Day 7 - Miami - Key West

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After eating a strawberry pancake (I had actually ordered a banana pancake, but I didn’t have time to return it before we were due to leave) and OJ in the already scorching heat (it wasn’t even 9am, yet it felt like it was midday!) and then lugging all our gear back down the stairs, we leave Miami and head for the Keys.
On the road out, we tell each other basically what we got up to this morning. Turns out we were only one block away from Miami Beach!
As we head out of Miami, this is where I learn about the very dangerous game of ‘Punch Buggy/Pinch Mini’ that Kylie and Zoe have been playing over the past few days. The rules of the game are simple – if you see a Volkswagen Beetle or a Mini (old or new) then you punch or pinch respectively the person next to you. Sadly it can become a violent game, especially when you keep seeing Beetles or Minis everywhere.
The road to the Keys is not only hot, but long. Sadly there is one stretch that goes on for miles and miles, and all there is around is ocean, and the old bridge that runs alongside, that about halfway has a section missing.
Once we make it on to the Keys, we eventually find the campsite, not before circling the island once or twice, and when we finally get to our sites, they are awesome.
Our collection of small sites is right on the tip of the campsite overlooking the water. Quite simply it is perfect!

We have some time to kill before we are going to head back to the Sunset Pier, where we will witness one of the best sunsets we will ever see, according to Todd. When we arrive, everyone else seems to already have the same idea and have taken the good seats already. We struggle to find a spot where all 14 of us can be together to witness the view, so we split up and I head off with some others further along the pier, passing by the very swanky 5 star hotel right by the water’s edge, to find a better spot.
What we come across is a consistent spectacular view over the surrounding water and the sun itself. It’s early evening, but the temperature is still high and the whole area has a buzz of something fun and exciting about to start. Along the pier, many street artists begin setting up their own spaces for their own unique take on entertaining the passerbys. A little further up is a small concert being held by the seaman of a nearby US naval ship. It’s not hard to spot the huge naval ship even further along the pier in the docks. It dominates the skyline.
There are street artists ranging from instrument players to one man and is performing cats (which just looks like animal cruelty especially when he get his cats to jump through rings of fire!), but the one that stands out the most is a coloured man wearing only some material to cover his modesty and a branch leaf the size of himself and a small drum stool. His act – to jump out on passer-bys when they aren’t expecting it, even if he stands out like a sore thumb. It looks quite pathetic at first, but it seems to work as people just stop and look on as he gets victim after victim.
After watching the sun slowly disappear behind a nearby island, we turn back to find the others where we left them, only for them to finally move and walk along the pier, that’s when it all starts. The sun may have disappeared from our views, but it was still quite light, and we all seem to stop just by the branch man, who gets 3 or 4 of us including Todd, and watch as a crowd builds up, and we watch as more and more victims are caught surprised. It’s amazing how effective the guy is, even though people see him coming up, they still look away at the wrong time and become just another victim.

More and more people gather and litter the pier side, and all of a sudden one guy strips off to his trunks and decides to jump into the water below. There’s a small bricked platform about 100 yards away that he suddenly appears at the bottom off and then starts climbing up its ladder to then show off to the crowd and more importantly the group he was with. Then he does some pretty impressive head first dives back into the water.
He is soon joined by a mate, and then he persuades a female member of his group to strip off to her bikini and follow suit. I think he’s been trying to impress her all evening and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was hitting that later on tonight!
As this guy’s group finishes and climbs out, Todd, Jess and Becca then decide to follow suit and jump in, still fully clothed, apart from Todd who insists on not wearing a shirt. They climb the same ladder to the platform and then pose for our cameras before finally jumping in all together.
When they climb back out though, sadly a cop has just turned up, which seems to disperse the rest of the crowd, with us looking on wondering if the 3 would be arrested. I hear Todd say once or twice something along the lines of “this is America. You can do what you want!” A proud American if ever I came across one!
Thankfully they are let off with a warning and we quickly exit the scene before the cop changes his mind. So we head back to camp and for dinner.

We fire up, eventually, the Barbie, and then just wait for it to be ready for cooking. Luckily we have a pretty nice view to look at whilst waiting. Group B use the time to prepare their dinner for tomorrow night.
In the distance, we can just about see a thunderstorm slowly making its way to what we presume is the Gulf of Mexico, going on to hit somewhere near New Orleans or that neck of the woods. No-one else seems to give it a second thought, but having spend my younger years on holiday in the South of France getting regular thunderstorms in the distance which could soon head for us, I regularly looked at the distance flashes waiting for the rumble to follow seconds later.
Finally the Barbie is ready, and Graham proceeds to cook some damn good burgers, kebabs and daggers, a term I’ve picked up from my brother Rob and his mates from their own BBQs! Damn is it all nice, all washed down with one or two beers.
By this time, it’s around 10pm and people are slowly turning in for the night. Like most nights on the cub camps I’ve been on, I was one of those who didn’t want to turn in early, and stayed up as long as I could.
There’s something about the night time at the height of summer. Back on those camps, I would be joined by some others to do a spot of star gazing, but never do enough of it ever. There’s also a great peace that comes from the dead of the night, as the world around you is sleeping. Everything has stopped and you hear or notice things you wouldn’t’ notice at any other part of the day. Now that’s one of the main reasons why I love camping, and I guess another factor in me doing this trip in the first place.
I am thousands of miles away from home, from work, from my friends, from my safety zone, and I’ve barely given any of it a second thought since I left.

Anyway, come midnight, it’s just Sarah and me left up. Sarah is just laying on one of the picnic tables watching the now nearing thunderstorm. During the evening, it has made its way level with us and is now heading our way. Like me, Sarah likes watching thunderstorms. I am sitting at another table just updating the previous few days in my journal.
Come 2am, the storm has now gathered two other storms, one from the left of it and one from the right, almost as if we are now being ganged up on by 3 big storms, as they get even nearer. Quite quickly the dead wind picks up more and more, and then we are getting splashed, not knowing if it’s from the water hitting the rocks by us or if its rain, and then it really picks up as the storms gather around practically on top of us.
That’s when Sarah and I decide to jump into my tent (fortunately it’s right next to us) and seek cover just in time for the heavens to open and unleash what sounds like the end of the world. All flies and zips were done up to their max, as our cover is thrown back and forth, but still standing.
Sadly, others haven’t followed suit, and having dismissed that first storm early on, have left their flies open to get some breeze. They’re soon woken and like shutting the gate after the horse has bolted, do their flies right up.
Sarah and I love it as the rain continues to hit hard, a crescendo of tropical rain, and we hear calls of help from some of the others, most notably Jess and Becca whose tent collapses on one half, leaving Becca and Jess to get personal. Becca tells me in when we meet up back in England, that she thinks that was the day Jess discovered she was gay, so seemed very uncomfortable at that moment.
10-15 minutes later, the storm passes, and everything seems to quickly change back to normal. The winds die just as quickly as they had picked up and the rain turns off like as if from a tap. The humid heat returns and seems to have got worse than before. Sarah goes out to help put Jess and Becca’s tent back to its correct self, whilst I stay in my tent.
When Sarah returns, we decide to get some sleep, but I find it very difficult. After a few minutes sleeping the humidity wakes me up again, almost to the point where I can’t breathe. I slowly etch the flies down to try and get any sort of breeze passing through, but it’s no use. There is no breeze. I have to get out of the tent.
Sarah is at the door end of my tent, and seems to have sprawled out over most of my stuff and there appears no waking her, so I quietly climb out of my tent and take up a seat on one of the tables, watching the peace around.

I stay up most of the rest of the night, going back to my tent once or twice to see if Sarah has woken up, or at least moved positions, so I can possibly get a t-shirt to wear. In the end I can only get my Ron Jon’s towel, so I wrap up in it and sleep til around 6ish.

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