Its about 11 on Friday night and Philippa and I have done just about all of the packing ready for the off tomorrow. Tom is sound asleep after another day of Big Swimming, and an outing across Seven Mile Bridge. No prizes for guessing how long it is. Its quite a magnificent thing in fact and we have driven over it quite a bit in the past few days. Halfway along it arches up to allow ships underneath it, and it parallels the rusty remains of the original bridge, which carried a railroad until it was badly damaged in the 1935 hurricane. The railroad ran along the Keys all the way to Key West at the tip. Those Victorians were really quite something - they didn't let the apparently impossible ever hold them back. We got up onto part of the old section today at Bahia Honda State Park, which promised great things but turned out to be a pleasant small beach with a longer section of mangrove fringed shoreline with shallow seas lapping at the edges and off to the horizon in every conceivable shade of blue, from pale aquamarine to deep violet. We baked a bit in the sun and swam and found the bridge and some inevitable ice-cream: "I'd like chocolate please and Dad, you can have mint choc chip so I can share it". I did and he did and in the end he said Philippa's ice-cream was the best (key lime sherbert since you ask). We bought fresh shrimps on the way home from what was probably our favourite eating place - a fish shop with cafe attached, and lots of outdoor tables lining a dock full of languid two and three four foot tarpon. They have fish food from a dispenser in the corner and the smaller fish dive for it when small hands throw it for them. When you eat there, as we did last night, they ask you to name your favourite cartoon character, and that labels your order. When it's ready to you hear "Wile E. Coyote" your order is ready, and so-on. I was Daffy Duck.
Its been a great week, and the hilight for me was probably our day in Key West and the Dry Tortugas. Key West has a real Bahamian feel with streets full of pretty clapboard houses. After our adventure in the islands we finished up in the courtyard of a lovely local restaurant glowing from the sun and eating pasta with a lot of garlic and drinking cold beer.
Tonight we walked down our dock to watch the sunset for the last time and failed, once again, to see the legendary (mythical ?) "green flash" but it was a lovely evening without the flash. We head back over the weekend, ruddy and relaxed, with a five year old who can snorkel!
Night all.
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