So, although I was able to upload Blogger posts absolutely
fine on my crappy old Netbook that took 20 minutes to boot up, it turns
out to be near impossible to do so on our expensive new iPad. Cheers for that,
Mr Jobs. Still, one consequence of not being able to put up these posts while
we were away is that I can moan about the absolute crapness of changing planes at Miami airport without fear
of being detained when I try to leave the US on charges of sedition or being a smartarse.
Although I would actually quite like to go back to the States at some point, so ignore that paragraph. (And memo to Apple: that dig against your products was just friendly banter, in case you're reading.)
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| Tiny tiny plane~! |
One good thing about having to change at Miami was that we
got to travel the last leg of our journey to Key West in a tiny plane that was
only three seats wide, and had a beautiful aerial view of the Keys at sunset as
we flew in to an airport about the size of the WH Smith branch at Heathrow. Key West's location right at the end of the island chain
and only a hundred-odd miles from Cuba allows various establishments to brand
themselves as the USA's southernmost restaurant/hotel/knocking shop/etc. You
can naturally get your picture taken at the Southernmost Point itself, and if
you go at the right time a slightly crazy man will offer to do it for you at a
no doubt highly-reasonable cost.
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| Southernmost wife in America |
Key West also likes to be known as the Conch Republic. At
some point in history, the government decided to set up blockades to
stop easy transport of people and goods to and from the mainland, at which point
the islanders decided to secede. And
although the blockade was soon removed, because the government never officially
moved to shut down the independence bid (presumably for reasons of having far
better things to do) the Republic still stands.
Although it's a tasty local shellfish, 'conch'
unfortunately always reminds me of Lord of the Flies ('I gots the conch, Ralph!'
etc), which is not an auspicious connection. And it duly came to pass that all
the island's major industries eventually collapsed (all of them fish or
ocean-related, including the looting of shipwrecks which for a time made Key
West the country's richest city per capita), and they were forced to hitch
themselves to the bandwagon of tourism instead.
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| Sloppy Joe's, sometime in the afternoon. It'll still be busy. |
This they have done with gusto. KW has gained a reputation
as a party town in excelsis - Duval Street is a huge thoroughfare packed with
bars, live music and a general drunken buzz, particularly around Sloppy Joe's bar. And the city's major Fantasy Fest
extravaganza - described by its own residents as Mardi Gras on crack - attracts crowds of 60,000 plus, with fancy dress more or less mandatory.
But interestingly enough, the party vibe does
not dominate the island's overall atmosphere. There is plenty of stuff to keep
families and older, squarer folks like us busy - various museums and heritage
sites in the Old Town (including the house where President Truman holidayed...
sorry, vacationed there), trolley bus tours, hundreds of boat tours offering
the whole gamut of seafaring experiences, good food, and beaches to chill out
on.
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| Heh heh, "girth" |
The owners of
Atlantis House, the wonderful B&B in
which we stayed, do a pretty fine job of providing all these activities
in-house. Captain Steve and Kayla offer the possibility of private fishing
trips and sunset boat tours followed by a relaxing massage, after
which they serve up whatever's been caught earlier for an insanely tasty
dinner (I'll leave you to work out who does what). They also offer bikes
for you to get around, which in retrospect would have been better than walking
all day - the roads are pretty sleepy in the main, as is the overall vibe
if you ignore all the Duval Street madness. Well, you would be fairly laid-back
too if you lived on a tropical island where any dip below 70 degrees Fahrenheit
counts as a cold snap.
Apart from sleepy, another apposite word to describe Key
West is dinky. At four miles long and only a couple wide, the island is easy to
get around, and no building rises above four or five storeys. When cruise ships
are docked in the harbour they loom over the landscape like the Death Star.
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| Award-winning decorations at our B&B for Fantasy Fest and Hallow'een |
The final word to describe KW though has to be chickens. There are hundreds of the buggers cluck-clucking around the
streets. This is all the fault of the Cubans, who brought them over for
cockfighting when they were in charge on the island. Once they departed they left the chickens behind, and because the government has made it illegal
to kill them they are free to crow to their hearts' content all night long
(it's not just in the mornings - thankfully though we were never woken up
by one).
* *
* * *
Iguanas pose a similar problem throughout the Keys, also
having been brought to the islands by humans and having no natural predators.
Tranquility Bay, the resort we stayed at in Marathon, about 50 miles up the
stunning Highway 1, uses cats to try to control the reptilian population. I
don't know about the rest of the time, but we only saw one iguana sunning
himself by one of the resort pools, which suggests that they are hardly in the
midst of a major epidemic. (On the other hand, we saw those tiny little lizards you get in hot climates scurrying everywhere.)
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| An old Keys bridge... that must have been one heck of a shark. |
We purposely spent our two days in the middle Keys just relaxing
and chilling out by the pool or the cocktail bar, so there's very little to
report from there. Marathon itself feels like an identikit American town that's
been plonked in the middle of the ocean by mistake, all concrete and exhaust
fumes unless you're lucky enough to be lounging on a man-made resort beach.
Highway 1 though provides some tremendous ocean views as you hop up the island
chain via its plethora of bridges. The daddy of them all is the Seven Mile
Bridge, which I was disappointed to discover is nowhere near to being the
world's longest, but it's an impressive engineering feat all the same.
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| Another Florida sunset |
Unlike say Highway 101 down the California coast, there aren't really many places where you can just park up and take in the views, but Bahia Honda State Park boasts the Keys's only natural sandy beach and also offers you the chance to walk across a section of an old railway bridge which has long since ceased to be used. It's a reminder of how quickly man-made things progress, and conversely how nature's beauty endures regardless.
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