Ok I have been a little neglectful in finishing up the Florida vacation and then I just found out this coming weekend we are going out of town as well, so I will have a whole new set of pictures to share. So I better get busy finishing up with Florida.
On Thursday of our week stay in Pompano Beach, we did the uneventful trip to
The Rapids Water Park . Right about the time we arrived a thunderstorm moved in complete with
lightning so as we were entering the water for the first time, the lifeguards began shooing everyone out of the water. We sat for about 30 minutes pouting and watching many people leave - since they had already been there for a few hours, they must have figured this was a good time to make a hasty retreat, using the lightning as an excuse to their protesting children. We waited it out however and in the end all worked out for the best.
The lightning passed and with it the huge crowds. Some people remained, die-hards like us, but it made the rest of the day VERY enjoyable with little to no lines on any of the slides and the wave pool was sparsely populated. I get the feeling that this particular wave pool can get completely over crowed and unenjoyble on a normal day.
So we spent about 5 hours there under completely over cast skys and a gently to moderately hard rain falling most of the time. It was great. The one time you can play in the rain and not be worried about getting wet.
But this post is about Friday night. The night prior to our departure. We arranged for a night tour of part of the everglades. The tour is named "the red-eye tour" for reasons other then those of people being very tired. When we got to the tour fascility at about 8.30 (our tour was due to begin at 9.00pm) we were met with a whole group of people and loads of free food. This particular fascility was holding a welcome night for local area hotels to show them just what they were all about and the hotel officials could go back and recommend this tour to tourists that frequent their hotels. It was great. The handlers there brought out some of the reptiles they keep for groups to look out while waiting for their particular tour to begin. Normally these animals are only viewable during the day light hours...so we got to see them due to the hotels being present. The above photos show a chameleon on my daughters arm. They also had a baby alligator, a few birds, and some snakes. So we all took our turns along with the motel reps, holding and oooing and ahhhing over the critters.
Then we were called to begin our tour. We were put on a small airboat, you know the ones you see on TV, the big fan blowing in the back of it. and off we went.
The captain of our boat in true red-neck style hollared out "hold on to yer butts" and "lets geter dun!!" as we tooled off into the night. Cappy has a big spot light that he shines out in front of the boat and thats when you see that you are far from being alone. Red glowing eyes are shining back at us with each pass of the powerful spot and as he finds them he then heads towards them. At the beginning of our tour the water was a couple of feet deep, so many times by the time we reached the alligator he would submerge and we were left with mud swirls in the water where he used to be. Then we continued on to shallower waters - just a few inches deep and the alligators could only try to run away from us. It was incredible, we were so close to the alligators, in fact at one point the captain shoved his spot light at my husband saying " her hold this!" as he bailed out after a small gator to attempt to catch. We all watched in horror as he chased the silly thing around attempting to grab its tail before it grabbed his arm. My daughter was closest in the boat to the action and I thought she was going to faint. In the end it was great, we spent about 1.5 hours out there tooling around looking at these amazing fear inspiring creatures and I managed to get a few photos that actually came out good.
The other highlight to the tour was my daughter and her friends screaming and cowering in the bottom of the boat as we zoomed out into the night. You see, the everglades are nothing if they are not bug laden. As we reached speeds of 30 mph through the glades bugs were bouncing off their heads and extremeties, getting caught in their hair etc. Imagine several girly-girl teenagers subjecting themselves to this oooey goooey experience. We spent the first 20 minutes after returning to the dock picking spiders and dragon flys out of our hair.
We ended our holiday on a high note vowing to go back next year and do all the things we didn't have time to do this year.
More about the upcoming weekend trip, which proves to be quite an adventure, soon.....
Ta, Pam