Sunday 5 February 2012

Crystal River and Miami

The greyhound arrived among the palm trees and never ending highways of Miami early in the morning. In order to purchase a day ticket for the bus we had to navigate our way to the airport (can’t get away from them), getting advice from a bus driver we took his bus to somewhere where we could cross the road, so that we could take a bus back the way we came and on to the airport. Once we had the tickets we piled ourselves, our backpacks and our ever increasing number of additional bags onto the express bus to Miami Beach. In sweltering heat we trudged from one bench to another hauling our packs off at every opportunity.

There were cargo ships, cruiseships, skyscrapers, more palm trees, skimmers, gulls, numerous parading peoples, a troupe of brightly coloured youth practicing dance moves, baking bodies on the beach, baking lizards on the rocks, children playing in the park and two weary travellers, not used to such warm climes. Reassuringly the Atlantic was looking relatively calm and quite different to the Atlantic we know, with very blue water and white fragmented shell beach.

Progress was slow and after lots of sitting down and not all that much walking we decided we'd head to the wholefoods market. But it wasn't where we thought it was, so then we had to wait about an hour until the bus that would actually take us to it came. We did spot some cattle egrets though, hopping through the hedge in the middle of the road and skirting their ways around the parked cars like pros. By the time we'd toured around the shop with our backpacks in the trolley and got a few things to eat it was already 4.00p.m. With the skies threating to rain properly on us for the first time since leaving Canada we found ourselves waiting at another bus stop. The rain didn't really materialise though, just a few spots of it, but enough for me to stretch my arms out and embrace it. A man waiting told us that it would be getting 'cold' over the next few days and he'd just been out to buy a sweater, because he didn't have one. What a foreign concept.

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