Cat drove straight onto highway 1 and we were off down the road to Key West. It was a great drive over all the bridges (especially the 7 mile one) that link up all the Keys. At Key West we walked around all the old buildings and shops, had a hot drink and key lime pie (lime cheesecake) and we sat around Malloroy Square waiting for the sun set.
There was a large cruise liner at the dock and thousands of people from the ship were in Key West, so it was very crowded. As the sun lowered more and more street performers and the like set up around the square. It had a carnival type atmosphere. Unfortunately due to cloud cover we did not see the sunset. 
22nd - We headed of the the John Pennecamp National Park and walked around the boardwalk through the mangroves. The weather was not favourable for snorkelling so we decided to head up to St Augustine. We were caught in a huge torrential downpour as we skirted Miami on the interstate 95 freeway. The rain was so heavy we could hardly see the road and many cars had their hazard lights on and were driving around 20 miles/hr instead of the usual 62-70 mph. We made it as far as Melbourne which is just south of Cape Canaveral. For dinner we had Pad Thai at a local Thai/Vietnamese restaurant.23rd - Set off to the Kennedy Space Centre where we spent most of the day. We did a Cape Canaveral: Then and now tour which took us around to all the old launch sites and the airforce space missile museum. It was facinating to hear the guides and volunteers (who worked at the site during the time these old facilities were used in the early 60s) talk about what went on. Good thing we are not one of thier neighbours as they did occasionally have missiles go astray. One in particular ended up over Brazil and has just recently been found in the jungle. In the afternoon we headed off to St Augustine.
24th - We had a full day to look around St Augustine - the oldest European settlement in North America. It was settled in 1565. 
We jumped onto one of the sight seeing trains that travel to all the important tourist places in St Augustine like the Oldest wooden school house in America, the Flagler memorial Presbyterian church, Flagler college-which was one of the old hotels built by Henry Flagler (one of the founders of standard oil) and the old fort which is one of the reasons that the town is still here.25th - Found the library and Cat uploaded some photos and updated the blog while david did some washing at a laundromat. Then we headed back down the coast toward the Everglades. We stopped along the way at Daytona beach and had lunch and watched the cars driving on the beach. It was a cold windy day but there were still plenty of people sunbaking next to thier cars on the beach! Our overnight stop was at Pompano Beach.
26th Headed to the Everglades national park, Shark Valley visitors centre. From there we took a 2 hour narrated tram ride out to the observation tower. Saw many birds and alligators along the way. We found out that the everglades is actually a large freshwater river/slough that due to human intervention is endangered and much smaller than it first was.
27th Back into the everglades but the southern part this time and Flamingo visitors centre where we hired a canoe for 3 hours. We paddled up buttonwood canal to Coot Bay. M
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