It was one of the things close to the bottom of my to-do list, but since I found a very cheap direct flight from Las Vegas to Frankfurt I decided to at least have a look.

We threw the few remaining things we couldn’t give away to anyone out in the morning, returned the keys and prepared for our last walk through Isla Vista. Our American roommates had already left on Wednesday/Thursday respectively, so we had no one we could ask for a ride. It was pretty freezing when we left at 5.30 a.m. but carrying all the luggage for 4 kilometers makes you get warm.

I had heard about about Burbank airport by coincidence. It is pretty cool because it is intermodal and served by Southwest. So we could just take Amtrak, get off and walk 1 minute into the terminal. With Amtrak we had decided to try business class this time, but for $15 more it was rather disappointing, You just get coffee, muffins and newspapers, everything else was equal. It even seemed to me business class was more crowded than all the coach cars.

Southwest worked great as always, the flight was overbooked so I could have gotten $300 for taking a three hours later one, but it was travel credit only and I wouldn’t want to let Lars wait even longer (he took an earlier flight). In Las Vegas the first strange thing was already spotting slot machines right in the airport terminal. Also from the flight you get a good impression how crazy this is – a huge city with swimming pools and parks in the middle of the dessert.

We stayed in the LVH hotel, which is one of the icons of Las Vegas, opened in 1969 and operated by Hilton until late 2011. It is not very new, but still pretty nice. As always we used public transport and we should have learned from previous experiences. Again the bus did not give any change, so we payed $20 instead of $10 (for a 24-hour ticket), but reached the hotel quickly.

When I went shopping I used the buses again, but ended up walking a lot, mainly because I did not have mobile internet anymore and couldn’t really find out which bus was going when and from where. I admit having been a little afraid all the time, there’s really strange people running around, especially after it got dark. I also saw some police who had obviously found drugs in a car and were interrogating the driver on the spot – somehow I get the impression American cops like that.

To avoid wasting time sleeping we went down to the strip at about 11 p.m. This is the really awesome part of Vegas – you can see, feel and taste the money. There’s a huge copy of the Eiffel tower and even of the statue of liberty. Every new hotel & casino tries something else to be unique and impress people.

While it is interesting to have seen this, I am happy to only have had to stay here for one day. It’s really crazy and there’s nothing to do except eating (cheap), enjoying all kinds of entertainment (expensive) and gambling (even more expensive).

We spent the last real day in Florida in Ft. Myers. It’s a nice, but small city. After walking through the center we went to the beach and did a quick run. On our way back we got into a thunderstorm, which didn’t seem to stop. We had to get back into the car completely wet, which was no problem because it was still very warm, but we were worried about the leather seats. They seemed to cope with that pretty well.

Next we drove back to Fort Lauderdale through the Everglades. When we started looking for a gas station we realized the next one was about 40 miles ahead or we could go 20 miles back. We decided to go for it and when the meter dropped to almost zero switched off everything except the lights. Thankfully we made it 🙂

After hiking, we wanted to explore yet another dimension of the Ocala National Park, so we wented a Canoe for 4 hours. Even though it is a lot more straight forward to paddle distances with a kajak we managed to squeeze quite a few kilometers into the trip and even have time for a good swim break.

Afterwards we did a quick cache (it was a jeep cache, but we just parked the car and went by foot). It was hidden a little in the woods, so we got some scratches.

Then it was time to head for the coast, the first longer ride with our little car. The views on the ride were very nice and we were laughing in disbelief about some advertisements. “Got no money? We still give you a loan, without even looking at your credit history. The worse the better!” sounds quite strange to us. At least “You think less is more? No! More is more!” explains why even small cars have at least a V6 engine over here.

It was a little difficult to find a good way to go to the Amtrak station, even the guys at the Hostel Reception weren’t really helpful. I tried Google Transport again, which proposed going to the Airport and taking the Metrorail from there. Our Amtrak Silver Meteor to Orlando was scheduled to leave at 8.20 a.m. so we got up at 6.20 a.m. and took the 150 bus to the airport at 6.55 a.m.
There we almost missed the train, but it turned out we needed to go South from the Airport to transfer to the northbound train. We got off at a station we stopped at earlier with the bus, so we should have just got on there. By now we were already running quite late and finally arrived at the Tri-Rail station at 8.10 a.m. From there we still had to go two blocks to the Amtrak station, so we had to run with all the luggage. We finally arrived quite exhausted at 8.15 a.m., but at least we didn’t miss the train. Normally you check in bags like at the airport and just take some small things into the car, but it was far too late, so we had to take everything in. It was no problem at all due to enough overhead storage space in the car, but we were told it would violate the luggage policy and would not be possible the next time.
The ticket said reserved seats, which were assigned directly in the train by the attendant. He was very funny and entertaining and again the service was nice. He greeted everyone nicely and explained where to find the trash cans, restaurant car and toilets.
Actually the train made a better impression than I expected, with clean and comfortable inclining seats, plenty of leg space and power outlets. We even got pillows. While we were a little astonished about how empty it was when we left Miami more and more people got on at the next stops and it wasn’t really getting crowded, but at least reasonably used.

We followed the public transport directions from the hostel we were heading to and were lucky not to have to wait a lot for the bus at the Amtrak station. It was pretty crowded and almost exclusively used by black people, but seemed to run on schedule. We were pretty annoyed by the number of stops – one about every 150 meters, but we reached our destination. When we got off we weren’t sure where to go exactly and while we stood there wondering were to go a man with a hummer stopped and offered us help. He looked up the hostel address in his smartphone and offered to drive us there in his huge Hummer (!), even though it was just around the corner. Americans are just amazing!

The hostel turned out to be a hotel, but the price was alright and we had a nice room. We had some time to get settled until we met my dad, who by coincidence was in Orlando on a business trip. We were really hungry, so we started at Fridays and walked over to the Universal Studio and the Citywalk – both popular tourist destinations and pretty crowded.

As this was to be our last day in Miami I really wanted to at least visit Downtown Miami, so we decided to go for a bike tour. Sebastian, yet another German joined us to we picked up the map and just left spontaneously. We crossed over to Miami via the beautiful Venetian Islands and rode right through Downtown. It was fun to ride the single gear bikes and even though the bike infrastructure was not optimal we had a nice time. It was especially nice how nobody honked at us when riding on the street. They just patiently drove behind us slowly waiting for an opportunity to pass by. I wished it was this relaxed in Germany, even though our infrastructure for bikes is better in most places.
At one point we stopped looking at the map and figured it might be nice to ride another island. We underestimated the distance and the extreme heat and radiation made us stop for water and ice several times. When we arrived at about 3.00 p.m. we walked up the lighthouse and enjoyed the nice view, but realized we should go back to return the bikes on time. The return tip was equally exhausting, especially riding up the bridges without shifting gears. As the dinner at our hostel was really good the last few days we were motivated to be back on time, but in the end it was not really worth it. Apart from that we had all underestimated the sun to some extend, especially because applying sunscreen during the ride seemed to have no effect, because we were sweating to much. Luckily nobody did get a real sunburn, though.

On Friday, after three full days in Miami (which again felt like one maybe) we had checked out of the hostel (getting the money back for the one day we cancelled required some negotiation) and got into her the cabriolet with Gerlinde heading towards key west. On the way we missed the Whole Foods, but stopped by a Walmart to get some food and drinks (they sell water in a one gallon – 3.79 litres – container for $1, which is enough for a whole day with these hot temperatures and being active). The nature of the keys is incredible, but you also get another impression of what rich people like. A lot of the land is still protected, but everything else boasts expensive mansions, gardens and cars.

We stopped at a tourist information about one hour before arriving in Key West. They gave us a map, but a hotel room would have been about $50 per person, so we decided to sleep in the car. Unfortunately I put my camera on top of the car and forgot it there, so when we arrived, I called them and they had indeed found the camera. We would pick it up on the way back, so I had no camera in Key West.

We wanted to see the famous sunset, so we settled at a nice restaurant right at the sunset bulevard. At first we had some ice tea (with free refill) and afterwards some real food. I wanted to try lobster so I ordered the lobster burger and it was really delicious.

We also booked a snorkeling tour for Saturday before we went off looking for a place to sleep. Since all the keys are small islands place is somehow scarce so we ended up on a nice spot with a facility to water boats, but where parking was prohibited. It was extremely hot, so it was difficult to sleep. After midnight we walked around a bit and saw a police car pass by without light first, and then observed a sheriff speeding after cars to pull them out of traffic. After he was done with one car he came back and came right towards us pulling into our parking lot, so we thought we would definitely be screwed. Luckily he was just turning to follow the next car, so we went back relieved, to get some more hours of sleep.

On Saturday we went to Subway for breakfest. They were really unfriendly and the food was mediocre, but at least we weren’t entering the catamaran with an empty stomach. It was a huge boat and relatively crowded. Drinks were free and the weather was extremely nice. The ride was about an hour at a pretty fast pace and soon we were snorkeling around the riff, looking at very colorful fishes. Together with Gerlinde I went pretty far away from the boat and almost hit the rocks at a shallow point, because with the high waves navigating was not too easy. Additionally you couldn’t see very far underwater (I admit having tried to watch out for sharks closely). Still it was a very nice experience – we even had showers on the boat to get rid of the salt.

Finally we went to a small Marine museum and left for Miami in the early afternoon (this time stopping at Whole Foods of course!).

I just received a mail telling me I finally got accepted at the UCSB! I wouldn’t have believed that it might work this fast, but it’s nice however. Now everything will work as planned if I manage to get the acceptance package sent to Perú and get my American visa from here…