Day 26 - Miami to Cocoa Beach

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Miami to Cocoa Beach - 41°c

After such a big night out last night, I wasn’t particularly thrilled to hear my alarm going off at 7am this morning, but nevertheless got up, picked up my suitcase that I thankfully packed last night, and headed down to another buffet breakfast. I met up with Nathan, Tim and Danni on the way in, so we shared a table, and although I wasn’t particularly hungry, I managed to eat a fair bit to say I did justice to a breakfast buffet!

After breakfast, we boarded the bus and got on our way towards Cocoa Beach at 8am. I seem to be getting used to getting comfortable enough to sleep on the bus, and managed to drift off for a while before we arrived at our first stop at Port St. Lucie around 10:15am for a quick rest stop. A short while later we got back on board for another 2-hours during which time Kristina put on some ‘Friends’ DVDs before we arrived at Cocoa Beach just after mid-day. Once we arrived at our beachside hotel, our rooms weren’t quite ready yet, so we all headed down to the beach literally a stone’s throw away.

It was a beautiful beach and I actually preferred it to South Beach back in Miami yesterday. Not only was it much less crowded, but it was also much quieter all round, with the roads slightly further away from the beach than in Miami. The sand was a beautiful soft fine grain sand and the ocean looked a turquoise shade of blue. Not one for swimming in the sea myself, those that did said that the water was nice and warm too - probably from hours of sunlight beating down on it.

As I laid in the sun surrounded by 15 or so fellow Contiki-ers, it felt so great to sit around together, chatting, chilling out and relaxing after what has been a very fast-paced and action packed few weeks. There’s been very little time in between things to just sit, do nothing and unwind, so the opportunity to do so, and to do so in such beautiful surroundings was a very welcome respite.

We stayed out on the beach for a couple of hours, each of us piling on our sunscreen, not wanting to burn in the full force of the mid-day sun, before walking the 2-minute walk back to the hotel at 2pm to pick up our room keys and take our luggage up to our rooms now that they were each ready. Once in mine, I unpacked a few things, (not wanting to unpack too much since we’re only here for one night) before taking a shower to rid myself of the sand that got stuck to me from where my sunscreen-ed body had been laying on the beach, and then having a well-deserved afternoon nap.
Once awake, I logged onto the in-room wi-fi access and caught up with some emails, news websites, and some Facebook messages, before Mum phoned from back home. It was great to chat to her after not speaking since the middle of last week and to catch up with all of the goings on back home whilst at the same time sharing with her all of the adventures that I’ve been having along with everyone else on the trip.

After speaking to Mum and rearranging some of my suitcase (which after nearly 4-weeks of living out of it, is an ever expanding mess!), I headed down to the pool and met up with Lauren, Michelle, Marnee and Swish who had all been down there for quite some time. The sun was still beaming down, although nowhere near as strong as it had been earlier, and now that the sun was slightly lower, the tall palm trees around the pool area meant that there were areas of shade to hide amongst when the sun did get too much. After a while of laying out in it, I then jumped in the pool along with Marnee to cool down. The pool was a lovely temperature, again probably due to being shined down on all day and heated up by the Florida sunshine.
Lauren and Michelle headed back up to their rooms to shower and change, whilst Marnee and I continuously stayed in the pool for 2 or more hours, just floating around, chatting about our lives back home and sharing some stories from the past. Most good, but some bad. - After all, not everything in life is all palm trees and sunshine! (Unless you live in Florida of course!) But regardless, it felt so good to talk on a deeper level and to share so much about ourselves that even after 4-weeks of knowing one another, we had yet to talk about.

Kristina our tour guide, arrived back from the beach about 10 metres behind the hotel after being on the beach, and we chatted to her for a good while, Marnee and I laughing and joining in the conversations as we continued to bob around in the pool like lifebuoys whilst the others sat on the pool side and dangled their legs in. However once plans between us all for the evening started to take shape, we both got out on the pool like shrivelled prunes and made our way back to our rooms to dry off and change.

Around 8:30pm, I headed down to the lobby and met up with Joey, Swish and Natalie, and headed down onto the Cocoa Beach pier and back to take some photos of the sun setting, and then across the road to have a wander around the shops and quick-serve restaurants. We ended up in a pizza place where we ordered and shared two massive 18” pizzas! Although massive and with enough left over for lunch tomorrow, they were absolutely gorgeous and since we were the only ones in the restaurant, we chatted to the guy behind the counter about where we were each from and what we’d been up to these past few weeks and where we were going onto next. Eventually we struggled back to the hotel room extremely full, and our leftovers in a box under our arms. We briefly headed down to the pool to see who was down there, and then I headed up to my room to get a fairly early night, the others following suit.

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