The Sunny South # 9: Winter in Gulf Coast Florida, Helpful Hints

I've been to the western or Gulf Coast of Florida enough times in the winter to be able to offer some advice and hints if you are thinking of heading that way.  Here are my thoughts, in no particular order except for the Big Number One.

[1]  Weather.  It's rarely hot.  Pleasantly warm is about as high as the temperatures in Florida go during December-February.  Think of a late spring day in Ontario, with temperatures in the high teens to low twenties Celsius, and you'll be about right.  Sometimes (as this month) it can get downright chilly.  In fact, most of my winter trips to Florida have included a day or two where the temperatures went near freezing overnight and barely rose to 10C in the daytime.  Rainy days are also not uncommon.  Bring layers and be prepared to roll with it.  If you require "hot," then you'll have to get much farther south, down into the Caribbean islands.  (I don't do "hot" very well, so Florida suits me right down to the ground.)

[2]  Sun or Clouds.  Bad news for sleep-in specialists.  In common with tropical areas the world over, Florida almost always gets at least a bit cloudy as the day goes on -- sometimes more than a bit.  It's the combination of daytime heating with moisture from the oceans.  The clouds are very likely to appear right above -- you guessed it -- the beaches.  In my experience, there's usually good sunshine until about 2:00pm.  After that, some days are luckier than others.

[3]  South is warmer.  You can usually find temperatures several degrees warmer by heading right down to Fort Myers/Naples on the west coast or Miami/Fort Lauderdale on the east coast.  I still haven't been all the way down to the Florida Keys -- that's for another trip.

[4]  "Beach front" versus everything else.  The prime hotels, motels, condos, etc., are almost always the ones which stand right on the edge of the beaches.  These are "Beach Front" locations.  All the others, though, are very good at marketing themselves to make it sound like they are on the beach front.  Sure, they're "On the beach" (the whole island is called "What's-its-name Beach"), and enticing words like "Sands", "Ocean", "Beach", "Sea", etc., recur in property names with great frequency.  "Steps to the beach" is another good marketing dodge.  Do your homework and verify the location online or with GPS if you absolutely need a room or apartment facing the beach.

[5]  Wheels.  You must bring a car, or get a car in Florida.  Urban and suburban sprawl is the name of the game here.  That nice little map on the website of that great restaurant makes it look like the place is right over there, and then it turns out to be a 30-minute drive or more.  Beach parking in many areas is very limited; you must arrive early in the day to get a space, especially on weekends.  Also note that gas is usually cheaper off the beach islands, and in any case there are only a tiny handful of gas stations on the beach islands.

[6]  Shopping.  It's not true that everything is cheaper in Florida.  If you want to shop for bargains, you need to do price homework ahead of time and learn to calculate the exchange rates quickly in your head!  And no matter what some people think, the word "Outlet" does not magically guarantee the lowest prices.  There are many small shopping plazas and individual stores scattered up and down the beach islands, but the major shopping malls and outlet malls are all inland, sometimes a very long way inland.  Plan plenty of driving time if you are on the beach but heading for the malls.  The good news?  There's always a chain drugstore nearby (Walgreen's or CVS).  They're much like a Shoppers Drug Mart in offering a little of just about everything, including some grocery items.

[7]  Happy Hour.  It's not always loudly advertised, but many restaurants offer Happy Hour drink specials.  There may be Happy Hour food specials too -- a limited number of menu items, at lower prices, available before 5:00pm or 5:30pm or 6:00 pm.  Be sure to ask.  Several places I know offer well drinks, house wines, and basic draft beers at 2-4-1 on their already low prices from opening at 11:00am until 7:00pm, and one of them has a similar Happy Hour promotion going on at all times they are open!  Over on the east coast, some places offer half-price on all their bottles of wine on the slack days like Monday and Tuesday.

[8]  Chain Restaurants.  These are nearly non-existent on beach islands.  There are all kinds of terrific restaurants, at all price points, all up and down the beach islands but rarely a Mickey Dee's or KFC.  If you absolutely must eat chain "food," I feel sorry for you -- in more ways than one -- but you usually have to find it by driving off the islands and heading inland.

[9]  Chain Hotels.  Mostly located around the same areas as the chain restaurants.  There are only a few chain hotels on the Gulf Coast beach islands.  You notice them right away because they are such rare birds (except at Clearwater Beach, where there are a half dozen or more of them).  

[10]  Beaches.  There are lots of beaches, but the Gulf of Mexico is really too cold for swimming in winter unless you have a wetsuit.  I haven't seen anyone get right into the water without one.  The water is a bit warmer on the Atlantic side, thanks to the warm current of the Gulf Stream.  All beaches and beach parking lots get a lot more crowded on weekends -- Floridians love their beaches, too.  Pick your beach with care.  They're all different.  Here's my take on some of the west coast ones which I haven't already written about this year:

     [a]  Clearwater Beach.  Heavily marketed, Clearwater is the beach for those who want to escape from high-rises, crowds, and heavy traffic by coming to more high-rises, crowds, and heavy traffic.  The traffic has gotten notably worse the last few years with a new crop of giant high-rise hotels and condo towers crowding the south end of the beach front.  Giant and expensive. 

     [b]  Sand Key, Longboat Key.  These two, one south of Clearwater, the other west of Sarasota, are the beach resorts with cachet, suitable for CEOs and lottery winners.  Properties here, especially on Longboat Key, have the rarest of all Florida beach luxuries -- space and privacy.  If you have to ask the prices, you can't afford Sand Key or Longboat.  Nuff said.

     [c]  Fort Myers Beach.  Popular and crowded.  Lots of island character and plenty of traffic congestion, mostly around the terribly-planned intersection just at the entrance to the island from Fort Myers.  

     [d]  Fort de Soto county park.  South of the city of St. Petersburg, a beautiful undeveloped beach with acres and acres of sand, and plenty of parking.

     [e]  Pass a Grille beach.  The far south end of St. Pete Beach.  A fine beach, backed by a village which preserves a bit of quaint old Florida character.  Great spot for walking around, and plenty of top-notch eateries and drinkeries as well.

     [f]  Bradenton Beach.  Unusual, a sizable beach park lined with trees instead of condos.  Nice rural feeling, gets crowded on weekends.  Actually, all the beaches do.

     [g]  Sanibel Island.  Beaches everywhere are littered with shell fragments.  Sanibel's beaches are shells and shell fragments.  Sanibel was famous among shell collectors long before the high-rise world discovered Florida.  It's the easiest place in the world to get bitten by the shell-collecting bug!

The Sunny South # 8: Life's a Boat in Fort Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale is an urban resort.  That means that any stay here comes with all the conveniences and inconveniences of modern urban life -- and "traffic" ranks pretty high on the latter list.  Not least of the reasons for the traffic problem is all the water around here.

But thanks to an enterprising business, the water has been put to good use.  One of the best tourist services in Fort Lauderdale is the Water Taxi -- which is a bit of a misnomer.  It's really a water-borne version of the "Hop-on-hop-off" tour buses found in so many cities today.  Like those buses, it operates over a designated route with designated stops, through a particular time period (10:00am to 10:00pm daily, approximately every half hour).  Also like the bus tours, this one offers a running commentary on the major homes and other sights being passed.

It works because Fort Lauderdale's nickname, "The Venice of America," isn't just a name.  Like its Italian precursor, this is a city built on land reclaimed from the water.  And like the original Venice, Fort Lauderdale is seamed with miles of canals.  In this town, life isn't complete if your waterfront home hasn't got a giant yacht moored outside, and there are dozens of marinas like this one for those who don't live right on the water.

The map shows the approximate routes used by the Water Taxi tour service, with the leg on the west side going up the New River into the heart of downtown, and the orange line to the south representing a separate shuttle boat that runs down to Hollywood Beach.

Since my ideal of "relaxation" rarely involves sitting still for long, and since yesterday was chilly and windy by beach or pool standards, a day of bopping around from place to place on the Water Taxi was a natural thing for me to do.

More than any other American city I have seen, Fort Lauderdale is a monument to glitzy, garish consumerism.  The houses generally combine the worst aspects of unlimited wealth allied to non-existent good taste.  The gigantic private yachts only make it seem worse.  The commentary on the Water Taxi boats points out certain homes for their astronomical price tags or their unique features, and also singles out one particular yacht.  Here we go.

The commentator jokingly described this house under construction as "the new Terminal 5 at Fort Lauderdale International Airport."

The main channels and canals are lined with hundreds of similar monster homes.

The owner of this massive mega-yacht, the biggest one in town, is apparently dissatisfied with it because a friend has a bigger one, and he wants to get a bigger yacht still, to keep ahead. 

A baby like this goes for something in the range of $250-275 million dollars new, and you can expect to pay 10% of that amount every year for maintenance, upkeep, insurance, crewing, and docking costs -- even before you sail the damn thing one foot away from its dock.  We passed hundreds of similar vessels, just none quite as big as this.  Oh, yes -- the owner?  Steven Spielberg.

No surprise, then, that "detailing" here doesn't mean your car -- it's for your boat.

Once you sail west on the New River into downtown, the picture changes dramatically.  Instead of the waterfront being used to parade plutocratic wealth, it becomes a people place to be shared by everyone -- the Fort Lauderdale Riverwalk.  The main Water Taxi route ends at the beginning of the Riverwalk.  The bright-yellow boat in the first picture is one of the Water Taxi fleet.

Even the lift bridges across the river are artistically decorated, rather than just being painted in the sort of utilitarian shades usually seen on bridges.

These bridges are constantly opening and closing for the taller boats, and the traffic disruption on the downtown streets would be horrible if it weren't for U.S. Highway 1, which passes under the river in a short tunnel.

After a good walk, I stopped for lunch at Briny's on the Riverfront, a classic old indoor-outdoor Florida restaurant.  It's billed as an Irish pub, but the zany assemblage of overhead "décor" is pure Florida.  The fish sandwich here was both delicious and huge.

Walking farther west from Briny's, I crossed the railway tracks and found myself in Old Fort Lauderdale village, a small assemblage of historic houses and buildings grouped around the New River Inn, right at the spot where the town first grew up -- where the railway crossed the river.

Along this portion of the Riverwalk there's more room for trees, shrubs, and grassy patches -- and that means room for urban wildlife, from a cute little 3-cm lizard posing on the corner of a concrete sidewalk slab...

...to two male Colombian iguanas, having a loud and ferocious shoving battle -- no doubt, over territorial rights.  It doesn't look like any biting took place, but their deep-throated growls sounded like they emanated from much larger beasts.

Heading back, I rode part of the way on the Water Taxi's Riverfront shuttle which works back and forth just through the downtown area.  I then walked some more, up onto Las Olas Boulevard which is an upscale -- and very popular -- shopping and restaurant street.  A few years back, I had one of the most awesome pizzas of my entire life at Gran Forno Pronto on Las Olas.

On the return boat ride back to the beach area, the boat stops under the 17th Street bridge, and you get a grandstand view of the cruise ships just beyond the bridge in Port Everglades.  There were seven cruise ships docked yesterday; six of them appear in this picture.

Close by is the 15th Street Fisheries in the Lauderdale Marina.  This popular fish market and restaurant is another stop for the Water Taxi.

The upstairs restaurant is upscale fine dining, with a splendid view of all the boats coming and going out on the Intracoastal Waterway.  The downstairs is an indoor-outdoor casual café/bar environment, with live music Friday through Sunday, and fish swimming around right under your feet -- as you can see through the plexiglass windows in the floor.  They also provide fish food, so kids can amuse themselves by feeding the fish off the dock. 

I came back on the boat for dinner, ate upstairs, and had a spectacular meal of conch chowder (spicy), sea bass with a miso glaze served with mango fried rice and Thai stir-fried vegetables, and capped off with a heavily-loaded Irish coffee!  Either upstairs or downstairs, it's an awesome restaurant and my one true must-do every time I come to  Fort Lauderdale.  Just be sure to bring a jacket or hoodie -- the ride back in the Water Taxi gets a lot chillier after sundown at this time of year.

The Sunny South # 7: Farther Into the Everglades

The short little 5-day cruise is now over, and I am back on terra firma.  Instead of flying straight home after the cruise, I am spending a little more time in Fort Lauderdale.  Thank you, Hilton Honors loyalty programme.  Five nights in a beach-front resort for free, including free internet and free breakfast, is a pretty decent deal.

And then there's the location: right smack on the beach, backing onto the Intracoastal Waterway, a ten minute drive from the airport or  cruise port, and a 5-minute or less walk to the Water Taxi.  These pictures give you the idea of the Bahia Mar by Doubletree, viewed from my top-floor room: the panorama from the tennis courts, and the second-floor pool deck and outdoor bar and café...

...to the low-rise south wing...

...and finally to the beach. 

With all these places joined by overhead footbridges, you never need to dodge the crazy drivers on the waterfront to get to the sand, or the walkway, no matter which part of the resort you are coming from.  Win-win situation in my mind.  And in this view, a spectacular shot of Fort Lauderdale....

...in which, when you zoom in, you find no less than five cruise ships hiding between the high-rises.  That's Port Everglades, the busiest single cruise port in the world by passenger numbers.

The problem: what to do on the day the cruise arrives when they boot you out of your cabin by 8:00am  and off the ship as soon as possible thereafter?  (That's so they can get ready for the next 3,000 sucke..., I mean guests, who will be arriving by noon).  There are a selection of debarcation tours available, which take you from the ship, show you some sights, and drop you off at the airport by 1:30pm, in time for later-in-the-day flights.  These tours are also great for those staying on locally.

The tour I picked focused on the environment of the Everglades (yup, we're back out there to the River of Grass again!).  On the bus, our tour guide shared this interesting statistic: in the last 20 years, the alligator has dropped from # 1 predator in the Everglades to a distant # 4 place.  The reason is human stupidity, although it isn't humans doing the predation.

The problem is idiotic people who illegally import "exotic" animals as pets, and then have to get rid of them when the little darlings get too big to handle.  The fools who dumped their Burmese pythons and such into the Everglades probably congratulated themselves on their cleverness, but there were enough pythons to mate and breed copiously, and no animal big enough to tackle them.  Result: the pythons are now the rulers of the river.  They're quite big enough to kill a small alligator, or anything else that crosses their path, and swallow it whole.  

Our first stop was an airboat ride, and the captain of our boat told us that he also works as a volunteer on a project to try to sterilize the pythons.  They're having some success, but it's going to be a long struggle.  I just hope they can stop the giant pythons before everything else in the Everglades gets killed by them.  At any rate, during our short ride into the Everglades we didn't see any pythons, but we did see a huge variety of water-based plant life, birds, Colombian iguanas (another exotic pet nuisance animal), and one wild alligator.

From the airboat, we drove on to the Flamingo Gardens -- and sure enough....

But there's a lot more to the Gardens than just flamingoes.  Originally a private estate and tropical botanical garden, it has expanded scope to become a free sanctuary for wild birds, and also a refuge and safe haven for birds and animals which have been too severely injured to be able to survive in the wilderness -- a similar role to that played for marine life by the famous Clearwater Aquarium.  Here are a few examples which I saw during the free hour for walking about the Gardens which our tour allowed for us.

As well, there are dozens of free-roaming ibis -- and they're pretty aggressive about food.  If you sit down to eat at the outdoor snack bar, arm yourself first with a squirt bottle from the counter.  The pesky critters know.  Just aim it at them and they will run the other way.  And there are other free-roaming birds of a decidedly more beautiful character.

I have no personal experience to draw on, but I've been told that the peacock is one of the most ornery and unpredictable birds alive, and also has a shatteringly raucous squawk which ill accords with the graceful elegance of its plumage.  Just as a by-the-way note, the correct generic term for this species is peafowl.  The male is the peacock, the female the peahen, and the children are known as peachicks or (in some regions) as peabiddies.  I've also been reliably informed that when the peacock unfurls his spectacular tail plumage for his mating dance, any nearby peahen is just as likely to go on pecking in the dirt for food, completely ignoring the gorgeous colours of the fan waving at her.

The Sunny South # 6: Epic Bus Ride to the Distant Past

My motto for this post perhaps ought to be, "Don't do as I do, do as I say."

When my cruise made its second port call at the Mexican island of Cozumel, my one thought was to take advantage of being within striking distance to visit the epic Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza.  That was my big mistake, right there.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that Chichen Itza isn't worth visiting -- far from it!  It's an incredible place, and all 47 of us on today's tour came away with exactly the same thought: "I wish I had more time."  Here's why.

Cozumel is a sizable island (actually, Mexico's largest island) located some 6 miles off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula.  To get from there to Chichen Itza, you have to:

[a] walk for some 8-10 minutes from your cruise ship to a not-too-swift catamaran ferry.

[b] wallow across the strait for approximately 45 minutes from Cozumel to Playa del Carmen.

[c] line up and get on a tour coach.

[d] drive for 2 hours and 15 minutes on major motorways to reach Chichen Itza.

Notice that you started from the ship when the docking was finished at 9:00 am.  It's now afternoon, and you haven't even gotten where you're going yet.  At least your tour includes a small bag lunch on the bus -- be thankful for small mercies.

Next, you navigate on foot between long lines of tour buses, desperately struggling to keep visual contact with your guide's neon-green hat waving in the air.  You get a few minutes for a washroom call, and then wait five more minutes for the tickets to be ready.  

Now, it's time (not surprisingly) to go through the entrance gates and security.  You actually hold two tickets stapled together, one with a standard bar code in English, and one with a computer code in Spanish, and you have to get one ticket scanned, go through a security check, and then get the other ticket scanned.  Who knows why?

You then walk for five minutes along a narrow, treed path with a very irregular, dangerous stone surface, while continually dodging the blandishments of dozens of vendors of cheap souvenirs ("only one dollar!") -- mostly marked, "Made in China", no doubt.  Brings to mind the ancient Greek myth of Scylla and Charybdis.

Suddenly, you emerge from the trees onto an immense open clearing surrounded by extraordinary buildings, and it all becomes worth the hours of hassle.  Almost.  Because it's right at this moment, that your guide tells you that you have about 20 minutes to take pictures and roam around before it's time to head back to Cozumel.  

This, of course, is because the cruise ship's port call only lasts from 9:00 in the morning to 6:00 in the evening -- and you still have to retrace the entire 3.5 hour journey in reverse.  Princess Cruises (or any other cruise line, I suppose) can't possibly make their port stop even 30 minutes longer, let along an extra hour.

Princess Cruises calls this tour "Chichen Itza Express."  It really ought to be "Chichen Itza Hit and Run."  Not the least maddening is the realization that you paid $70 in admission fees alone for the privilege of spending less than half an hour actually seeing this extraordinary site.

I think I did well to get as many good pictures as I did in the very limited time allowed.  If I could run, I would have gotten more.

The moral of the entire story is simple:

Do not take a one-day tour to Chichen Itza from a cruise ship.  Ever.  Period.  End of sentence. 

Instead, as our guide recommended, stay in one of the hotels which have their own private entrances to the site, and you can finish breakfast and be out roaming around among the awe-inspiring remains of an extraordinary civilization before the daily tour coaches from Cozumel, Cancun, and Merida even begin to arrive.  Lesson learned, the hard way.

**********

Well, that's enough of my well-founded cynicism.  Even the short time we had was enough to excite me and overwhelm me with the sheer power of this unique place.  As our guide so aptly put it, the Maya who built and lived in Chichen Itza and many other cities of the Yucatan, Guatemala and Belize, were the ancient equivalent of the classical Greek civilizations -- city states of high social, scientific, and cultural development which were continually at war with one another.  The much later Aztecs were Mexico's equivalent of the Romans -- an imperial, conquest-driven state bent on ruling as many others as possible.  Not a bad analogy.

We started with the ball court, its entrance guarded by this imposing structure.

We know from the carved walls that the ball game played here, with a 6-inch rubber ball, involved slinging the ball with a racquet or throwing stick not unlike a lacrosse stick through the stone hoops high up on the side walls.  What we don't know is why the game mattered.  Sport?  Entertainment?  Religious ritual?  All of these theories have been proposed.

We also know, from this detailed carving on the right-hand wall, that the game ended with one of the players being killed -- as a loser?  As a ceremonial sacrifice?  Again, we don't know.  But once your guide points it out to you, you can't miss the beheaded body to the right of the sun disc, with the blood fountaining upwards from the severed neck.

There are a number of stone platforms, apparently intended for some ceremonial purpose.  You can clearly see the carved heads of jaguars or serpents on either side of the stairs.

Beside one of the platforms stands a heavily-eroded statue of the god Chac Mool, complete with a live dragon perched on it (well, an iguana if you want to be fussy).

Another stone temple pyramid stood off to one side, still surrounded by trees.

Beyond that temple, arcades of columns stretch off into the forest, showing the location of an ancient marketplace, apparently reserved for royalty.

At the east end of the cleared space which must have been a ceremonial plaza, there stands this impressive temple.  It's called the Temple of the Warriors, simply because so many of the columns have warriors carved on them.  Whether that was its real name we do not know.

In the centre of the temple stands another statue of the Chac Mool.  If you were to stand here on the equinox, the sun would rise directly above the statue's curved stomach section, and appear to be cradled on the statue.

The most incredible sight of all is the Sun Pyramid towering in the centre of the plaza.

There's a very good reason why the pyramid is always photographed from this point, showing the northwest corner.  The south and east sides have suffered considerable damage, including damage from stones being removed for construction elsewhere, or by souvenir hunters.  This photo at the southwest corner shows the damage of the south side compared to the well-preserved west side.

The damage is even more clearly visible in this one, if you can see around the grinning fellow partially blocking your view of the pyramid.

Speaking of damage, climbing the pyramid has been forbidden for some years because of idiotic tourists who defaced this extraordinary monument by carving their names into the stones at the top.

The most curious feature of the Sun Pyramid is this.  If you extend the four staircases to an imaginary point where the lines meet, and then build a complete pyramid to those four angles, the proportions (although not the size) would be almost exactly the same as the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.  And it would, like the Giza Pyramid, be steeper than a 45-degree angle.  I'll just end my visit to Chichen Itza with that final puzzle.

**********

Okay, on a less serious note.

Our last sea day was, again, beautifully sunny, and that meant crowds of people and all kinds of activities up topside around the pool.  The cruise staff ran a bartending contest for passengers, and this was followed by one of the ship's show-bar staff doing a balancing act with multiple glasses of different coloured liquids.  He was pouring all the drinks himself with one hand, as well as adding the platforms and glasses.  Quite the show.  The first pic shows the perfect control he exhibited.

In the second pic I captured, quite by accident, the epic moment when he tried to add just one more glass and then lost it all.

By the way, take a look in the second picture at the bottom of the entire structure.  The bottle was resting on the side of the cocktail shaker, with the first wooden platform balanced on top of the bottle.  He had a couple of fruit slices in there to help hold the bottle steady, but even so it was damn impressive.