Crossing over miles of swamps into Florida, we drove directly South to Fort Lauderdale, bu it looked more like we had gone North. Being the winter nesting grounds of New England's elderly and elite, West Palm Beach and most of Florida, is dominated by empty vacation homes and sprawling franchises.
Originally, Key West was the only reason for visiting Florida, but serendipitously two of my favorite cousins had found work here on foreign vessels wedged inland amongst Fort Lauderdales palm trees and mansions.
We were lucky enough to be able to stow away on the $6+ million dollar S.Q.N, a super-yacht David was working on as the ship's engineer; the huge boat has an all foreign crew, including a Kiwi skipper Brett, who graciously gave us the marble floored owners quarters for a couple of nights!
The S.Q.N. was an amazing Star Trek like, luxury palace that happens to double as a fully functional yacht. It's one of many such ships that concentrate in the super-rich boating paradise that is the Caribbean.
As the crew toiled on the S.Q.N., Elliot {my other cousin}was just down the road {canal?}, working as a chef on an equally flamboyant dream boat; with only evenings off ,we hardly got to see either of my busy cousins as they polished their ships and soaked up the local flavor of Americana.
Rested and refreshed, we chugged across the famous concrete bridges towards Key West and it's communist neighbor.
The keys where chopped up into housing developments wherever a house could fit {with its own back yard jetty!}, until Key West where a stubborn population of old hippies and now trapped locals call home. We had arrived on a Friday and Fantasy Fest was kicking off, a week long dress up festival of drunken debauchery; basically it was overweight, over the hill couples ogling each other dressed as sloppy vampires or movie villains.
We saw Hemingway's old house and the Southern-most point, then left the beer gut, stuffed streets and the Keys for the Everglades.
We had made the turn North, and after ten weeks on the road, using public showers, cooking on park benches and sleeping in crampt quarters, we where still having a blast and could hardly remember owning a house or going to college!
Amazing Everglade bird life!
Bald eagles, Turkey vultures, Ospreys and bird sized mosquitoes everywhere.
Florida without the people is a swampy, steamy, stew of life; we lost count of the exotic birds we saw, we even saw the rare American Crocodile, the Alligators bigger, meaner relative.
Before turning West, going North, into the South, we stopped in Tampa to see Ami's step father, Roger for a couple of days. It was funny to keep seeing family in Florida but this time we got to spend some quality time catching up and just hanging out; Roger is an avid hunter and had recently returned from Texas with a Sika deer and some Rams meat.
Our days where spent sleeping in and watching a huge flat screen TV, and our nights processing the deer, ram and pork into hamburger and sausages, it was a lot of fun!
We had such a nice time; we stayed for Halloween and handed out candy to the local ghouls and monsters, it was a unexpected trip highlight, but eventually we had to answer the beckoning call of the road and say farewell to Roger and Florida.