With the hood of the Chrysler down and the sun turned all the way up to 11, we made our way down to Miami in a record amount of style. That style was very quickly removed when we were shown to our hostel room: a miniscule cupboard with 4 metal bunkbeds squashed together (think very cheap and squeaky children's climbing frames). The accomodation was in fact so poor that the only way to get to the room's fridge was to climb THROUGH one of the bunkbeds! The thought of frotaging a fellow hostel guest to get to our soggy coleslaw obviously meant that this part of the room was out of bounds. Also, the usual semi nude man was in our room, except this time the snoring was replaced by loud telephone conversations at 8 in the morning. Weirdo!

Enjoying a few beers and chatting to our new friends from Austria, Stephania and Elmar, we were invited to go out to a club by a former New York club promoter. When we agreed to go he quickly told us that the invite was only good if we were to shower, change and 'musk up'. We didn't go out that night, however the following night he somehow tricked us into going out with him. Not since 14 years of age was there such an embarrassment of a night out - trying to persuade bouncers to let us in, arguments about shoes and a lack of cheap booze.

Miami's South Beach was great fun, but our style level took a further blow as we laid in the sun on our travel towels, which are basically shammy cloths. We looked more like street bums trying to shine someone's car at traffic lights than beach bums.

We also drove to Key Largo - it wasn't very good...

We spent two nights in a chickee on the Billie Swamp Indian Reservation: the days were filled with 'critter'/ snake shows, safaris and air boat rides (think Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach); the nights were filled with fear (Trudy saw a statue of a lion on the first night and thought it was real), mosquitos, frogs trying to jump into our beds, and a raccoon living on the roof of our chickee (scary when you don't know what it is and it's the dead of night). We were additionally treated to the sight of a 15 foot alligator on the side of the road (no photos as we were too scared to conduct a second drive-by).

On the safari we witnessed some absolute pearls of American stupidity. The guide was explaining how the 1800s Native Americans built their chickees in the swamp (surrounded by palm trees and ferns), and a man from Chicago asked "Where did they get the fern leaves from? Did they buy them from Wal-Mart?". Yes, that actually happened! The same man asked why all the trees around the swamp had no leaves - the guide simply replied "Because it's winter". Unbelievable.

We returned to the barren hell that is Orlando to return the convertible and the only thing that was even halfway fun there was seeing a family of wild pigs on the side of the road.