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19/5/13 Fort Myers Beach
Survived the night despite the feuding couple – I half expected to hear gun shots and it was another glorious hot sunny day, so it’s off to the beach. We had a quick stop at Walmart to buy a smart price beach umbrella (cheaper than hiring one) and drove down to Fort Myers Beach. Parking was pretty expensive but just back from the sea road we found a pair of enterprising pensioners who had turned their garden into a parking lot and for $5 you could park there all day.
We finally got away from Mrs Pensioner who was delighted we were English and proceeded to tell us all about her son who was stationed at Mildenhall with the air force and all of his accomplishments, bless her.
Back at the beach we joined all the other tourists and found a spot to park ourselves. Well I don’t think there is a lot more I can say, it was boiling hot, the sand was like white icing sugar sprinkled with tiny shells, the sea was just the right temperature and every so often a prehistoric looking giant pelican dive bombed the water to catch
a fish, lovely. We spent the whole day there and suitably cooked now.
After another 30 miles driving we arrived at tonight’s stop, the Comfort Inn and then the heavens opened. We went out on the scout for grub but the bbq place we tried was shut on Sundays so we ended up buying a cooked chicken from good old Walmart.
Luckily all was quiet back at this ranch.
20/5/13 Miami Beach
So it’s onto Miami Beach for our final three nights and rain and thunderstorms are forecast for the whole time, bummer.
They were not kidding about that weather forecast we were merrily driving along when suddenly it got dark and the rain came down. It reminded me of that time in Pennsylvania, the rain was so hard and so torrential you couldn’t see at all at some points and then when you could you couldn’t make out the road markings – not good on a 3 lane highway. I realised how terrified I was when the piece of paper the instructions were on was shaking violently! I’m shouting ‘slow down’ and Howard is shouting ‘shut up and let me drive’ – nerves were
slightly frayed!!
Eventually we drove through it but it kept on raining on and off the whole way, so no beach stop today. We went through Fort Lauderdale which looked pretty swish and nice, with a really long beach. The most amazing things were all the waterways which were kind of like roads, with swanky houses lining the banks and big, flash yachts moored alongside them like cars parked on driveways, megabucks around here me thinks.
After a few more mini episodes of rain induced terror we eventually reached the Sorrento Villas our home for the next three nights. It’s great, it looks like it has been frozen in time from the 1950’s, all pastels, a wrought iron balcony runs around the place, flowers everywhere and a kind of well-worn and loved air to the place. The room is excellent, lounge/kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, I reckon it’s bigger than our little bungalow at home. The family that run it are lovely, really friendly, she is from Puerto Rico and he is from Uruguay and they were genuinely really interested when they found out how long we had been travelling and quizzed us for ages about where we had
been. So now we have been told we must make Puerto Rico number one on our next to do list.
In between rain showers we have been for a quick scout around the area and discovered we are in the Latin America area, there is a block of shops and restaurants just nearby and all the food is either Peruvian, Brazilian or a generic Latin American, so it looks like it’s back to the old Lomo Saltado and Chaufa Arroz once more (curses just when I thought we had escaped from all that!), not a BBQ or burger in sight!
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