There was a man and there was a airboat and there was one
can of Budweiser and there were two cigarettes and there was a cadre of
alligators and there were twelve inches of dead, fraying, sun-bleached hair
formed into an absurd ponytail and secured in place by no fewer than a half
dozen rubber bands. The man was on the airboat and one cigarette was in his
mouth and the other was waiting in his left hand and the can of Budweiser was
in his right hand and the absurd ponytail was clinging desperately to his head
and the cadre of alligators was lurking in the water next to the boat and there
could be no doubt that I was in the Florida Everglades.
Thirty minutes prior, our situation was slightly different:
There was no man and no airboat and no cans of Budweiser and no cigarettes and
no cadre of alligators and no absurd ponytail but there was a Toyota SUV and
one pair of threadbare jean shorts and three pairs of ridiculous, vintage
sunglasses and one fully unbuttoned, cut-off flannel shirt and an American flag
bandana and two spray painted cowboy boots and a children’s Florida Marlins
jersey bursting at the seams and an orange, Hawaiian shirt with no sleeves
commemorating Superbowl XLI and a driver and three passengers with Salvation
Army thrift-store receipts in their pockets and self-aware grins proportional
in size to the one point five million acre National Park they were presently
entering.
We pulled in and opened our doors and our first drops of sweat
hit the ground seconds after our thrift-store boots did. We grabbed our tickets
and met our guide at the same time that we met our cans of Budweiser and the
only instructions we received were that the two were not to be mixed.
Our outfits failed to draw the attention that we had
expected, which likely reflects their close approximation of the staff
uniforms. Sleeves were discouraged and boots required and only if you were
lucky would you see a clean-shaven face. Cigarette smoke was your bug spray and
sweat was your sunscreen and I’ll be damned if the staff at Gator Park weren’t
the most red-blooded, rebel flag-waving, whiskey drinking, salt-of-the-earth
Americans east of the Mississippi.
To say that our airboat looked clumsy would be a bit of an
understatement. It was nearly twenty feet long and about half as wide with no
measurable tapering at the bow or stern. That is to say, it was a flat-bottomed
barge made of yellow fiberglass with a six-foot caged fan mounted to the back
just in front of the pilot’s seat, which resembled an aluminum lifeguard stand
that had been bolted on as an afterthought. There were four rows of bench seats
made of the same yellow fiberglass, the first and last of which were occupied
by a couple from Colombia and a German photographer, respectively. We boarded
as ironically as we dressed, Budweisers in one hand and iPhone cameras in the
other and we took our seats between the German and the Colombians and securely
plugged our ears with the complimentary, blaze-orange, foam earplugs.
The fan erupted and our guide screeched out some canned
lines through his missing front tooth about the flora or fauna or weather or
what-have-you in an endearingly exaggerated Cajun accent. The boat splashed and
the birds fled but the alligators loitered and we snapped pictures while the
fan hummed and the clouds cleared and the sun beat down and we soon found
ourselves a considerable distance from civilization and our boat stopped and we
looked about and it gave me pause.
The landscape of the Florida Everglades is not much
different than what you would imagine if someone drenched the Great Plains in
eighteen to thirty-six inches of water. The Sawgrass is tall and golden and it
waves in the wind like a Kansas prairie and the sky is bright and blue and
spotted with puffy, white cumulus clouds and it can turn from rain to sun and
back at the drop of a hat.
Similarly, our guide was not much different than what you
would imagine if someone drenched a southern redneck in eighteen to thirty six
inches of water. His arms were wiry with waterlogged and sun-tanned skin with
deep wrinkles and elevated veins and they were exposed to the sun by his
cut-off sleeves. At the end of his wiry and sun-tanned arms were two, short,
puffy hands that were crisscrossed with scars from cuts and bites and scratches
from plants and animals and machines alike. He wore shorts and no shoes and his
legs bowed but he still bounced from the pilot’s chair to the bottom of the
boat and back with the energy of a man half of his fifty plus years of age.
Our guide began in on an exposition about the vast expanse in which we found ourselves. He explained how the water began at lake Okeechobee and flowed at about half a mile per day towards the Florida Bay and about how there were alligators and crocodiles and now there were pythons. He spoke about the Sawgrass and its razor-sharp, serrated edge and about how his friend lost his life thanks to the Great Blue Heron and its dagger-like beak. He told us about the Seminoles and how they would wrestle alligators so that they could keep live food in their camp, ready to kill and eat whenever they were hungry.
Our tour ended and we fled the scene as quickly as we
arrived, knowing that we had a long weekend ahead of us. We would have less
than thirty-six hours between being inundated deep in the Florida Everglades and being
inundated in the Miami club scene but we knew that the margin for error would be slim and the transition treacherous.
In between the two lay many obstacles, each waiting its turn
to derail our South Florida adventure. There were ten to fourteen games of
beach volleyball to be played and three wardrobe changes and a photo-op at the
Swimming Hall of Fame and the creation of one sleazy goatee on my face. Once
past these we would be faced with a few six-packs of beer and countless iced
coffees and some late-night street tacos, then a half dozen Fort Lauderdale
bars with their legions of cougars backed up by an army of bros, each of whom
took umbrage with our particular brand of irony. We’d get little sleep and have
even fewer beds and we would engage in no measurable water intake. Finally,
we’d endure a thirty minute car ride south that was teeming with anticipation
and somehow we would survive it all to find ourselves in the heart of downtown
ready to pack a few weeks worth of shenanigans into one Miami night.
It was certainly a weekend of overcoming obstacles but even
more, it was a weekend of constructing obstacles. It was about the mustaches
more than the fashion and the pick-up lines about fictional ex-wives more than
the bars in which they were uttered and it was the needlessly late-nights
rather than the gallons of iced coffee that served to ameliorate their
symptoms. The excitement that we felt at engineering a new means of
inconveniencing ourselves was superlative and it was infectious and neither
time nor lack of sleep managed to temper it. Sometimes a vacation is about the
destination and other times it is about the people but more often it is a
combination and if the two must be mixed then you might as well make the best
of both and we certainly did.
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details:
highlights:
- Airboating at Gator Park
- Biking at Key Biscane
hidden gems:
- Street art at Wynwood Walls
- Coffee at Panther Coffee
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