Southern Florida

Last week Nathan and I headed to Florida for a last minute vacation. Heath convinced us to meet him down in the Keys to hang out. Heath had to go back to work before we got there so we headed down to hang out with his gf Beth. Her mom grew up in Big Pine Key and they still have a house down there. We decided to spend two days in the Keys and two days in Miami. Here's a few pictures...

We went on a snorkle trip to Looe Key and saw a Reef Shark! Nathan laughed at me because I was swimming after it like crazy trying to take pictures. It wasn't scary at all so why not follow him, right?!

It's only the Southernmost Point if you can't figure out how to sneak onto gov't or private property, or don't want to pay money. I told Nathan that we need to hit up the Noth, West, and East points now.

Beth's dad (an A&M professor, WHOOP!) has studied Key Deer for 40 years or so. We learned lots of info about them while we were there. They are endangered but not very afraid of people. It's illegal to feed them but we still got to pet them! They are endangered because to the lack of space. They are found on Big Pine Key and No Name Key and not really anywhere else. They only allow two homes per year to be built on Big Pine Key no to help preserve their habitat.

Nathan's big Tarpon. Different environment than our Tarpon adventure last summer, but same result. I have other pictures when he's picking it up out of the water. Yes, that's me running around in the background like a nut.

An airboat tour of the Everglades was a must, no matter how touristy and cheesy. Our boat was filled with European tourists. Heck, all of Miami and South Beach was filled with European tourists! Anyway, they were enamoured with the herons and egrets flying around and almost went to the bathroom all over themselves when they saw an alligator. I guess Nathan and I are jaded by the sight of an alligator.

Nathan and I were keen on hitting up two National Parks in one day: Everglades and Biscayne. Success! you can't see it in this picture but downtown Miami is in the background. It's a small park but pretty none the less.

At least once every vacation I want to get a little dressed up and go out to a nice dinner. We were tired of Cuban food so we went to an Italian place within walking distance from the hotel. It was amazing! Our pastas were fan-stinkin-tastic and I wanted to die while eating desert. It could have been my last meal for all I cared. Any desert made from dark chocolate that oozed out more chocolate and had vanilla bean ice cream has my name on it!

Oh, you didn't know that I have my own beach. I forgot to tell you! We didn't stay at the Nikki Beach hotel but I sure did take a cheesy tourist picture next to it! (And yes, the green dress in almost every picture was my go-to lazy/beach dress for the trip.)

Standard beach picture. This was a few minutes before we saw some topless Euro chick. Um, no. I am obviously a prude american because I couldn't get over it. What about the small children on the beach?! what about creep-os who would take pictures?! I don't think I'll be topless on a beach anytime soon.

A Must Try! :)

One of the ladies at school sent this out today! She said she makes them every year during the last week before Christmas break.

Jose Cuervo Christmas Cookies

1 cup of water

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup of sugar

1 tsp salt

1 cup of brown sugar

4 large eggs

1 cup nuts

2 cups of dried fruit

1 bottle Jose Cuervo Tequila

Sample the Cuervo to check quality.

Take a large bowl, and check the Cuervo again, to be sure it is of the highest quality,Pour one level cup and drink.

Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter In a large fluffy bowl.

Add one peastoon of sugar. Beat again.

At this pointit's best to make sure the Cuervo is still ok, try anotherCup just in case.

Turn off the mixerer thingy.

Break 2 leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cupOf dried fruit.

Pick the frigging fruit off the floor.

Mix on the turner.

If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaters just pryIt loose with a drewscriver.

Sample the Cuervo to check for tonsisticity.

Next, sift two cups of salt, or something. Who geevesA sheet.

Check the Jose Cuervo.

Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts.

Add one table.

Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink.

Whatever you canFind.

Greash the oven.

Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fallOver.

Don't forget to beat off the turner.

Finally, throw the bowl through the window, finish theCose Juervo and make sure to put the stove in the wishdasher.

Cherry Mistmas !

Day 6

This day began with grand plans. Drive all over the area and see as much as we can see.

We were already up and out the doors eating breakfast by 7am. Our first destination was a beach called Mas Chiquitas. I'd seen a picture while looking up places to go but didn't put much effort into finding out about it. The guy Nathan sat next to on the plane, a native, gave us great ideas on places to go and told Nathan that this was a 'must' if we were going to be in the area. We found where it was in our lovely "Places to See" book in the hotel room. The problem with it was that all we had to go on was a dot on a very large map. Let the fun begin! We headed off toward the general area with the trusty Garmin in hand. Nathan's job was to keep his eyes on the road and I would navigate. After MANY wrong turns and turn-arounds we finally made it! We didn't have time/take the time to change into our suits and swim but it was a great place to see and we'd make time for it if we ever go back. Oh, and I also found some sea glass. Score!

We had to wait FOREVER to get down this road . . .

Only to find a locked gate that would have taken us down to the wrong beach anyway.

Yes, you too can climb rocks in a dress and a pair of Reefs!

The view from the top! Worth the climb.

Mas Chiquitas Beach.

It was time to re-fuel. Good thing the road-side stands are plentiful. We decided it was time for roasted chicken. Mmm. Good choice. Eating in the car is always a challenge but thanks to a 'borrowed' beach towel from the hotel we made it work.

SO GOOD!

I'd promised my mom and Krissy that I would find Puerto Rican coffee for them. According to the hotel website there was a coffee plantation nearby. Nearby is a relative term in that country. Everything is very close mileage-wise (it's only 100x35) but the roads are so insane that it will take you forever to get anywhere. The coffee plantation, Hacienda Patricia, took a couple of hours to get to but was a unique experience. The owner spoke NO English but thankfully an English-speaking neighbor was there hanging out. She got him to show us around and we got to see the inner workings of the place. He didn't usually give tours and only worked when he felt like so we got very lucky. It's an amazing process and is so simple at the same time. When we inquired about buying some coffee he took us into a room where he packages it all by hand. We only spent about 30 minutes there but it was worth the story and coffee. Too bad I hate coffee. My mom told me it was delicious.

I may hate the taste but the smell is fan-stinkin'-tastic!

The owner and Nathan actually trusted the structure. No thank you. They dry the beans in the sun after rolling the large trays outside on this contraption.

Whole bean or ground? Whole bean of course! We got 3 lbs. at a good price I might add.

Ok, moving on. We'd seen that there was a observatory in the area. Great. Let's go there. Only one day earlier my Dad asked me if we had plans on visiting Arecibo, the largest radio telescope in the world. Nowhere in my brain did I connect seeing ads for the Arecibo OBSERVATORY and the type of observatory Nathan and I thought we were going to. I was tired, ok? It closed the gates at 4 in order to make the last tour so we had to book it. After an insane drive we made it at 3:50. Ha! Suckers! (Thanks to Nathan's super skills.) If you are in any way interested in science then it's pretty cool to see. Moody teenagers would hate it for sure. A science teacher and an engineer thought it was cool at least.

Pictures do nothing to show the incredibly large size of it.


One more stop before the sun headed below the horizon: Jacinto's Well. After watching an episode of No Reservations I decided that i wanted to visit a blowhole known as Jacinto's Well. Legend has it that his cow fell down in the hole and if you yell at the hole (something in Spanish that I can't remember) then the water will fly up and out of the hole as it tries to give Jacinto back his cow. Well, I'm a smarty pants and thought I found it on the GPS. We get out of the car and see a huge wall of water splashing in the distance. Assuming this was it, we begin to find sea glass and get distracted. The sun is falling fast and we realize that if we're going to see this thing and yell at the water to give Jacinto back his cow we need to get over there. Let's just say that I was wrong and by the time we drove around and located what might be the right beach it was pitch black and we were starving. No blowhole for me. Oh, well.

You can see Nathan over my shoulder hunting for sea glass. He told me I was a "sea glass crack-head" but he was the one that couldn't stop picking up pieces.

Oh, look! The blowhole! And there are even tourists up there! YAY!

Except the tourists were locals fishing and THAT is NOT a blowhole!!!

After this we ate at some random place and fell asleep from exhaustion. I was almost too tired to eat. We had to wake up at 5am for what the next day had in store for us. Stay tuned.

Day 5

I got lazy with the posts. Oops. Moving on...

We got directions from the owners of Mimi's Guesthouse on how to get to the beach behind their house. We spent the morning alone on the beach. I'm going to be so sad when I see other people on the beach now. We went snorkeling so we could look for conch shells. You can buy them all over the island but I wanted my own. I wanted to be able to brag that I found it when people asked and not have to say that I bought it. Most of the shells were inhabited with permanent residents but I did find a few that had removable tenants. Honestly, I didn't know that anything was in them until I touched a tiny octopus that was coming out of one. SLIMY! I freaked out and handed it to Nathan who waited patiently for it to leave. We only took two shells with us even though we found more. I took me 2+ hours to clean them up so I'm glad there weren't more than two.


Eww!

Very cool!

After cleaning and packing up we moved on to Rincon. It was our West Coast stop. In the winter it's a big surf spot but it's good for snorkeling in the summer. After checking at the Coconut Palms Inn we went to explore the beaches. I read in my "Off the Beaten Path" book about a beach that was known for sea glass collecting. I'd found a few pieces earlier in the trip so my interest in this new hobby was growing. We found the beach and began our search. We found numerous peices and even found our first blue! (Some colors are much more difficult to find than others. If you are curious you can look at a rarity chart here. I'll post more about all of the colors we found and the things we made from them later.)






Nathan waited until I would get splashed. His plan worked.



Our first road-side stand, Delish!



Collecting sea glass!

I thought this was a lot at the time. Boy was I wrong!

Our findings for the day.

I wrote everyone's names that would be getting a gift from me and took a picture so I could attach it as the To/From card.

After the sunset we went to eat dinner at a resteraunt suggested by the hotel.

Nathan's first mofongo. This was the soup kind. Very tasty.

My dorado and tostones. Yum!

Can you tell that we were tired?

Flan #2. Coconut flavored.

I'd heard from the ladies up front that a five minute walk down the beach would get me to a resort that made a coconut drink. Lame, right? Oh, no. The drink is eight kinds of rum INSIDE of the coconut. I needed to have one. We walked down to the bar and got out drinks to finish off the night.

I was extremely tired and wanted to sleep. Apparently that wasn't going to happen. We'd heard from the girls up front that the owners were out of town. One of the ladies decided to drink out on the porch woth our neighbor. It was like they were talking on our room! I was pissed! And the worst part was that I couldn't even call the front desk to complain since the front desk was on my porch, wasted and being loud! WTF people! I finally fell asleep and other than that the day (and entire trip for that matter) was great.

Day 4

This day was the first moving day. Time to leave the East coast and move South. We began the day with Snooba before driving into the mountains for roasted pig, heading through Ponce and arriving in Guanica.

Nathan and I didn't have time to get PADI certified so we could go Scuba diving. Nathan suggested we find a Snooba place where you dive below using a long tube connecting you to the air tank that floats above. There was only one place on the entire island. Good thing it fit into our schedule. Nathan had done it before on a trip to Hawaii when he was 10 or so. I wish we could have gone Scuba diving but this was fun too.

We arrived on time which was apparently WAY too early. The other group was driving from the West side of the island and was caught in traffic. We got to sit around with the wacko instructor/owner and wait for an hour. When we finally got moving it was very rough. We learned later that he wouldn't have gone out it the other group hadn't driven so far. Once we got out there they sent to other group into the water first because they were more nervous. Nathan and I got tossed into the water and off we went. (The other group had freaker-outers that couldn't relax and get under the water. I felt bad for them.) We spent about 30 minutes underwater and the instructor guided me around so I could get closer to the coral without touching it. It had been raining everyday so the visibility wasn't as good but I still had fun and really want to get PADI certified!

Gorgeous!

I didn't know that I was so close to the bottom and could stand up!

When we got back to the dock we showered and got ready to move on. We'd watched two episode on the Travel Channel about Puerto Rico, No Reservations (Anthony Bourdain) and Bizarre Foods (Andrew Zimmern). Both of them drove to the "Pork Highway" and Cayey and ate roasted pig at one of the many food stands. We decided this was a must do. It was pouring down rain but we made it. When we got there the guy ran around to find someone who spoke English. The food was yummy and we had a great time. they let us pose for pictures and the guy found an umbrella and helped out me into the car so I wouldn't get wet. What a nice guy!

Here piggy piggy!

I ate pig skin for the first time but passed on the blood sausage. The rice was great and we had it at a few other places before we left. There are little pea-like things in it. I'll have to look up what they are since I can't remember the name.

The guy made Nathan hop up there and handed him the knife.

We headed off to Ponce with full bellies. My Dad lived in Ponce for close to a year in the 70's while working for Union Carbide. We saw the old plants on the way out of town. They shut down after a hurricane hit and messed everything up and made it too costly to rebuild. Mom and Dad looked at moving down there at one point. Can you imagine?!

We went to the town center (just find the church) and started exploring. It was lame. Very small and I got creeped out by a homeless lady that was loud and falling all over the place. We ate some sort of ice cream concoction (twice) and looked for souvenirs. We didn't find anything good and I was ready to move on.

You can't really see it but the windows on the top were all different colors. Very pretty!

Tamarindo flavored!

The Lion Fountain in the middle of the town square.

We went back for more! Vanilla and coconut this time! SO GOOD!

We headed off to Guanica to check in to Mimi's Guesthouse. It was a huge room, but the smallest at the place, and was very affordable. The owners were great and super helpful. It was kind of strange staying at someones house instead of a hotel but I'd go back for sure and would recommend it to anyone going to that area! We went out for a drink but went back and we were asleep by 9:30, maybe ever earlier. Vacation is tiring!