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Miami and Key West roadtrip
After the last 3 weeks of travel I decided that I could not contend with the 28 hour train journey from Washington to Miami and it was also cheaper to fly so I booked myself on a flight. Strangely it had a 3 hour lyover in Detroit which is North and a bit of strange route to Miami but the cheapest fair wins so i went for it.
Flying was definitely a good choice and I arrived in Miami on time with no issues. I stepped out of the airport and was very excited to need to take off my hoody as it was boiling hot! I navigated my way to the hostel pretty easily and checked in. It was very different from any other hostel i'd stayed in so far. This was obviously due to the climate as my dorm opened up straight into the outside and the common areas of the hsotel were only covered by an awning. The hostel was really cute and included free breakfast and 2 free BBQs a week which was great news for my dwindling budget!
After nearly a month of constant sightseeing and being on the go I'm not at all ashamed to admit that I spent the first 4 days doing pretty much nothing but lying on the beach relaxing! I met a guy called Dan who is also a solo traveller from England and whilst we were exploring South Beach we saw people riding segways, we decided this was definitely something we needed to do! Seqways are amazing! We had so much fun and got to see so much of South Beach as they are surprisingly pretty quick. We only had one incident when Dan managed to drive into a policeman on a bike but he wasn't too angry about it, luckily! The only dampener on the segway tour is that the compnay didn't tell me it would take up to 7 working days for my $400 deposit to go back in to my account so I then had around $20 to my name until I could move money around. In hindsight it was probably a good thing as it meant I couldn't spend money!
A couple of days later after more relaxing I decided I'd been frugal enough to treat myself and booked myself on to a diving excursion out to one of the reefs off of south beach. Jono, who was now also in Miami joined but as a snorkeler. The whole experience was excellent, I saw so many different kind of fish and they were just inches away from me! It was fascinating and I can't wait to do more dives in slightly cheaper places like Fiji and Thailand.
As I had never dived in the ocean before and was obviously unfamiliar with the reefs and currents I hired a guide to lead the dive. He was great and I felt completely comfortable for my first ocean dive! Before the I've he warned me that if he was carrying a spear in case he saw any lionfish. Lionfish are not native to the area, they came from Asia and they are threatening the reefs and the other fish as they have no natural predators. Sure enough around half way through the dive Jo alerted me to a small cave and inside I could see Three lionfish. He managed to spear and kill two of them and attached the bigger of the two to his spear to take with him after the dive.
Back on the boat Jo explained that he would eat the lionfish for dinner and ended up inviting Jono, Izzy and me to his flat to try the fish. We headed over to his flat complete with jacuzzi and swimming pool and had an amazing view of the Miami skyline with the sun setting. Jo told us about a small bar in Miami that held 'Ladies nights' on Wednesdays, this meant that women got free drinks up until midnight. We headed over to this bar and sure enough we were ordering two drinks each and shots and they were just placed on the bar and left there! It was bizarre but brilliant. The bar was really interesting with a huge outside area and street art all over the walls. Needless to say I was a tad hungover the next day!
Whilst I was in New York I met a girl from Bristol called Izzy. We chatted and found out that we were doing pretty mhch the same route across America and were both interested in doing a road trip. Long story short Izzy got to Miami and 3 days later we picked up our campervan ready for month long road trip to San Francisco! Excited doesn't even cut it!
The plan was to go down to Key West, the southernmost part of the U.S, and then head up to Orlando, across to New Orleans and then North through Texas and around most of the national parks the West has to offer, ending up in San Francisco on 1st July. It's not cheap renting a campervan but I emailed the company basically saying we couldn't afford their prices and was there anything they could do to make it a little easier, they replied straight away with 15% discount, no one way fee, and unlimited miles. So Izzy, me and Suzanne the van were pretty excited to start our roadtrip adventure!
Our first stop was Key West, FL, I drove the van first and can personally vouch for how awful driving in Miami is! The van is huge and very wide so trying to gage where you are within the lanes is hard enough without the crazy American drivers pulling out on you, cutting you up and not letting you change lanes to exit a junction! The stress was compounded by the fact that the satnav that came with the van was broken. We rang the company and they said we could go to a Walmart and buy a brand new one and they would reimburse us. After that drama we were finally on our way and the roads became much more manageable the further into the Keys we got.
The drive to Key West was beautiful, it is a series of 42 bridges connecting the Islands off the bottom of Florida, the bridges are surrounded by bright turquoise water and the resulting views are incredible. The weather was also gorgeous but we were glad for the air con with it being 33 degrees outside!
We eventually got to Key West, the last of the islands, and found a residential street to park on for the night for free. It was a bit nerve racking leaving the van parked for the first time not in a car park, we all crossed our fingers that Suzanne wouldn't be towed. We explored the town a bit and found a square full of street performers, buskers and stalls. The atmosphere was really fun and we joined a group of people and ate dinner there watching the sunset across the islands which was amazing.
The main strip of Key West, is a blur of old fashioned, very unique, bars with live music along with a LOT of cigar shops and stalls. With Key West being 90 miles from Cuba i guess they too like their cigars! After stopping at a typical American bar for a bit to listen to the live band we headed back to the van. Jono, our friend from New Zealand that we had both met in New York had come with us to Key West so we had three people top and tailing in the van. It was also 29 degrees outside at midnight, so Suzanne was like an oven. We very quickly realised we would genuinely die if we didn't do something so we drove to the nearest Walgreens and bought a battery powered fan.Luckily the Walgreens manager was nice and let us sleep in the car park as long as we left by 6am, so we could relax from worrying about waking up to being towed!
The next day we walked around Key West a bit more and took in the views. The houses are really cute and wooden, they are an array of pastel colours and make the town adorable. However the thing that stuck out most and was by far the strangest part of Key West was the chickens. If you think of the amount of pigeons you see in a typical English town and then replace them with chickens you have Key West. There were brown ones, black ones, white ones, roosters, baby chickens, it was bizarre! We still haven't found out why there are quite so many roaming chickens but feel free to add to the conspiracy theories by commenting below!
We said goodbye to Key West and our new chicken friends and headed back up to Miami, dropped Jono off and then proceeded to Orlando. No crashes so far!!
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