Miami Vice

We never quite let ourselves believe we were actually leaving Cuba this time until the plane was actually taking off. But it did take off, and we did leave. Arriving in the Bahamas was a little strange. To get our connecting flight we had to go to a special terminal for US flights and enter the US officially there. At least it got customs and immigration over with nice and early. Security was of the usual unneccessarily unpleasant flavour. Sometimes you have to wonder how they train these people. The departure lounge was weird as well - more like T-bay with all the Bahaman crafts and boutique bits and pieces. Clearly there's only one type of American who visits the Bahamas - rich ones.

On the plane we sat in front of two guys boasting to eachother about crime levels, strip searches and their guns. It was as if they wanted the whole plane to know that they had been up to different, dangerous things and this somehow made them cool. It was very funny to listen to. The plane itself was a tiny little thing which at one point got a sharp kick sideways in the air and gave everyone a fright. Luckily Paul's over his fear of flying, right? Arriving in Miami was scary, I suppose. I'm always nervous when starting a new country and not knowing what to expect - we didn't have a hostel booked and weren't really clear on how to get where we intended to go. Plus it was night and we were hungry. But people were extremely friendly and helpful - so we found our hostel, and there were beds for us.

The US is weird, because it seems like it should be similar to the UK because of the language and of course there's a lot we feel we know about it because of films and TV. But at the same time it's so alien. The great thing about it is that we have all these assumptions we've made about the place because of the whole media thing, and all of them get disproved.

We'd also thought our Spanish days were over after leaving Cuba, but tis not so. Miami has a huge Cuban population so we actually found that most people were still speaking Spanish, and all the signs were in Spanish too. (In fact, I found myself automatically trying to interpret the Spanish translations, without thinking to read the bigger English sign above.) There were also Cuban flags all over the place - were we in fact still in Cuba? The main difference is that there Cubans are rich and influential, and you won't see a Viva Fidel poster anywhere. Otto told us that there are some very influential Cuban senators holding back any progress in improving US relations with Cuba, and that it's no coincidence that Florida was one of the key states involved in the re-election of Bush.

Miami also represented to us the return to food, and I'm ashamed to say we began our stay with a trip to McDonalds. There's so much for the consumer everywhere! Where would you start? Paul had dreams of making fajitas, but though we could now buy anything we needed in the supermarket, making that meal was another personal triumph. The kitchen in the hostel basically had 2 rings on a cooker, and a couple of pots. Not cutlery, not plates, no other equipment of any kind besides a microwave! We did pretty well with a few plastic forks and a pen-knife!

I'm not sure what my expectations of Miami were. We were staying in Miami Beach - the posh bit where all the holiday makers stay - everything was so clean and white and quiet and rich. And American. No-one could understand our accents except the Spanish speakers! On our second day we hired a car and Paul braved left-hand driving. I braved trying to navigate us out of the city. We triumphed and hit wide open highways listening to American radio stations heading for the Everglades National Park. The radio was particularly funny to listen to. Being in Cuba we'd forgotten all about advertising. And it was especially weird to hear medical procedures being advertised. Paul's favourite was 'Laser Vaginal Rejuvination.' It was so nice just to have the freedom of driving about, not worrying about which bus to catch, or walking to places. The Everglades is a big swamp area at the bottom of Florida mostly built upon alligator tourism. Really interesting. Really beautiful. It was a good day. And next... Orlando.

We caught the bus the next afternoon (we've bought Greyhound Discovery Passes which allow us free travel for 60 days on any route in the US and Canada - we just turn up an hour or so before the bus leaves. Great because our plans keep changing and last minute tickets are expensive.) We had a particularly hairy moment getting to the station though. For some reason Greyhound stations are hidden in obscure places out of the way - as if the Americans are ashamed of actually having long-distance public transport. The bus driver wasn't being overly helpful in telling us where to get off, and as a consequence dropped us in the middle of a highway with no pavement and no crossing. But a helluvalot of cars. The bus station was on the other side, and our only choice was to run with our big heavy bags. We were taking our life into our hands with that one!

Orlando was another weird place. It's one of those places that other people always went on holiday to when I was at school, but I'd never considered going to myself. And the outskirts is basically made up of theme parks - in fact, a whole big section of the highway is owned by Disney. Our day in Orlando, then, was to be spent at one of these theme parks - Seaworld's Aquatica (a water park recommended to me by someone I worked with). We made a great mission to get there - everywhere's very far apart - and when we arrived we found that everyone was British (I'm not exaggerating). We'd happened to come during British half term. I wonder if it would have been empty the week before or a week later. At least we weren't the palest people around any more. We've built up pretty good tans. Some of the Brits amazed me - they were there for the whole week, staying at one of the expensive hotels with all their kids, and going to a different park each day. Must have cost an absolute bomb. Never thought I'd say this, but it sounds like a huge amount of fun and maybe I'd consider doing that myself some day.

Anyway, it was all incredibly exciting. I managed to smuggle our food through the bag searches saying I had special dietary requirements. Well I do - I require not to spend extortionate amounts on theme park food. Not sure if the checker believed me, but she let it go. The security felt like it was of airport standards, and the rules were ridiculously strict. We spent the day splashing around on lots of different water slides and looking at dolphins with the colouring of orcas. Loads of fun.

We took the night bus away from Orlando. Everything was great up until that point - fun day at the water park, and everyone we met was so friendly and helpful. Including a strangely insightful man on the bus who spotted that Paul and I are married (most people assume we're just boyfriend and girlfriend because of my age) and who gave us some kind of contemplation card on compassion for other people. Perhaps he knew we were about to encounter an absolute arsehole of a security guard at the Greyhound station. As soon as we entered the building we were treated like idiots and criminals, and subjected to a thorough search while this guy was rude and insulting. Then to my horror they confiscated the bottle of rum we'd only just bought for our next hosts, and we only narrowly escaped having the penknife confiscated too (how would we survive without that?). The whole thing made my blood boil. The rules seemed so arbitrary and petty. The main guy was clearly an idiot on a power trip, and the other guy said he wished he'd been the one to find the rum - they were dividing our stuff up for themselves before we'd even left the checkpoint. Afterwards I wished I'd argued that as the rum still belonged to me (I just wasn't allowed to take it past security) and I'd bought it as a present, I still had the right to do with it as I wished. I should be allowed to go outside and give it as a present to anyone I wanted to. Or failing that, empty it into a bin. I certainly didn't want them to keep it. But I was too tired and upset to do anything daring. And we still wanted to keep the penknife.

So I leave you as we sit on the bus heading to meet our North Carolina friends from the Peru jungle trip, and our endless summer is finally ending. It's gloriously sunny, but noticeably colder. I can't wait for autumn -it's been a long time coming.