Road trip from New Orleans to Amelia Island and down to Fort Lauderdale
Morning surprise in New Orleans
I like to sleep with the bedroom door shut, now that the kiddies are grown. Â I kept them curled up with me far longer than the child police would deem appropriate and even when we slept in separate rooms they were but inches away. But now they are all growed up.
For security I used  to hang strings of bells from door handles, hopefully sufficient to wake Merlin, our Newfoundland, asleep at the bottom of the stairs. Once a mother, always a mother, but the sweet soft days of snuggling dreaming children are over (apart from when they are sick and I can sneak in alongside just incase they need anything).
So I prefer to sleep with the door shut and usually GS does too but in New Orleans he preferred to leave the door open. With Aircon on we couldn’t have the windows open and there were a lot of blackened Cajun ‘gator bites to be digested…
It was dawn o’clock on the last morning.  The door was shut. I was fast asleep lulled by the whiring and clicking of the ceiling fan and the ‘singing’ of the Cardinal bird.
‘Did you hear that? Is there someone  in the house?’ blurted GS.
This would be a minor miracle given that GS claims never to be able to hear anything.
‘Agwwagrup…’ Â I replied malfunctioning from lack of tea.
Although incapable of speech and barely conscious my suspicions were aroused. Might this be a peculairly cunning and devious plan to wake me up so I would slap barefoot downstairs to make the tea?Â
My suspicions were allayed when GS leapt up and  into the bathroom. I concluded that any noise had been identified as Cajun ‘gator bite related and that if I played possum, it was only a matter of time before a cup of tea would be delivered to my bedside.  Â
Then I too heard a noise I couldn’t identify which wasn’t of Japanese loo origin. Â Blearyeyed I Â extracted my dress from the clothing puddle on the floor and leaned over the bannister.
‘Hello? Hello?  I shouted downstairs in my most commanding, no nonsense  voice lest there be bandits in the house.
Neinte.
Bravely leaning over the banisters I spied that the ground floor of our shotgun long house was empty. Meanwhile I heard GS on the telephone from the bathroom presumably picking up the overnight calls from Europe.Â
Next second GS blustered past me  somewhat agitated.
‘There was a man climbing through our bathroom sash window! He couldn’t see me because of the bamboo blind.’
‘What!’
‘He said the front door was deadlocked so he got the ladder out and climbed on the roof to get in!’
‘What!’
‘He says the owner sent him to mend the leak’Â
‘What! Where is he now?’
‘Front door!’
I followed GS downstairs to partake in a hugely awkward conversation.
GS, still bristling with adrenalin like a startled puffer fish was discussing the likely source of rainwater ingress.
I was keeping a fixed smile on my face wondering how transparent my cotton dress was given that my emergency speed dressing hadn’t included underwear.
A diminutive Hispanic man not knowing where to look appeared baffled, relieved and embarrassed.
I speculate that this was due to
- Lack of familiarity with English accents our cultural need to defuse the situation by repeated offers of tea/coffee. Refusal only leading to a repeated requests.
-  Shock from attempting  to climb through a first floor bathroom window and finding one’s self face to face with a towering  naked 6’4  heavy weight Irishman (post Brexit) and former National rowing champion.Â
- Relief that since we are Brits and don’t ‘pack’ ie have handguns within snatching reach, it hadn’t gone the full Pistorius. Â
Pop Quiz
You are Hispanic handy man sent to investigate a leak in the Garden District of a city with a record crime rate, in the deep south in a country where fire arms are the norm and twitchy people have more guns than at the OK Corral and the front door is dead locked. Do you
- Sneak around the back, grab a ladder, scramble over roof tops and ease open a sash window next to the master bedroom?
Or
- Ring the doorbell?
Just sayin’. One of my mantras – ‘Do dangerous things safely, not the other way around.’
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Meanwhile… back to our road trip. It was a long way from New Orleans to Tallehasse (overnight) then out to Amelia Island.
US motorways are astonishing. No litter, big wide lanes, bayous or forests fenced off, Â huge grass central reservations which looked mowed and shiny huge trucks. We switched from the Elvis channel, to Country then rigged up our Spotify so we could go through our fav play lists. Â I was bored out of my head in minutes so started counting road kill mainly though because in the UK it’s the odd splattered pheasant, inflated badger or strewn fox the first thing on leaving NOLA was a HUGE ‘gator.Â
And we hammered right and skidded to a halt when  a space rocket suddenly appeared suddenly out of a grass verge .https://www.visitinfinity.com/about/
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We had a lovely couple of days staying with our creative friends in their beautiful house. It was just perfect- chilling by the pool, watching the wild alligator sunbathing the other side of the fence (one of their dogs wore a flight collar to stop him squeezing through the bars and becoming a tasty snack)
We had a wonderful walk on a nearby beach – within seconds we saw a flock of vultures, a wild tortoise, rabbits and slowly arching through the waves pods of Dolphins. Â Fellow beach combers spent their Sunday morning searching for blackened fossilised sharks teeth or settled into deckchairs reading paperbacks. Bliss.
Then in the evening we went for cocktails and a sunset boat trip. We just missed Manatees in the lagoon, but the sun sank in a brilliance of splashed colours. We chugged past banks of beach combers and fishermen.
‘What are they fishing for?’ asked a young lad.
‘Sharks. Doesn’t matter what they are fishing for  they’ll catch sharks’
There seem to be a lot of sharks in this neck of the woods. I was thinking about 40. Turns out there are about forty species…
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We left to drive to Fort Lauderdale to catch up with Tom and Jelaine again. We were back to tornado warnings and torrential rain. In no time the roads were closed and the airport shut. Given that since we have been in the US the weather has consistently tried to kill us, GS and I nonchalantly pressed on.
Later that evening  as we sat around  chatting outside a golden light flooded their terrace. We went to investigate.  To the west was a glorious sunset, the east a full double arched rainbow over the ocean. We stood on the sand on Hillsboro beach, amongst marked turtle nests and watched in awe as rainbows radiated filtered light in silence and then began to fade back into the sky. Â
It looks as if we had glimpsed the birth of a  hidden planet.
I hope you have enjoyed my little bloglet. Do please like, share and comment if you do.Â
Love GS and I
6 Comments
Your writing is such a delight!! And a model for how to find creative expression in situations that would otherwise have me cursing having ever undertaken the travel to begin with. Brava!
Thank you so much Helen. It was a lot of fun and America definitely a foreign country for us! Thank you so much for taking the time to read my offerings- I really appreciate it!
Hahah! Oh my! Pia! Your descriptions had me laughing so much that I thought surely that my BF would ask me to share whatever it was that was tickling me so, but alas, when he is “in the zone” of writing, he is dead to the outside world. I can’t decide if I should be jealous or annoyed, but I settled on content.
Love this post!
Christina
Thank you so much Christina, it means the world to me that you both read and enjoy my posts!
Oh my gosh! What an adventure. I’m glad the US was kind enough to offer up such lovely literary inspiration. Thank you for your witty words that show how non-residents see our southern culture — and photos to back up your stories for those who think it too bizarre to be true! (What? No giant reptiles in the UK?)
Your blog, as always, puts a smile on my face. : )
Aww thank you so much Jelaine. It was such a wonderful and fun trip!