Tuesday 12th May

Our second travelling day today.

We packed up from Sanibel and left there just before 10:30am. We stopped at a couple of shops on the island before heading into the Everglades.

Maybe that last bit sounded more grand than it actually was. The Everglades, from our point of view, were just an everlasting green expanse behind a chainlink fence some 20 feet away from a 4 lane highway.

That highway stretched for just a little over 95 miles in almost a perfect straight line.

I was only a few minutes into this 90 miles when the heel of my foot started to go numb. It was at that point I remembered that the car had cruise control, so a few seconds fiddling with the controls then meant I could drive by wire, so to speak. It was a lot more comfortable to drive that way. You can only keep your foot in one position for so long!

We stopped midway though the drive at a service station. It was there I noticed the "Venomous Snakes of the Southeast" poster outside the toilets. There seem to be at least six venomous snakes here - eek!

Finally, the signs for Fort Lauderdale (FL) started to appear. We left the I75 motorway and headed into FL proper.

Although we'd travelled mostly in overcast conditions (the first clouds we'd seen all holiday) the sun was back out to greet us as we pulled up in FL.

Out accommodation is a small set of apartments (we only have one!) just off the main coast road in the centre of FL. The furnishings are very nice, there's plenty of storage space, a kitchen and the biggest bed I've seen outside of Vegas.

One problem though is the internet connection which is very flaky. It's down at the moment and the caretaker/owner of the site isn't in until tomorrow morning. I'm writing this in Notepad at the moment, hoping I can upload it, together with the photos, once the router's been reset... unless I can work out the router password beforehand of course!

There's a variety of things to do here - I want to do an air boat trip into the Everglades and we might also do a glass-bottom boat trip out to a local reef. They also do snorkelling - so that might be a good opportunity to test out my waterproof camera in (hopefully) clear water!!!