Thursday

Today we explored the Amazon. We took the boat trip up the Loxahachee River, through mangrove swamp and cypress groves, where live mythical beasts such as alligator and manatee, trouble was we didn’t see them, finally stopping at Trapper Nelson’s Cabin, whre we given the tour of this isolated dwelling which has remained pretty well untouched since Wildman Trapper Nelson died there in 1968. He lived as a trapper there from 1928. It was quite fascinating. In the afternoon we hit the beach to look at Blowing Holes – an outcrop of oolitic limestone which has eroded to allow the waves to push up through a blow hole, though the tide was not quite right for it to work properly. After this we dropped into Wal-mart, just to look around. On the way back we stopped and looked at a gopher tortoise that was walking by the side of the road. We had a pork chop BBQ. We finished just in time to jump into the van and go down to the boat ramp to watch the sunset over the Loxahachee River, on the way back we saw some deer by the side of the road. We then sat and relaxed with a drink and a sing round the old campfire. While we were sat in our gazebo, at about 7.30, Carol saw something move in the darkness, it was a pair of racoons, looking for bits we had left. They investigated the cool box again, and nibbled bits out of it- we had already learned to put a big bottle of water on it to stop them opening it. Then one looked up onto the table, deep joy fro them we had left an empty potato salad container on the steps of the trailer. They found that and ran off with it. They returned and were wandering around for about 5 minutes as we sat and watched them.