Miami, Florida, Day four

Everglades Day!

We had booked a tour to see some Alligators. When we booked it the guys goes to Mae, ‘you’re gonna have twins.’ I was all ‘I want twins, am I gonna have twins?’ To which he replied, ‘no, you’re not. You’re going to have your own business, be very successful, you’re very independent and don’t like being told what to do.Two kids. One girl, one boy.’ When we enquired how he knew this he explained his parents were North American Indian face readers, skills passed down from the ancient generations.

From then on, whenever Mae met a guy we assessed his suitability by first asking… ‘Sooo do you have twins in your family?’ If he said no, we knew he wasn’t the one hahaha.

Anyway we got picked up and bused out to the Everglades. It’s the second biggest national park in North America after Yosemite. Which I have also visited.

It’s actually considered a tropical Forrest but looks more like wetlands. There’s grasses and Lilly pads everywhere and alligators! Heaps of them!

We took an awesome tour on an airboat with a hilarious guide who probably has the best voice I have ever heard. About 5 gators came up to the boat and we saw a few snapping turtles too! We went way out, it was awesome scenery, nothing like I’ve seen before.

Next up was a gator show. A massive one just hung out behind the tour guide, not giving a care in the world. Gators brains are about the size of a pea and therefore if you’re not food they don’t really care what’s going on.

I learnt two cool things.
Firstly, if you scratch a gator behind its ear it will open its jaw. If you then put your finger in as don’t touch anything it won’t shut it. If however, you touch a tooth or gum, WHAMMY! Jaw shuts down hard and fast.
Secondly, if you ever want to wrestle a gator (I know you do, it’s very possible) they’re very easy to control. I was actually in awe of this. So what you do, is you put your hands over the gators eyes. He immediately relaxes. The entire body goes all floppy, it’s so cool! I want one!

It was $3 to hold a gator, I gave $5 and held a 3year old. He was lovely, I could have taken him with me.

So after we’d seen and held gators the logical thing to do was eat some! We ordered a gator tail burger as shared it. To be honest, it just tasted like the spices and deep fried batter it was in. Had a fish like texture.

Awesome tour, we did it with Half Price Tours Miami. It was about $35 I think.

Back in Miami we met up with some friends I had met there previously for some drinks. Wet Willy’s was first up for some frozen slushy goodness followed by Mango’s, by now you should all know how much I love Mango’s! Best atmosphere and so different to anywhere else.

We left there to drive to Key Biscayne to look at an awesome view of Miami. Unfortunately it started raining heavily so we want back in and had breakfast at a cute diner before sleep!

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