Day 15 Everglades

Today we booked an everglades half day tour for the morning. We waited as instructed outside our hotel at 9.45 but when tbe bus stoped down the road our names weren't on the list. We got some excuse about the tour being overbooked, but our hotel had phoned and booked us in infront of us the day before. Nevermind, we booked onto the afternoon tour instead, and went for a wander, and a cheeky burger king (the cheapest food around).

We got onto the 12.45 bus, that drove around for ages picking up other people. Our driver was a maniac. Ithought we were going to crash. Seriously! Anyway, we drove through Aligator alley, and i saw a gator on the side of the road. Matt was asleep so he missed it!

We made it to Gator Park in one piece, just about! First we went on an air boat tour of the glades, which was cool. The boats are big but can go in 3 inches of water. They were in 3 feet of water today and are concerned that the rise could eventually destroy the wildlife in the glades. The boat goes so fast, it was really fun. We saw two types of turtle, a talapia fish on its nest and 2 gators. We got lucky and chose the right side of the boat to sit on for once. When we got back, there was a talk with a guy training lots of animals to go into schools for talks (him talking, not the animals), so we saw a toad, scorpian, cockatoo, baby gators and big gators! The animals seemed to be treated well  and the talk was very interesting. We then had our photos taken with Larry, the baby gator, who was quite happy to be passed around to earn his living.

We survived the bus journey back, and found a proper 50s American diner for dinner. I had a burger and chocolate peanut milkshake, Matt had a full rack of ribs.it was gigantic. We got some hot cookies from a cookie bar and some beer to take back to the room (i got chatted up while Matt was queuing for beer) and watched 5 glorious hours of Wrestlemania. Americans love the wrestling, just not those in Miami. Unfortunately we coukdnt find a bar to watch it in, most had never heard of it. The only other person interested was the hotel receptionist, whom we had a very long conversation with about the joys of wrestling!