Hi y’all. It’s been a while again, but again there hasn’t been too much to talk about. We did move to a new place, and I was going to blog about that whole story but I’m glad I didn’t That’s behind us.
In brief, what happened when we returned from California and why we moved is the owners completely remodeled our house while we were gone. They just went on in, moved walls and added a bathroom, as well as paint, which is what they asked if they could do and I said okay. Myung and I felt our space was invaded. In fact, if we had a written contract they would not have been allowed to do that. So, withing a few days we moved. We had packed up most of our stuff to give them room to paint, so moving was a breeze. Luckily, we found a place right away. It’s okay. We might get another when our one year lease is up. It’s definitely nicer than the last place, and bigger with two bedrooms and a good kitchen. It’s a hundred dollars a month more, but still cheap by US standards and fair by Cuenca standards.
It was sad to leave the owners’ dog we got attached to, but we got a new one and we like her. They couldn’t be more different, but we like our new one, too. I will post some photos in my next post which I’ll do after this one.
For a lot of people, moving to a new place is a big deal, but we’ve been so mobile over the years, this was like going to the next town and staying in the next hostel, so I’ll just move onto the trip we took to Florida for two weeks, just returning last Saturday.
Myung’s computer was dying, so that gave us a reason to go shop in Miami. Coincidentally, it died completely on the day before we left. As I’ve mentioned before, many things are so expensive in Ecuador that if you have enough things to buy it’s worth going to the States to buy it there. The computer I bought for Myung was $370 on Amazon (which doesn’t deliver to Ecuador) but would cost double here. Our round trip air tickets from Guayaquil, plus a couple of night’s stay in Guayaquil, plus $24 round trip on the van from Cuenca to Guayaquil was was about a thousand bucks. So if we stocked up on stuff and did some discretionary shopping, we could and did come out ahead. And we got to be tourists in South Florida.
Whew, Myung can shop! She searched bargains for days. It’s fun for her. I got a couple of t-shirts, not counting the free Miami Marlins jerseys we got when we went to a ballgame. We also stocked up on Korean foods which are even more than double price here, if you can find it at all. I don’t have pictures (which by the way were taken on Myung’s new camera, as hers also happened to die just before we left) because malls are malls, Whole Foods and Trader Joes are what they are, and the Asian markets ain’t near what they are in the Bay Area. But shopping was a lot of why we went and it’s what we did for several days, probably over half the time we were there.
This text is getting so long, it’s time for a photo to break up the action at least. How about the first picture taken with the new camera?
In my opinion, the beaches in and around Miami are not that interesting. For us, it was worth one picture, and that’s not even worth posting. There is a beach in the keys, Bahia Hondo, which got billed in 1995 as best beach in America. Are you kidding? Here are pics. It’s not even in the top 500. What are they thinking? No features out in the water, so-so beach itself on one side. Sheesh.
We stayed in a cheap hotel with kitchenette on Marathon Key and did pretty much nothing. Sunset pictures? Blah. Here’s one.
Marathon and the rest of the keys were hit hard by Hurricane Irma last year. There used to be a lot of mangroves along the east side of the island. A lot of them were trashed. Here’s what it looks like at the end of the street we stayed on.
It’s not too bad in the other direction but, then again, the keys ain’t no Malaysia as far as beach and mangroves go.
The main thing to do out there, of course, is going to Key West. I was there once in 1966 when I was 14 years old. My memories are few and dim. I’m sure it wasn’t so touristy.
Hard Rock Cafe
If you want to party, get good food for a price or buy a t-shirt, Key West is fine.
One thing I remember pretty well from when I was there as a teenager was going deep sea fishing with my dad. I’m thinking we got a boat from what’s now called the Historic Charter Boat dock. Now going out is about $250, so we didn’t do that. We did go on a little reef fishing boat with about 10 other people. It was like going to the kiddie fishing pond. We dropped lines about 5 feet down and caught lots of little fishies, 37 of which were over 12 inches long and therefore keepers. I caught about 10 of them, I guess because I still have the knack from fishing my whole child and teen years. Myung got kinda seasick and mostly laid low. We took six of them back to the motel. We grilled three in foil on each of the next two nights.
We had about three days left in Miami before we left. Besides more shopping, we went to a couple of areas of the Everglades. It’s pretty nice out there. It reminded me of the Okavango Delta in Botswana, without the hippos, elephants and crocs. We did see one baby alligator in the area down by Homestead, south of Miami.
It’s totally pretty there.
Myung especially wanted to see a big alligator, so we went to the Miccosukee tribal cultural center and alligator show.
The cultural part was actually pretty interesting, especially how they avoided getting frog marched off to Oklahoma with the Cherokees by joining with the Seminoles for some to successfully be able to remain in Florida.
That’s about it. What else I got… How about this lizard in Marathon? Myung’s a good photographer.
That really is about it now. If it looks like I didn’t think much of my experience in South Florida, it’s because I didn’t. We went mostly for shopping. For that, it was great.
So, be well, all of you.
