I’m writing this in the back of an SUV on the way back to Fort Lauderdale from the Florida Keys. A wet and sultry tropical storm is passing overhead and a passing SunCruz Casino sign says Florida has the loosest slots.
There is a Burger King and fries congealing queasily in the pit of my French cheese belly (something acquired during six months in Paris, and Key Largo’s Hideout restaurant has an all-you-can-eat Friday night fish fry.
After beautiful blue heavens, kayaking and snorkelling yesterday, the sky today is the colour of washing machine runoff, and we are now on I-95 in Monroe County where fat drops of rain are engulfing the sign for the Gulfstream Shores resort and the radio spruiks a ‘special’ on ‘vaginal rejuvenation’ surgery (which should sort out those loose slots at SunCruz once and for all).
The Florida Keys are a lot like tropical North Queensland in terms of weather patterns and architecture. Clapperboard houses on legs, sunny one minute, rainy the next ... but here they have several things that Queensland doesn’t: Wendys, Dennys , Burger King, Pizza Hut, McDonalds (with a 99c cheeseburger offer), Taco Bell, Wendys, Dennys , Burger King, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Taco Bell, Wendys, Dennys , Burger King, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Taco Bell ... and so it goes.
Outside, the rain is bucketing down in vicious gusts that feel, frankly, a little vindictive. The SUV is being buffeted, the wind is coming in waves and, even though I’m freezing from the A/C here in the back of the vehicle, it’s upwards of 80 degrees outside.
We are passing through the Crocodile National Wildlife Park Refuge and the hump-back bridge ahead seems to be disappearing up into a grey haze. It’s spooky looking at it through windscreen wipers that are thrashing back and forth, working overtime to disperse the rain. It feels personal now.
We have pulled over to let the speeding lunatics go past. It’s tropical chaos out there but you won’t slow down? Faint fractured halos of light appear, headlights of cars coming towards us, as if from nowhere but proof that the other half of the bridge still exists.
Starfish palm trees bow to the inevitable, another Hummer goes by, and I wonder why. Why a Hummer? I also wonder why all the people in the ‘service classes’ here in America are black or Hispanic, why everything tastes of sugar and why the banks won’t change my American Express travellers’ cheques.
I was going to sit here and write about our night at the El Bulli restaurant in Spain but it feels like a long, long time ago on another planet in another galaxy.
* Here’s some advice – don’t take travellers’ cheques to America. My bank sold me a whole bunch of them, assuring me they would work in the USA. They don’t. The banks won’t/don’t take them and if you are lucky enough to find a currency exchange booth they will gouge you like it’s going out of fashion.
We finally had to go to Miami International airport to change the travellers’ cheques and lost a bucketload both on the exchange rate and the charges. One currency place I tried in a mall in Florida would have charged me like a wounded bull ($11) for the privilege of giving me an exchange rate at which even the Mafia would have baulked.
We have both taken to taking money out on our credit cards – surely even they can’t charge what they charge here!
What a change from Paris, where we changed travellers’ cheques in banks with no problems whatsoever, and without the outrageous charges.
