It’s quite hard to believe whilst sitting on a jet boat zooming through the Everglades that just one week earlier we were both back in Jersey in full time jobs having worked for 14 months. We had a flat, albeit one we had rented, a sofa, bed and a house full of clothes and bits and bobs we had accumulated over that 14 months. Needless to say the 5 days we had to relieve ourselves of our belongings again was an exhausting process. But we managed to succeed in leaving a few bags of work clothes and 3 boxes of our worldly belongings and were back down to our backpacks.

The next day after the usual round of frantic goodbyes we headed to London, Heathrow via Gatwick and had built in another night in a hotel to avoid any concern from the usual jersey flight delays. We arrived at the Hilton to a letter saying we had been upgraded and had the most awesome views over runway T4. Tim’s inner plane spotter was in his element. We were only staying in the Hilton as we had had problems with our last stay and so they had given us vouchers for a free stay. Low and behold just before we were going to sleep we tried to put on the air con to warm the room and it just blew cold. Tim was straight onto reception and within minutes a maintenance man was poking around in our ceiling and told us in was broken and he would bring us a portable heater. Next minute the duty manager is on the phone apologising and offers us a free taxi to T3 in the morning and enough Hilton points for another free stay. I am beginning to quite like the Hilton!! Anyway after a luxury Mercedes dropped us at Heathrow we travelled on an airbus A380 in the top deck and arrived late into Miami.

With no time to waste we had a day tour booked to explore the Everglades. Since I was a kid watching Gentle Ben on TV I have always wanted to go on an airboat through the Everglades. Tours through the Everglades are quite limited. Most just offer a short airboat ride followed by an alligator show. Thankfully we found Everglades Day Safari which offered a spectacular day of exploring whereby we travelled coast to coast across Florida through the entire width of the Everglades. We were due to be picked up at 7:20am and thankfully the jet lag worked in our favour and we quite enjoyed an early morning walk along Central Beach whilst the sun rose.

So factoid time!!!

Everglades National Park is a U.S. National Park in Florida that protects the southern 20 percent of the original Everglades. In the United States, it is the largest tropical wilderness, the largest wilderness of any kind east of the Mississippi River, and is visited on average by one million people each year. It is the third-largest national park in the lower 48 states after Death Valley and Yellowstone. It has been declared an International Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage Site, and a Wetland of International Importance, one of only three locations in the world to appear on all three lists.

Our day exploring consisted of the obligatory airboat ride which was every bit as amazing as I hoped, we were flying around sideways through the rivers of sawgrass hovering over just a few inches of water. The bird life was incredible and the gators were everywhere.

Next we were driven through the Big Cypress Preserve 720,000 acres of wet cypress forest swarming with bird life and of course more gators.

We took a short walk through the Big cypress preserve and were rewarded with a few Florida Water Snakes clinging to a log in the last remaining pool of water around.

We had a fabulous lunch in Everglades City then our last stop of the day was a boat tour around the 1000 islands in the Gulf of Mexico. Where we were surrounding by dolphins a perfect ending to the day. We travelled the full width of the state and had the most epic time.

Exhausted and still struggling with the time zone we decided to have an early dinner and struck gold with Primanti Brothers. An Italian sandwich bar like no other, we felt like we were in man vs food when they arrived. Stunning Italian bread filled to bursting point even your chips were in the sandwich. Delish.

Given that we only had 24 hours in Fort Lauderdale I don’t think we did too bad!

Next we board the Nieuw Amsterdam for a 7 day Western Caribbean Cruise.