Friday morning dawned a little brighter than Thursday, and the sun came out as we breakfasted once again in the Pelican. After a quick stroll on the beach for Jim to film it we made our way up the road to pick up a hire car and head off to the Everglades.
Once out of downtown Miami the Turnpike wends it’s way through increasingly drab little suburban estates until they peter out half-heartedly some 15 miles out of town. Another 10 miles brought us to Homestead, the last significant settlement before the Keys, so we took a right turn and headed into the wilderness of the Everglades National Park.
The south-western corner of Florida is all a protected area and is pretty much as it’s always been, apart from a little settlement called Flamingo on the coast. It used to be accessible only by boat and so it was hoped that the building of the road in the early 20th century would bring prosperity, but apparently what actually happened was that everyone immediately jumped at the chance to leave for the bright lights of the city, so it’s pretty much a one-horse town now.
The 40 or so miles of road through the Everglades to Flamingo was a beautiful drive, and brought home to us just how harsh an environment it is here once you get away from civilisation. The road cuts a dead straight line through endless sawgrass plains, becoming ever marshier until the mangroves dominate and you end up in real swampy stuff populated mainly by alligators and mosquitos. We saw plenty of both, stopping at several road-side lakes to watch the gators cruising around looking for lunch, while the mosquitos swarmed around us whining with delight and apparent contempt for our insect repellent.
An Everglades resident
A few hours of this was more than enough, and it was a relief to be heading over the causeway to the glitzy island of Key Biscayne, home to the well-heeled Floridians and their chums. I believe Madonna has (or had) a home here, and after driving around looking at the beautiful houses we could see why she chose it.
After a tasty pizza and quick snoop around a local supermarket (Winn Dixie, which Sue declared to be a worthy competitor to her employer, Sainsbury’s) we drove back towards the lights of Miami. It was dark now and the city was ablaze with colour, each skyscraper vying to outdo it’s neighbours in both height, design and lighting. The drive back over the causeway gave us a fantastic vantage point of this futuristic skyline, and needless to say Jim filmed every millimetre of it.
Once back in South Beach we cruised down Ocean Drive, which is also lit up beautifully at night with each hotel in a different pastel shade of neon lights. It was a warm clear Friday night and the crowds were out in force, thronging the narrow pavements between the tables of the street-side restaurants and bars. This is definitely one of my favourite places in the world.