Florida

Mum arrived on Thursday and i went and met her at the airport. We picked up a car and after getting horrendously lost and taking about 3 hours to do what should have been a 30 minute drive we found our hotel, and collapsed enjoying some pretty shady microwave food. American food is having some serious dodgy effects on my body, i managed a month in Peru eating anything i was given no matter where it came from and was fine, i never heard any warnings of Miami belly, maybe this is why everyone on the beach here is so thin.

It was great to see Mum again and catch up more on things back home and kind of bring my thoughts a bit more onto the real world again.

We drove north to Orlando, passing through the Historic downtown of Melbourne Florida (Historic here is anything that is over 20 years old - I don't think, the town was even established when my house in Melbourne, England was built) But i did get to enjoy my first really good meal in America.

Orlando is a crazily busy city where everything is open 24/7 and if you dont want to you can never leave your car.

They have drive through, food, starbucks, banking and cinemas and they have a them park based on everything from Disney to Jesus, from waterworld to indoor skydiving anything goes it seems.

Mum and i spent the next couple of days in the 2 Universal studios parks
enjoying all the rides, shows and performances.

I was very proud of her she went on every ride, including the highest log flume i've ever seen and some of the wettest rides ever.

In England you couldn't have them as people would freeze, thankfully here you dried off pretty quick. The rides are based on different films that Universal studios has produced and as a bit of a film geek it was great to experience some of that including a fantastic laser and firework display with clips from all these different films projected onto these enormous globes, which was really impressive.

Orlando really is a strange place, it just doesn't feel real and i can't imagine what living there would be like. Walking around the theme parks, where everything is perfect, the trees, no rubbish, everythings clean, all the lights work, none of the buildings look like they are gonna fall down, the waters perfectly clear but i guess coz we're so used to things being broken or messed up when it's not it kinda feels weird, but anyway it was a lot of fun.

After the business of Orlando we drove across to the West coast of Florida and enjoyed the beautiful beaches all the way down there.

Along this coast the sea is so flat and calm that other than the salt water it feels like you are swimming in a lake. To get to a depth you can swim at you have to walk out a really long way because the land is so flat. Loads of islands surround the mainland that just stick up above the water. On one island we visited called Sanibel Island
we visited a nature preserve and saw Flamingo's and lots of other storks and Heron's.

Later that week we headed back across to Miami via a swamp natural park where we got our first sight of real wild alligators, and went on a board walk around the forests ad swamps where we saw snakes rustling through the grass, lots of lizards, a big owl chilling in the shade, vultures, hawks and lots of other tall birds wading in the swamps along with the alligators who were enjoying sunning themselves in front of the crowds.

During the rest of our time in Miami we did some shopping and enjoyed some good days on the beach the weather being in the 80s every day. We also made 2 other trips one down the Florida keys, loads of Islands that stretch out 100 miles off the coast of Florida into the Carribbean all connected by a giant causeway surrounded by the most beautiful blue seas i had ever seen.
Our last day out was into the Everglades a unique environment that covers the whole of the southernmost part of Florida which is actually a big river (apparently the widest in the world) running out towards the sea but so slowly that it doesn't seem to be moving at all. We saw lots of birds and lots and lots of Alligators as we sped around the canals on one of those fan powered hover boats. The place we went to was the most stereotypical redneck country american thing you could ever imagine, as we headed across the water with captain Skeeter.
It was great and such a contrast to the cool beautiful people environment of miami beach. I enjoyed the local delicacy of home cooked frogs legs and gator tail, and as well as eating some gators held a tiny baby one.


Before i knew it, it was time for mum to go and me to move on again. But it had been a great reminder of home and great to spend some time with mum again. Love you lots mum