Hanging around in South Florida

We escaped the ship on Friday morning, disembarkation wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and got the shuttle bus to Miami Airport to pick up our hire car. We were met with indifferent service from the counter staff at Dollar / Thrifty and directed to the floor below to pick up our car. We were met with a scene of complete chaos, the system wasn't clear if there was a system and we had to wait 1 1/2 hours to get our car. Now that's bad enough for us young (no comments) fit healthy people but there were many older and not so fit people also hanging around for that length of time. A shambles so my advice is NEVER hire a car from those people especially from Miami airport.
We headed South on US 1 a road with more traffic lights than cars and after a couple of agonising hours left the conurbation of Miami & Florida City. Now I never thought I'd say this but I'm so glad we weren't on the bikes, scorching temperatures and stop go driving for 2 hours, biking hell.
We stayed half way along the Keys at Marathon, the keys is in fact a collection of islands linked by a massive amount of bridges and causeways which extend the South of Florida for 100 miles, impressive engineering but I wouldn't bother going there, I can show you pictures and save you the time.
Saturday we headed for the Everglades National park, the wetlands and home to around one million alligators. This is a very impressive eco system with much to see for anybody interested in Nature. Great once again to see animals in the wild rather than being treated badly in theme parks. So one thing I'd recommend in Florida is this park, the rest I wouldn't bother but then again that's me and I am biased towards interesting motorcycling roads and nature.
A day on Sunday spent taking an airboat ride in the everglades was interesting, I'd have liked to have driven one as it seemed great fun but would rather practice outwith the Alligator infested area first.
Hopefully not sounding too grumpy here, we are enjoying the weather and hanging it out for a bit yet before deciding on our re entry to society!.

Key Largo

7 mile bridge just past Marathon. Many car chase sequences are filmed here

Long Long bridge although not as impressive as the 17 mile long one further North

See you later Alligator

Fi enticing the Gator with lunch, there is a small fence to protect the stupid humans but the gator just has to go 50 metres along to get round it

I thought they looked like almost human hands, needs its nails cut though

The water is teeming with fish

Which means this guy stays well fed

Sunbathing, amazing to see so many of these all over the place

Moving for another feed

Look at the teeth, scary!!

This one was swimming away from us thankfully

Typical scene in the Everglades

Fellow tourists in a similar airboat to ours

The Captain was feeding the birds, pretty sure they feed the gators as well

Mair fish

This one is called Blackie seemingly and thats his missus you can see just behind him