Miami Hotels
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Into Gator Country
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Rain almost called off play in Miami, but it thankfully brought and end to a drought in the Everglades, Florida's wetland swamps that house an incredible range of alligators, turtles, fish and birds. Oh, and the odd native american indian...
On Saturday evening we bumped into a guy from Galway who was also staying in our hotel and invited him to join us for the daytrip into the glades. It's a $49 day trip from South Beach, but if you can make it there under your own steam (and steam we had a-plenty thanks to Avis and Judes) the price falls to $20 for admission to the park and a trip on one of those crazy looking airboats into the 'River of Grass'.
I tried to charge the guy $15 for the lift out, but Sinead was having none of it.
Our guide for the day was a loon called Dan, who stepped right out of central casting for 'Swamp Loony Bin' lookalikes. ("Tonight Matthew, I'm going to look like I sleep in a hole in the ground and eat badgers whole for breakfast"). But what a great character. He obviously knew his onions, and felt passionately about the ongoing development of the swamplands and the misguided conservation attempts in the glades. Dan showed us the mandatory gators and gave us the standard scary full throttle blast across the swamps, but unfortunately we couldn't go too far up the River of Grass as the droughts had reduced the water level to mere inches in places.
Once we were back on dry land, we were treated to a lovely bit of repile abuse a.k.a. gator wrestling. As with so much in life, cruel but entertaining. Shame the gator didn't win this time...
We left Florida on Monday, happy that we had at least got a flavour of Miami,m but probably a little underwhelmed by it. Maybe it was the marathon card sessions we played as we waited for the rain to stop. Maybe it was the 'Grand Theft Auto' overload. Or maybe, and I hope this was the actual reason, Marge and I are looking for something more than $6 mojitos and long strips of seedy nightclubs.
Which sort of describes our next stop....Rio. Let's hope they do things with a little more style. And more sun.
Latest Comments (2)
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Chuckle (reply)
Jun 8, 2007 06:00 EST by trishy
Ah Richie your stories are hysterical! Really enjoying reading about your trip keep em comin'
;-) Trishy
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