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Date: 21st September - 25th September 2006
After LA we went on to Miami (5 hour flight). Mel got approached by a guy at arrivals offering us a shuttle bus to Miami beach for $10 each cheapest offer and he seemed genuine so we accepted. Our hostel for the first two nights was the Jazz, this place seemed cool although it had a few cockroaches in the showers and we were sharing a really small room with a Guy called Charles in his 50s who had a mean cough. That night we walked up the strip ate out at a nice Italian restaurant and made sure we left a good tip hehe! We popped to the bar next door to our hostel and met this nice local couple Dave and Katie who we played pool with and chatted to them about the city. Dave freaked us out with a few dodgy stories which meant we were never gonna go near the beach at night but we knew that anyway. Next morning as the shower was a bit minging me and Mel just took a 2min walk to the beach to take a swim instead to cleanse in the sea (Backpacker style) the sea was like a bath here too. South beach is really beautiful, the temperature was about 30 the whole time we were there so the water was really warm and we topped up on our tans. In Miami we did a city and boat tour which wasnt up to the high standard of tours we have got used to, but we did pass the house from Scarface and Al Capones old house on a boat which felt pretty sweet hehe :). The guy Charles that we were sharing a dorm with asked us to pop by to see him as he apparently owned the tour company we had leaflets for, we were a bit confused when he gave us a business card for a hairdressers. We took a walk up and he spotted us first and called us up so we couldn´t not go in, but when it came to it he had leaflets and tour info in the salon at his desk, (we still don´t think he runs the company tho!). He booked our Everglades tour and gave us money off our deposit so we were like sweeeet! But then later found out next day we only had to pay more on arrival so he didn´t really save us money oh well! The Everglades tour was really cool and worth it anyway, had an airboat ride through the swampy Everglades and saw Aligators swimming past the boat ahh! The tour guy told us a few facts about the Gators, and some crazy guy did a show where he was sticking his hand in one gators mouth, man they shut with some force, and held a gators mouth closed under his neck! Then we all held a 3 yr old gator too but had to pay $2 to do this haha but thought we may aswell!
We went out on the lash one night and met a load of other young people from the Jazz which was a good laugh and also bumped in Charles there too! It was a cool night in a bar called Teds Hideaway, Miami was buzzing at nights but more for people on holiday than backpackers, as there are lots of expensive restaurants and the drinks were quite a lot too, but we glad we went there coz we really enjoyed ourselves!
Coz the Jazz hostel wasn´t that great we found a better place for the same price further up South Beach called Tropics which had a swimming pool!! So we moved up there for our remaining 3 nights in Miami, it was worth the half hour trek with our bags getting there coz we had a 3 bed room with a TV with lots of movie channels felt like luxury!! So glad we had a pool coz it was so hot it meant we could just jump in the pool whenever, I was very good (better than Matt and Russ haha) and swam 30 lengths everyday we were there! While we were at the Tropics we cooked for ourselves a few times to save money, they had an outside kitchen area next to the pool which was sweet!! We also stayed in one night to enjoy the luxury of a TV and watched Kill Bill 1 and 2 Back to Back hehe!
On our last day we did a day tour down to Key West (the most sourthern point in the USA) and did a snorkling trip there on the 3rd biggest Reef in the world called ´Eastern Dry Rock´ that was really good! We had about an hour swimming about and saw lots of cool fish stripy ones, bright blue ones and a small shark called a nursery shark (not a dangerous one thank god)!! We had brought an underwater camera and got it developed the other day some of them are really cool but it is hard to capture how beautiful it actually was down there swimming above the coral reef. There was free beer and wine on the boat trip back which was a nice surprise, although Russ couldn´t take this offer up as he was feeling a little sea sick poor russ. We spotted some baby dolphins on our trip back too. Was such a cool trip though and worth the 3 hour drive to get there, you drive over 43 bridges and over 34 Islands was really scenic and pretty but again its hard to get good pics as you´re driving past! Next we move onto Ecuador!!
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