Day 16

Woke up slowly and tried to occupy my idle hands until Rory was awake too. Can’t open the door or all the A/C unit’s graveyard shift work would be completely futile. No joke, the swamp is airborne and tangible on the other side of that door.

Each room in Bill’s house (couch surfing host) has its own individual A/C unit. Helps to save money. Electricity to the island is expensive. We left it at that because any inquisition as to why the costs of conveyance are so high would surely lead to a deeply historical lecture.

Breakfast consists of trail mix, water, and yard work. A former tenant recently vacated clearing out large sections of the yard that have apparently not been touched for eons. Rory, Robert, and I do what we can before we agree that this should be made a multi-day event. Pack up the backpack; we’re walking to the beach.

There is a state park just to the southwest that is supposed to have a nice beach. Our chosen path takes us through the island’s own version of the projects. The low-income housing adjacent to the wealthy tourist façade comes as a surprise to us both.

Does this park charge for pedestrians or just cars? No time to find out, sorry Florida. A windy road terminates in paradise. Few words are exchanged before we are under the surface of the Atlantic with our masks just on pointing out amazing things to nobody. Hours are spent free diving coral reefs just off the beaches of the southernmost point in the continental United States. Fish of every color are scattered around the reefs. Large, small, camouflage, spiky, slow, outgoing, are all equally entertaining to these two desert dwellers. Large schools of blue and green minnows socialize along the fringes of these reefs. Swimming along the seabed gets me underneath the school so I swim up through the center. They move in a uniform fashion but will not separate. Instead, they form a colorful ring around me until I pass completely through and they regroup. We search for the fabled sea turtles that occupy this area. No luck but we’ll be back. There is an old fort that resides within the park boundary so we walk through on out way out, barely worth mention. A walk down the main drag back towards the house results in some cheap pizza and extensive dinner planning. Fajitas it is. Mexican food is more reliable than the sun or the moon.