Dispatch from Miami, Florida - Glidin' in the Glades

I have spent a lot of time experiencing South Florida over the years and I've had some great adventures along the way. But I've never had that ubiquitous South Florida tourist experience - an air boat ride in the Everglades. Today, as my great aunt used to say, "God willing and weather permitting" that will change.

I'm headed out Tamiami Trail to the site of one of the many companies that offer air boat rides. 

Miami is a sprawling city but as you drive west, urban and suburban development abruptly end and you find yourself in the Everglades. No wonder there are seemingly daily news reports about alligators in swimming pools, school yards, and the kitchen's of people's homes. South Florida is built right up to - and in some cases over - the Everglades. We and the alligators and all the other Everglades critters share the same 'hood.

With all the alligator encounters I've had, I should be used to these creatures. But as we know from past posts, I am not. They scare me. They look at me like they know I'm afraid of them. 

When I see homes set against a canal or a pond in South Florida, I shudder to think of living there. Every time I'd go to the yard to call out for Fluffy the cat (or Junior the kid, for that matter) and not get an immediate response, I'd think the worst.

After you hit the Everglades along Tamiami Trail, buildings are few and far between. Just about all that dots the highway are the tourist places offering an Everglades experience. 

The air boat place I'm headed to is set on the side of the busy road smack in the middle of the Everglades. The place is nice enough, with all the accoutrements of a good tourist attraction - a somewhat cheesy gift shop and a greasy spoon restaurant with fried everything listed on a Coke board. I love it. But in this case, the offerings include gator tots. As if the air boating over their heads doesn't tick off the alligators enough, I'm sure the smell of their brethren being deep fried will.

In the parking lot and everywhere else you wander, there are signs telling you to not bother wild alligators. The signs have an animated picture of an open alligator mouth and a human arm with the fingers separated from the hand. Point taken.

I always get a kick out of signs like these. To me they are some desperate attempt to cheat Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest. They're like the directions painted on London streets at sidewalks telling people to look to the left or right before crossing. How many tourists not used to traffic driving on the left side of London roads got smacked by a London cab or double-decker bus before the authorities said, "We'd better paint warnings on the streets"?. In this case, how many gator-taunting tourists were disunited from a limb before the powers-at-be said, "We'd better put up a sign"?.

When I check in, I am corralled along docks to an area with a variety of tour-ready air boats. When boarding the boat, I am given a pair of bright orange foam ear plugs and told that I must wear them because the boats are noisy. Immediately, I imagine going out on the tour and seeing another boat flipped over with big bite marks on its hull and no sign of anyone - just a bunch of these orange ear plugs floating in the water.

The tour itself is a great experience. Once underway, I finally understand the reason for the air boats. They can glide on top of the shallowest of water because they have no props beneath. It's all about the air power. In places, we are in open water but in others, we seem to skim over the grassy land of the Everglades. 




The area is vast and no buildings are in sight. You have a frontier feeling as you zip around this beautiful place.

By the by, I think KIm Jong-un is on the boat in front of me. Come to think of it, maybe it's not him because I can't see Dennis Rodman. Judge for yourself. Anyhoo, at least his head is blocking the wind.

Of course, the guide slows the boat at different spots to see alligators. At one spot, a gator comes swimming by as if on cue, like some Orlando theme park attraction. But in the relative safety of the boat, the gator is not what strikes me. It's what the guide says. 

We are next to this small outcrop of trees - a crude little island. The guide says that this is called a "hammock" and that Native Americans inhabited small islands like this back in the day.

They escaped forced relocation by government and came here to be left alone. Alone indeed. I can't imagine how desolate it must have been, especially when it was dark, the area was teeming with wildlife, and mosquitoes were the size of birds. Wow.

After the ride, we are invited to roam the park and see a live alligator interaction show. The guy who does the show is engaging but as he handles the alligators, big and small, and tells us how safe it is to handle them if it's done properly, I can't help but notice this bandage on his face and wonder what happened. 

After the show, I continue to explore through a park area with varieties of gators and crocs in pens. They even have the human-eating Nile crocodile that recently has been found in the wilds of South Florida. Lovely. Oh yea, this one's got my number.

As I'm bravely staring this beast down through chain link fencing, I hear an air boat approaching and look up. The air boat is coming in from a tour, just like mine did, and is passing by the grassy area where I am standing. 

With a thump in my stomach, I realize that the area where I am standing is open to the water where the tours go and where the wild alligators are. Without putting too fine a point on it, I am looking at these exotic human-eating specimens penned behind fencing but I am standing in the open Everglades with all the human-eating creatures that call it home. Sure enough, just as my pea brain takes all this in, I see a big alligator taking a stroll on the grass next to the incoming air boat - and he is not behind any fence! Dagnabbit!



As if that isn't enough, to guild the sheer-fear lily, I reel around to avert the threat. As I am turning, I look up and catch sight of a palm tree full of big birds. I squint to see them against the backdrop of the sunlight and realize that it is a flock of vultures, perched right above me. What are they waiting for? Everglades tourist road kill to snack on? I'm so out of here. I'd rather face the crazy wild people of Miami than the crazy wildlife of the Everglades.

Dispatch from Hong Kong - Hong vs. Kong

Hong Kong is a city of contradictions: futuristic skyscrapers next to shabby buildings; high speed yachts sharing Victoria Harbor with traditional Chinese fishing boats; five-star gourmet cuisine alongside street food vendors; haute couture fashion houses on the same block as dollar stores selling cheap wares.


Next to my hotel, a skyscraper is under construction. The modern building reaches for the sky but the scaffolding cladding it is crudely made entirely from bamboo lashed together and covered in green plastic netting.

And yet all these contradictions create an eclectic mix that makes Hong Kong entirely unique.


The pace of Hong Kong is fast. There are more than 7 million people here and they tend to get around with haste, just like the big bucks being spent on luxury goods and the billions of dollars flying around the financial market.

And then there is that skyline, so beautifully highlighted by the city's harbor. On the hotel- and tourist-heavy Kowloon side, the harbor-front boardwalks do double duty as an open air stadium to view the nightly light spectacle of the Hong Kong skyline. Even that moves fast.

Yesterday, as I was wandering the streets of Hong Kong, I was struck by how much of the British influence remains - from the street and building names to the high tea ritual at all the swanky hotels.

With it's own money, government, and culture, as well as so much that remains British, the "Special Administration Region" of Hong Kong is an anomaly within China. But that is probably smart. The SAR allows China to have capitalism and all things western without compromising the communist state - the best of both worlds.

To experience Hong Kong's greatest contradiction, you need only take a short walk west of that world class skyline. Within a few blocks, you leave the Hong Kong you know and enter a traditional Chinese community. I explored it this morning.

The streets are lined with small independent shops selling all sorts of adventurous stuff - exotic foods, herbs, live animals. I saw one shop that sold live snakes to cure all sorts of ails. Apparently people pay to have the gall bladder taken out of a live snake and eat it raw in the belief that doing so ensures long life (not, it goes without saying, for the snake). While I was standing there, a guy came out of the shop holding an empty snake basket and scanned the sidewalk like he lost something. I left pretty quickly.

On this hot summer day, the sidewalks in front of these shops are lined with all sorts of things drying on plastic or in baskets in the hot sun - veggies, mushrooms, fish, sea slugs, lizards, and even seahorses. I guess the drying intensifies the flavor, but with all the traffic, it must also add a note of exhaust.


In an attempt to escape the heat, I ducked into the central market. Wow, that place was intense. People and food were flying around everywhere - chickens being slaughtered, boiled, and plucked; pigs being portioned; seafood being cleaned on the floor; vegetables being bundled and tossed onto tables. I saw one guy in chef's whites walking out with a slaughtered pig over his shoulder. The pig was not packaged in any way - just bound at the hind legs with twine. It bobbed up and down like it was dancing as the chef walked away. I guess pork is on the menu tonight.

After a butcher fired up his hose to clean his stall just as I passed, and showered me with specks of all the nasty protein bits he was cleaning, I decided that the blazing heat and sun outside were not that bad after all. 

I headed up another street that had many shops selling what looked like colorful toys. But these weren't toy stores. It turns out they were funeral stores selling plastic and cardboard replicas of everything and anything you can imagine. Apparently people buy these and burn them at the funeral or bury them with the deceased for use in the afterlife. 

And when I say they sell everything you can imagine, I am not kidding. I saw utensils, books, musical instruments, sporting goods, designer handbags, make up, bundles of money, food, booze, ciggies, flat screen tv's, cars, headphones, laptop computers, cell phones (talk about roaming charges) and dolls that were dressed like servants (I guess it's hard to get good help in the afterlife), all made from plastic or cardboard.

But what I couldn't find in any of the stores, no matter how hard I looked, was what I would want buried with me more than anything else - a return ticket.