Big Truck heads south...

View from our camp site near 7 mile bridge on the Florida Keys. After landing in Miami yesterday morning before the sun came up, we picked up our LARGE SUV (they were out of the small ones!) stopped at supermarket for supplies and headed south on highway 1. We tried two campgrounds along the way, both being met with 'what is a tent?' (well, actually they just said RVs only), until we landed at Knights Key- tents no problem, thankyou very much

It gets dark here about 6.30pm this time of year, and we fell asleep (slightly jetlagged) shortly after that.

Awoke to beautiful sunshine this morning and CEREAL for breakfast (this was an important development in our adventure as most mornings had been started with bread and jam or some other less suitable substitute since Chileans don't really do milk with breakfast in the morning) they don't seem to do milk at all really.

Spent today exploring Key West - right at the southern most point in the US, though if we are being picky the actual most southern bit is about 400 yards south west of all the tourists photographing the sign inside a nasty looking naval base with a high fence.

Tried the compulsory Key Lime Pie which was nice. Martyn had the inevitable 2 scoop ice cream cone which was possibly his ideal flavour combination (Cuban banana and coconut rum raisin ) but was not as good as our Chilean ice creams.

Scored a blinder seeing the sights again - picked up a leaflet for the tour bus and then walked the route saving ourselves a not inconsiderable number of bucks and because the tour buses were open air as we walked we could hear the commentary anyway. These hints do not appear in the budget section of lonely planet harumph!

Saw Hemingways house (needs coat of paint), lighthouse (which blew down in hurricane so strong it also emptied the local cemetery depositing the bodies in trees eeeewww), oldest house, Mallory square, walked up Duval street and along the boardwalk reading all distressing signs about how they used to eat and farm turtles ;-( found new cemetery ( with crypts in which bodies are 4 high and apparently have things like "told you I was sick" engraved on them)
Avoided truly IMMENSE amount of tat, the vast majority of which was either shell, sea life or pirate oriented, laughed at awful t shirt slogan and bar names.

Currently sat in snack bar at campsite - everyone else here owns an rv and is definitely over 60 and some are apparently here for 3 months after which they play it day by day. Sign above bar says "shirts and shoes required bra and panties optional" it's very tame for here!

Thinking of taking part in activities here tomorrow there is shuffleboard on the map and I need to know what that is, there is also "brat on the beach" at the stay up late partying hour of 5pm to 8pm we think at a push we might manage to stay awake for that. A "brat" is apparently a sausage type thing and not an annoying young person so we think it's got potential.