My First Visit To America – Alligators and Fort Lauderdale

Having enjoyed a couple of days living the high life in Miami on my visit to America it was time to head for the next destination in Fort Lauderdale. Besides the fact we were heading for an airboat tour in the Everglades I was looking forward to cruising the roads in the muscle cars we had for the week (once a car loving guy always a car loving guy). The only downside was that I had to sit in the passenger seat and not get behind the steering wheel myself.

Arriving at the Sawgrass Recreation Park the first thing I heard was the massive fans of the airboats fire up. Automatically it made me think of every Hollywood movie I’ve ever seen with them in it. You know the ones, where they race out across the water taking jumps with nothing but open space in front of you having what looks like the time of your life.

OK Ok… maybe that was just me and while there were no jumps on my tour I did get to experience the amazing speed of the boats. It wasn’t long into the tour that my focus soon turned to the wildlife as I spotted my first alligator. I was surprised by just how close it came to the boat (photo of him here in my post on airboat touring the everglades), especially when it seemed to just swim in as a turtle surfaced to say hello.

At the end of the tour there was the opportunity to tour the park and hold a baby alligator if you so wished. I preferred to keep my fingers but did snap this guy while our tour guide Sandy held him.

Next stop for the day took me from searing heat to searing pain in my feet as we stopped in at the Sawgrass Mills shopping mall for lunch and a look around. According to wikipedia it’s the 6th largest mall in the United States and given how much I walked here… I hope I don’t visit the other 5 on the list.

Now I’m not a big shopper but when you see brand name items on the shelf for half the price you’d pay in Australia or the UK then you buy up regardless. I can only seen America growing as a shopping holiday destination with the way of the currencies at the moment, if only Australia wasn’t so far away.

The last stop for the day my hotel, the B Ocean Fort Lauderdale. This was a super cool hotel which had everything I’d ever wanted in one. The rooms where spacious and provided ample desk space for you to work. Oh and the view was pretty sweet to look at from the bed as well.

Perhaps even cooler was the wine vending machine in the cafe downstairs. You simply take your pre-loaded card and insert it like a credit card. Put your glass to the appropriate bottle of choice (some 20-30 options at the time), press the button and wait to be delivered wine. It’s something I’d never seen before and while its a novel idea it turned out to be a lot of fun with a few people.

And thus ended a day where I’d soaked up just a bit more of Florida and its to do activities. The final joy of my very short stay in Fort Lauderdale was to watch the sunrise the next day from the comfort of my bed, pretty spectacular to wake up to wouldn’t you say?

While all views are my own, my stay in Florida was organised by Visit Florida with cars provided by Hertz from their Adrenaline Range and the flight to Florida was provided by Virgin Atlantic.