West (the farthest key) I was out of accommodation options. I called into a Visitors Centre (just a small hut, not as elaborate as the states had) and found, naturally, that it was the peak of the peak season, made worse by the very cold weather up north. I found a place, a “private hotel”, and then had to find somewhere to park. With all that settled, I transferred the photos and processed them and the laptop picked up the network in the hotel. The photos went off and I wrote my blog, posted that (but not before I finished writing it, which was a few minutes later), checked and answered some emails and then went off to bed, ready to see Hemingway’s house and mile marker 0 in the morning before I head back off to the mainland to arrive at Cape Kennedy on Tuesday (it’s Sunday today) and do some shopping (hopefully) tomorrow for Polaroid sunglasses and to post off more souvenir material (and visit another museum, but that will be on Tuesday morning if I miss it – it’s the USN SEAL museum).