Note to dear readers: as I might have mentioned before(!) having inevitable tech problems with blog site – after many early morning hours on help chat with site host I’ve given up. They finally sent me a ‘We have a solution!’ email. 8 paragraphs of which 7.99 were preliminary sucking up; 0.01 were telling me they can’t fix it.
So am republishing this post, because although it was published a few days ago, it couldn’t take it anymore and unpublished itself.
Today’s post is brought to you by: a gentle current
Grateful for: ability to swim
Trying hard to accept: people can have such appalling taste
It’s been the best day.
Started out mighty fine, well actually mighty friggin’ hot, with a stroll to the shops at 9am when it was hot enough to fry hash on the footpath.
Wish I’d skipped breakfast when I walked into the Latino grocery and deli and was almost floored by the overwhelming absolutely delicious smells of the fresh cooked nosh.
Only thing that looked vaguely familiar was chicken, oh and the empanadas. Couldn’t tell you what anything else was but wouldn’t scoffed it in a heartbeat.
This place is skinflint’s paradise. For $5 I got: hass avocados (Florida avocados are so big your avocado face mask would cover your whole body, and the next door neighbour’s), tomatoes, cucumber, cans of tuna (‘Chicken’ brand – why did the tuna cross the road?), bananas and a fistful of change.
Then it was time to go to Kelly Springs. But first I was killin’ time chillin’ on the front porch, watchin’ the world go by, photographin’ my bruises, as you do on a lazy Saturday morning.
Focus on the bruise. Ignore the varicose veins. Took me ages to line up shot so you wouldn’t see the cellulite.
We drove past the most ginormous ugly bad taste houses you’ve ever seen. Imagine Florida architecture at its worst. And so many gated communities they must have to start reusing the names.
And new highway construction that made Houston’s look like a Lego model. As far as the bionic eye could see there were new roads so wide and bridges so massive I felt like an ant under a kitchen table. Is ‘small’ even a word in this country?
Kelly Springs is the most pristine, luscious, expansive, well-provisioned, cheap place you could spend a week. It’s got boardwalks for miles, forest everywhere, clean bathrooms, tent sites, BBQs, and enough picnic tables to fit Yogi’s family going back 6 generations.
And weaving through the middle are the springs that start in a cave and meander slowly down like a snake (of which there are lots). You can tube down but those people are missing out on the best of it.
Where it all starts. Limestone rocks near the cave.
Lynn and Kurth are divers so we donned on the masks, flippers and snorkels, eased into the initially-bloody-freezing-but-cozily-warm-within-20-seconds water, put our heads down and were off.
It was the most magical experience. The spring bed is white sand and all around you are mid-size flat fish, smaller size non-flat fish and the odd garfish.
I’ve never been in such crystal clear water and never been so close to fish. And it was incredibly peaceful because it’s completely silent and it’s just you and the fish and it’s pretty darn cool. Well pretty darn warm if you want to get picky.
What would a picnic be without a few accidentally-eaten bees and 3,754,827 ants?
I leave Florida tomorrow for ‘Southern Living’ magazine’s most highly rated city, Charleston South Carolina.
It’s funny, I’ve never wanted to come to Florida. Always given it a big swerve on previous trips but if I was lucky enough to live in the US it’d certainly be top of my list. It’s got it all for next to nothing.
