Key West, Florida

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Friday October 19th through Monday October 22nd.

Stretching out for 125 miles from the southern Florida coast line are a chain of small keys (islands) that make up the Florida Keys. Before making the trek down to the southern most point of the US mainland we camped a night at Flamingo, deep in the Florida Everglades (well as deep as you can get into them). We were warned about the bugs, so I coated my whole body in 100% DEET bug spray, two layers of clothing on my top, trousers, socks and shoes….despite humidity at 92% and an overnight low of 28. Had one bite on my hand. Excellent. That’s enough I thought.

Problem. In the morning before we leave a camp site, my job for the past 64 days has been trailer loader, a good job as it gets me out of food prep and cooking, as well as van cleaning. Also a good upper body work out in the morning and evenings. But at 6.30am, dawn, it’s playtime for the mozzies and 6 hours later when we got into the Keys I could feel my whole back on fire, legs, hands…oh it’s painful. They’d bitten clean through my t shirt and trousers. On my left hand alone, I can count 18 individual bites. I’m like a cheese grater. I’ll say one last thing, I could almost bear them, but they are in the most awkward places! All over my bum, so it’s painful to sit, around my ankles so it itches to run, walk or just wear shoes, on the palms of my hands, so it hurts to lift! Combined with a temperature that differs only by 4 degrees day and night, and thus constantly being sweaty it just about makes sleep impossible. Especially as I arrived back the other night to find my tent flooded by a thunder storm (though that has something to do with my extremely dodgy tent pitching.) Air conditioning has become my best friend; as soon as the humidity is gone the pain goes….wha hay!! Oh one quick word about the camp site, possibly one of the nicest, my tent is perched 5 feet from the Gulf of Mexico, can lay down at night and hear the water bobbing up and down, while heat lightening (no thunder) lights up the tent.

Pretty much everyone else is the same mozzie boat, just been trying to crack on. So we hit a $99 water sports day onboard Sunset, a brand new $1.8 million catamaran loaded with 2 waveriders (jet skis), a huge inflatable rock climbing blow up thingy, kayaks as while also tugging boats along for water skiing, knee boarding, and parasailing. All for $99 10am to 4pm. Brilliant.



Waveriders (as they like to call 'em over here), possibly the most fun I've ever had at 50mph. The boat is meant for 100 people, but there was just us on it, slightly out of season so had all day on these things....brilliant...

Really enjoyed it, did everything. Jet skiing was awesome, hit 50 mph, they’re limited to that, on the keys, made some crazy turns, had some races between us. Also tried out water skiing and nearly broke my cheek bone. Just as I thought mosquito bites and a stolen wallet were as bad as could happen I fell forward (yes forward), head submerged and the water skies into my face, fortunately only at about 10mph. And luckily not the forehead or eyes… Ibuprofen & Ice straight away, a black eye probably, but I’ll take that and forget I ever tried it.

Before:



After:



Owch.



Ice and Ibuprofen, but there was a funny side:



So back to the campsite and where I’m writing this now, Burger King. A triple whopper king size. I’ve never seen a burger as big as this before. It’s larger than the keyboard on this laptop.



Perhaps the best campsite we've pitched up at in terms of views - though Glacier National Park up in Montana was another fantastic one. Sunsets here took it though, I think...

Florida Keys, conclusion……just fantastic. It’s a different world, you’d never believe you were in America if you were just dumped here like Mr Bean. Quaint little streets more like a ski town, but just mega humid. Sea 80 degrees, like a bath, some of it less than a foot deep! This is exactly how I imagine some of the chain islands in the Pacific, hope Kiritimati and Hawaii are just like this – clear turquoise water, just minus mosquitos.

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Wrote the above the other night, but only just putting it up on the blog now (Monday), so we're out of the Florida Keys now, at some camp site by Cape Canaveral, absolutely gutted that we have to leave early tomorrow (500 miles + to cover) as there is a shuttle launch scheduled for 11.30 am tomorrow, but thing is, only 1 from ever 10 actually go on schedule and it just leaves too many miles to cover in too shorter time to get back up to NYC by Friday/Saturday...Nevermind, at least I'm avoiding the mosquitos at this camp site! Just taken about 50 free samples of repellant from the camp site shop! Not sure the lady was too chuffed, but hey, it's moisteriser too!!

Hit Miami Beach today:

Really liked these two shots of Takako I took:





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Snorkelling at Key Largo, a protected coral reef