Last days on the keys

Youth hostels are international places. The clerk was from Bulgaria. First fellow I met inside was from Australia. When I came back from my walking tour, two Germans were waiting for the fellow from Bulgaria to come back so they could register and get a pair of beds. We had a pleasant time, me practicing German while they fixed themselves some spaghetti and telling their backgrounds: After graduating from the German equivalent of high school, they had worked the past year in the US doing child care (au pair) for some rich folks in Baltimore. They were on a two-week vacation before returning to Germany.  They said they were impressed with my German, and I learned that most computer terms are the same in German and English. That's a picture of them above.

5:00 AM rolls around pretty early after a long day of riding and walking, but I was motivated—in a couple hours I would be snorkeling on the only reef in the US. Traffic is light this time of day, and I made it to Key Largo before the marina opened. I tried to catch a few winks, without success—too many mosquitoes. When they finally opened, I learned I was the only person who had signed up for the tour, and they couldn't justify sending a boat out for only one person. I was out of luck. The fellow offered to call around, and he found a place that would accept another adventurer—if I was willing to wait until 11:00. I had no reason to hang around this marina, so I looked for my new guides, a couple miles west. Turned out they had a boat going out at 8:30 (meaning I could get back to the Cape Canaveral area by around suppertime), and I was just in time to get aboard. And they were $10 cheaper. Met a nice German couple on the boat, too.

It turns out that nobody dives in the actual John Pennecamp State Park. All the boats go a little farther out to the national site where the water is clearer and the coral mounds are nicer. The first marina wasn't explicit about this, and they even allowed me to believe they were part of the park system. So I was glad to have switched rides. I spent most of the trip out and back chatting with the pilot, learning things, about the stupidity of some divers, who purify the gene pool by drowning themselves, and the invasion of iguanas in the keys. A few pets got released, and now they are everywhere. 

After the pleasant snorkeling expedition, I ate at a local highly recommended eatery, Mrs. Mac's. It's one of the few remaining original places on the keys, they said, and the walls certainly had the license plates to prove it. The waitress insisted she take a picture of me, so here is the second of two photos from the whole trip that has me in it. (The other one is me on the bike at mile zero a post or two below.) They have a wonderful key lime milkshake that I highly recommend. My waitress, an auntie type, talked me into trying their local style steak (julienne over a bed of lettuce with their house dressing). Like every other place I've eaten at on the east coast, they overcooked it, but it wasn't too bad, and I bought a jar of the dressing as a souvenir for Valerie.

Now it was time to head north. Cape Canaveral or bust!

I arrived in time to take my host out to dinner. Next post: Randy Stallings and the Kennedy Space Center.