The Everglades

Before leaving South Beach the Miami weather had to turn on one last storm to make sure that driving in city traffic in a shit box Chevy on the wrong side of the road didn't get too easy. Actually I can't complain the airboat thing was about 40 kilometres out of town and depending on traffic conditions the GPS said it would be between 37 minutes and 1 hour and 9 minutes. I allowed 90 minutes and even in traffic and a pretty decent storm did it in under 30. So I'm sitting here at a truck stop waiting to meet my guide. 

All the hotels on South Beach like to rape you when it comes price. The holy grail of a city hotel here is one that comes with parking, breakfast and wifi, even two out of three would be good. You can always stay out of the city centre but you still have to find and pay for parking (around $15 to $35 depending on where you are and how long you stay). So while my Miami Beach hotel was a pretty good deal it didn't come with parking or breakfast. Breakfast was not that big of an issue as I just had it wherever I was heading and if I timed it right you could always skip lunch. Its quite cheap to eat here but not if you want to eat something a little healthy. This breakfast I decided to live the American dream and eat at an old fashioned diner. How good does this look?

Breakfast was great and while I was hoping the waitress would be some broad named Doris who was world weary and seen it all before I had to make to do with a smoking hot Cuban fox whose mere presence was enough to arouse me from my drunken stupour.

I hit the road and made the truck stop where we were scheduled to meet our guide to the Everglades. To fill in time I was sitting typing furiously on my tablet when two ladies came up and asked me if I was Carl. It was too early in the morning for me to do cheap lines like "I'll be whoever you want me to be" so we got chatting and discovered it would just be the three of us airboating (if that's even a word?) the Everglades. Can I say right now that riding an airboat is one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life. Its so much fun. It felt like a guilty pleasure. I kept looking around waiting for someone to yell ".....what the hell do you think you're doing? Get off that thing" then take away my new toy. God how I enjoyed it.

We were out on The Everglades for over an hour and a half. But who gives a shit about that right. This thing can do 50 miles an hour, we got it up to 47. It has no reverse gear and no brakes. The way you stop this puppy (and for that matter steer the thing) is by way of power slide and the application and reduction of power. For about the first 15 minutes it was raining and the very real fear was we may have to head in. A lightning strike on three million acres of water only six inches deep when you're sitting in a metal boat is not something you want to be a part of. Apparently the electricity from a lightning strike takes 30 miles to dissipate here. Fortunately it soon cleared and we didn't get to test this hypothesis. Steve the driver cranked it up and we had the time of our lives.

Plus we got to see alligators, two alpha males, a few females and whole swath of youngsters. They swam right up to the boat. The biggest one was about three metres long so nothing like our monster crocodiles but still impressive to see in the wild. We entered Indian land which was also a little special. There had recently been an accident where two airboats collided. I only saw two other boats the entire time we were out there and one of them was in dock. How two could collide in so much space I do not know. Anyway It was seriously cool. So below are the obligatory wildlife photos to pretend that was what I was there for. But just between you and me it was to fulfil a childhood fantasy to ride an airboat. Job Done!

Anyway I am at Cape Canaveral for the evening. I didn't even realise it was Friday night so I am sitting at a Grills Seafood Deck & Tiki Bar eating steak and enjoying the band. Tomorrow I head to The Kennedy Space Centre. I am pretty sure now that I have been to both Houston and now Cape Canaveral that I now qualify to become an astronaut. I will send you guys a postcard from Mars.