Sadly the wind and wave forecast is still too much for our little 'Slow Flight'...a little peek out at the black and frothing ocean was enough for us to know that no amount of lashing everything to the deck would save her from a pounding in the Gulf Stream (or us!) so we wait....and wait...and head for an adventure in the Everglades. 
3 hours of quizzing and singing followed as we zipped south on an alligator bear hunt. Roads in America are 6 lanes wide and have no useful signs, plus you can't get a map anywhere. So we drove the whole side of Florida with out a single map spending much of the first few hours going the wrong way..
The everglades are made up pf 1.5 million acres of swamp, mangrove and marsh land. There are 300 different animal & 700 plant species! We also found out that it is the only place in the world where crocks and gators co exist... With all of these exciting things, we spent part or the day hunting down exotic swamp birds to take pictures of, as ever Freyja was on hand to help get the perfect shot...
Looking for a way to explore we ended up swerving the disney style air boat ride (the vegetarians didn't approve of the caged alligator petting..or the concept of feeding them hot dogs whilst blasting through their habitat on a noise machine) so we went for a more ecological and back to nature approach in a canoe...signing our lives away in a pretty serious waiver...seems the locals can be a little snappy...Freyja asked how one should defend themselves should the gator be a little peckish... helpfully the canoe man said guns don't work (lucky as we didn't have one in our pocket) so you could always try banging the oar against the side of the boat...hmmm...seeing our expressions he followed up with, 'don't worry 9 out of 10 times everything is fine'....errrrr
Things got quite snug in the swap as Esme unwittingly went for a "save herself" style approach to the canoe paddle and regularly forced pippa into the gigantic serrated reeds.
Team Esmé and Pippa would have definitely won in a paddle off against team Freyja and Abe, despite Abe being exceptionally proficient with his paddle....
The ride home was a tad entertaining too...BIG giggles
Dunkin Donuts drive thru! With 1,000 items on their menu and 52 varieties of donut we were a tad confused and that's before we even spotted the munchkins... a few language barriers at the drive thru speaker point led to more giggling and we only managed to order 3 plain glazed donuts...few more weeks here and we may progress to a vanilla peanut butter kreme or the cocoa confetti!
2 comments:
If you all carry on eating American food .... you'll need a much bigger boat!
Looks like an adventure!! Enjoy it!
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