Arrrgh! The Tortuga's Matey! - Bring me some Rum and a Wench!

 

 

One of the experiences that we wanted while in southern Florida and the Everglades was to wander down and through to the Keys and beyond.  When we saw the advertisements for the Dry Tortugas (70 miles by water from Key West) we jumped at it with visions of Henry Morgan, Jean L’Ollanais and Blackbeard (Edward Teach) with sunken ships and buried treasure dancing in our heads.  Pirates – everyone of them - ruthless, bloody, and unrelenting!  We needed to go!

To cut a long story short – wrong Tortugas!

 

We headed through the Everglades and down to the Keys via Homestead, Florida with an occasional stop at the various tourist attractions and view points.  Places like Key Largo, Sugar Loaf, Marathon, Boca Chica and Bahia Honda.  Just the names alone brought the visions of turquoise water and white sand, bikini clad hard bodied buxom young women and muscular speedo clad bulging young men. 

 

Reality doesn’t always match up well with unfettered anticipation!   

 

As we drove through the Keys we found that there were very few white sand beaches there, lots of mangroves though!  Lots of people, lots of tourist things, lots of boats, lots of RV parks, lots of rental places!  It’s a winter time party place!  And I have to admit they are quite good at it.   We drove into Key West and stayed at the Naval Air Station lodging – which was quite nice, complete with a kitchenette and all the amenities.  

 

We drove down to the main part of town and with a little effort found a place to park our rather oversized truck.  The streets and parking lots are narrow and short!  As we wandered the streets of Key West we encountered some rather unique homes and business’s along Duval Street.  The one to the left is the southern most private home in the continental USA.  Owned by the Ramos-Lopez family who are one of the oldest merchant families in the USA and made their start as part of the Spanish colony near St. Augustine, FL.  Just past this home was the southern most beach (and bar) in the continental USA.  Complete with a snowman.  We stopped for a drink and a snack, and since there were no walls at the bar, the view of the beach was very good.  No buxom young women or hard bodied young men here!  Just old tourists (a few of them had a lot more exposed than was prudent) with a few parents and screaming kids.  Oh well, the sunset was pretty and the music was good – have another drink, kick a rooster, get in a Key West frame of mind and just enjoy!   Free roaming roosters and chickens seem to be everywhere on/in Key West, kind of like city pets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those of you who have never been to Key West it is a party town with a capital PARTY!  A lot of the bars and restaurants don’t open until 9 or 10pm and some of the clubs don’t open until 11 or midnight.  There is an evening extravaganza at the harbor each evening with performers of all kinds and lots of alcohol.  The harbor is quite interesting with boats of all shapes and sizes (but mostly large and rather nice).  I think you could literally walk for miles just hopping from boat to boat to boat and never touching dry land.

 

 Key West has had (and has) its famous residents just like any other party town so we had to see if we could find a few of them as we wandered.  The first being Ernest Hemingway as he was and is still one of my favorite authors.  His books won the Nobel prizes for literature in 1954, but the adventures in his actual life out did his writing many times over.  Since we had stopped for a drink and a snack we were too late to take the tour so we continued wandering hoping to run into other residences of the famous - ones such as Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Robert Frost and one of the more current – Kenny Chesney.

 

No luck finding any more homes but we did run into the original Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville!  No Jimmy but there were strains of “Cheese burger in paradise” coming from the bar.  We moved on.  The shops are typical of tourist/party towns with the souvenir shops, t-shirts, and lots of cigar shops – much more than I’ve seen in any other place!  Being closer to Havana than Miami probably had something to do with that.  As it got later in the evening more people – interesting people - started to make their appearances and the young hard bodies and Cuban pool boys started looking for the action.  But as we had planned to get going early the next day for the boat ride out to the Dry Tortugas it was time to head back to the room and let the roosters, interesting people, and the young’uns have the streets and party away.

 

We needed to get to the harbor and board the Ferry Yankee Freedom III by 7 AM.  Other than your own personal boat the only way you can get to the Dry Tortugas National Park is by this ferry or sea planes.  This one offered bathroom, breakfast, lunch and snorkeling gear as part of the package and since there are no public restrooms, or places to eat on the islands we chose this one.  The fact that it is the only one had nothing to do with it – absolutely nothing.

Sometime before we left I found out that there are multiple Tortuga Islands in the gulf and the Caribbean.  The one I was thinking of is over near Haiti and does in fact have a debauchery filled history of pirates and treasure.  We didn’t visit that one.  We did visit  the one with the National Park on it which is actually called the Dry Tortugas and had nothing to do with the Pirates of my dreams or buried treasure - but did have a few sunken ships in the area.

 

These islands or Keys were first discovered by Ponce de Leon in 1513 and named “La Tortugas”  It is also known as the American Galapagos and has a rather large and varied sea turtle and Magnificent Frigate Bird population.  It was a seventy mile, two and a half hour ride by ferry over absolutely beautiful blue/turquoise water through schools of jellyfish, pods of dolphins, on past the Marquesas Key and the Rebecca Shoals. 

Once we docked at Garden Key, the main attraction of the park and home to Ft. Jefferson we received last minute instructions on visiting the Island, the tours, and snorkeling. We wandered off with the group for the ranger guided tour.  We stayed with them for a while but after realizing it was going to be a bit  lengthy and the fact that we have toured many similar historic forts, we escaped the group and went on a quick self-guided tour with a bit of geocaching thrown in.

 

 Ft Jackson’s construction began in 1846 and the fort was intended to control navigation in the Gulf of Mexico but then the Civil War broke out and it was used as a military prison for the Union and housed captured deserters and the conspirators of the Lincoln assassination including Dr. Samuel Mudd who was said to have treated John Wilkes Booth after the assassination and before his capture.  The fort was abandoned by the Army in the 1880’s, turned into a National Monument in 1935 and then designated as a National Park in 1992.

  

 We wandered around the fort checking out the gun emplacements and powder magazines trying to imagine what it would have been like living inside this thing with the walls blocking any wind at all and the sun beating down.  Not to mention the storms, this place was only a few feet above sea level and it would not take much of a storm surge to fill it with water!  Just in case your interested – it took an estimated 60 million bricks to build this place which by the way was never completely finished.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are the Magnificent Frigate birds of the Florida Keys and the Dry Tortugas.  These guys just soar endlessly and are quite large – fun to watch!  Then it was off to the beach, the moat wall and the coral reef for a bit of snorkeling.  Linda wandered out a lot further than I did and since my mishap with the snorkeling adventure and the Manatees, I have in fact learned to crank down my mask so I get a good tight seal around my face.  An unfortunate side effect of that is that the mask is so tight that my eyeballs bug out of my head and it scares the hell out of people when all they see is two huge eyeballs behind the mask.  (Just kidding!)  So once again (prior to any mishap this time) I got out of the water and satisfied myself by taking pictures.  We did enjoy ourselves though and Linda even got a couple of good pictures with the underwater camera.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All to soon it was time to board the ferry and head back to Key West.  The weather was a bit on the rough side going back so Linda found a seat near the back of the ferry in the open air (That helps ease the queasy feelings).  I stayed up front in the main cabin and was entertained by the people who didn’t take their Dramamine nearly soon enough and participated in the barf bag diving competition – it was great!  I never knew people could turn so many shades of green.  They didn’t want me to take pictures though. 

 

 

Once back to the harbor and weaving our way through all the cruise ships and multitude of evening party boats, we found a very nice Mexican restaurant, wandered the streets for a while and then made our way to our room and collapsed into bed with smiles on our faces.

 

The next day it was just a bit of shopping and then drive back through the Keys to the Everglades (our current home) and our volunteer positions.

 

 

 

 

 One day after our return I was asked to go along with Raoul (one of the maintenance guys) on the infamous Poo boat.  He needed help controlling the boat as he made his run around the Ten Thousand Island campgrounds emptying the port-a-potties.  If you had asked me a while ago if I would ever volunteer to do something like this it would have been a very quick, very loud and clear “no way in hell!”  It seemed I had a weak constitution that day and as I was told I would be at the  the pump controls and helping from the boat - I was talked into and agreed to it.  What a dumbass!

 

Raoul and I took off out of the harbor planning on making a good eight hour run in the islands and campgrounds – Raoul was driving and 30 minutes out ran up on an oyster bar with the boat.  The channels are narrow, shallow and unforgiving going through the islands. The tide was going out so we were stuck on the oyster bar for the next three and half to four hours.  In the pic above you can see the Poo boat and Raoul (up on top catching up on his phone calls).   This pic is of a rather unhappy me from the helm of the boat as I waited for the tide to come back in. 

  

 I took a couple walks around the area on the oyster bar  harassing the little hermit crabs and watching the various animal life.  It’s a pretty strange and eerie feeling being stranded like that with the only sounds being my companion talking very rapid Cuban Spanish to his friends and family on the phone.  As the tide came in, the water came alive with schools of fish being chased by dolphins and sharks through the extremely shallow water.  I got some pictures of the dolphins but the sharks were too fast for me by the time I saw their dorsal and tail fins.  Since the water was rising it was time for me to get back in the boat before some of the fishes decided my toes looked tasty.

With half the day gone before we got the boat moving again, we did not get much done that day.  I did learn that they do not pay these maintenance rangers nearly enough for what they do.    I learned a vast and unabridged range of cusswords in the Spanish language (the Cuban version) that afternoon as made our shortened rounds.  We made it home, but  ---  I will not be going out on the Poo boat again!

 

 Linda was able to go down to a different portion of the park and get boat tours, presentations and information about the entire park.  While she was down at the Flamingo Visitor Center she ran into an American Crocodile – I did know about the alligators but I didn't know about these guys.  It seems that in the Everglades crocodiles and alligators coexist rather well – the only place in the world that this happens. That portion of the park takes about 3 hours by car to get to from here.

 

 

 

 On some of our wanderings we run into various swamp things like the ones above. The first one is a swamp buggy police car, and the second is a fire buggy.  These belong to Big Cyprus National Preserve.

 

Linda and I have been given numerous projects to help with while we are here and the one to the right is where we were helping to remove an old observation deck that was out over the water in Shark Valley.  As we were working the birds and an occasional curious gator would come right up along side or underneath us – just checking us out.

 

This little guy was getting ready to bellow at me as I was walking towards him with a camera.  When they do bellow it is a very deep bass grunt that you can hear as well as feel right down to your bones – pretty awesome! 

 

 

 

 Oreo - our 17 pound Tom Cat, who has lived and traveled with us for quite a few years, decided he likes being part of the Blog and will continue to provide a few purr-fect bits of wisdom and observations for all the blog readers out there as well as a few comments about the antics of his pride members and life on the road.

 

 

I feel the need to continue the education of my readers by imparting my vast knowledge of the animal kingdom on the variety of species that I and my pride have encountered as we continue our stay in this place called The Everglades.  I hope you enjoy it.

 

The West Indian Manatee 

These guys are soooo cool!  They are sometimes called sea cows and can grow up to 13 ft. long and weigh up to 1300 lbs.  They are kind of like me on a warm sunny day, just kind of curious, slow moving, rolling around and enjoying the sunshine.  Sun beams are good things!

They are kind of funny looking though and have paddle-like flippers and a big rounded tail.

This family above live just down the road at a place called Big Cyprus Visitors Center – my pride members told me that there were two other families there also.  These guys eat lots of Mangrove leaves, grass and the green algae in the water.

 

The Green Heron

The Green Heron is kind of small; (not like those other big herons, egrets  and stork suckers!)  The adults have a glossy, greenish-black cap, a greenish back and wings that are grey-black grading into green or blue, a chestnut neck with a white line down the front, grey underparts and short yellow legs. The bill is dark with a long, very sharp point.  I would have loved to meet his designer!

These guys are really confused about how they are supposed to sound.  When they fly the wingbeats are a noisy whoom-whoom-whoom so they can’t sneak up on anything.  And the noise they make – a very load and sudden “kyow”.  Wow!  When they mate it’s a whole different range with a “roo-roo” and an “aaroo-aaroo”.  Silly damn birds!  My pride member told me that these are considered among the worlds most intelligent birds because they drop small objects or insects into the water to attract fish.  Intellegent bird?  Yea – right, when dogs stop licking themselves.

 

 

The Wood Stork

This guy is another really large bird that I don’t think I want to mess with!  They have buzzard ugly heads with a huge beak, white feathers trimmed with black on the wing tips and cute pink feet.  They hang out in the marshes and Cyprus  trees around here and sometimes even go into the Mangroves.  The Wood Stork is the only stork that breeds in North America.  The rest of them go somewhere else – I guess the mood is better for loving where the others go – maybe Paris or Tuscany, or an exotic island like the Tortugas.

They like to feed where water levels have lowered and have a concentrate of fish.  Mostly they like  fish, frogs and large insects. They catch fish and the other things by holding their bills open in the water until a fish, frog or bug is wandering through and then they slam that big old beak shut – instant dinner!  It’s probably a good thing that  I don’t like the water.

   

 

The Great Egret 

The Great Egret is a large Heron with all-white plumage.  (and a really sharp and large bill!)

It flies kind of slow with its neck tucked in.  A lot of the Herons and Bitterns do this.  The Great Egret is not a very talkative bird and don’t make all kinds of weird sounds like some of the other birds do.  But they do feed in the shallow water like the others hunting small fish, frogs, small mammals, lizards (they like the Cuban Tree Frogs because of the spicy flavor).

This is one patient bird as it waits motionless for its victim - spearing them with its long, sharp bill when they least suspect it.  My kind of hunter!

 

 

               A once in a lifetime photo of a Wood Stork and a Great Egret sharing a tree limb.

                                Lunch time in the Everglades – you do not want to be a fish!

 

Little Blue Heron

These guys are more my size but still have that really sharp pecking thing. 

They are fun to watch as they stalk their prey through  shallow water, often running as they do.  It eats fish, frogs, crabs, snails, small rodents and bugs.

White Little Blue Herons (young ones) often mingle with Snowy Egrets. That helps them both catch more fish when in the presence of each other and protection from predators.  The Snowy Egrets don’t like them once they turn blue though.

 

 

 

                          Here is a picture of a male Anhinga drying his wings – love the blue eyes!.

 

                Why does the alligator cross the road?  -  who cares!  You just let him go.

That’s it for now -- The Oracle of the Everglades!

Oreo

 

Even with all of our little experiences and adventures we look forward to more visits with friends and family – as we set our sights towards Houston and beyond.  We leave you with a view of our sunrise from the harbor of our current home, and wishing that you all have a little adventure - no matter where you are.

 

 

 

 

Home is where we park it!

Lee & Linda